spoonbender

Good luck friend, have been looking for a couple years for a source with no success to date. I've solicited injection molders but the tooling costs are a bit steep. Let us know if you find something.

I'm a bit out of my comfort level with bass jig making but got my butt kicked this summer by my little brother while he fished a Peanut Butter Jelly pattern Mop jig. We fished several lakes varying from clearwater to coffee colored and he clobbered decent bass every day. I've made tons of walleye jigs but have no resources for the bass variety. What mold/color/skirt recipe do I need? I suspect it has a living rubber skirt material, seemed to maintain a nice flowing action during the retrieve.

I don't have any Binks guns but mine all run from 30 to 70 psi, depending on what I'm spraying. If it sprays when gravity feeding, can only assume that it has a plugged air passage in the siphon tip or a gasket/O-ring is out of order. I did once put a pressure feed tip on a gun set up for siphon feed by mistake, wouldn't draw the fluid up the siphon tube. Is your air pressure 60 PSI at the gun or to the supply line? You can lose a quite a bit of pressure using 1/4" air hose, depending on it's length. Good luck Ben!

Silica gel is the most common desiccant, absorbs airborne moisture. Auto Supply's sell it for re-furbishing air compressor air dryers, I make up little bags of it with coffee filters and tape them shut with electrical tape. I use it in my gun cabinet, powder paint (to prevent clumping), and ammo reloading components. You can put it on an old cookie sheet and dry it in your oven at 230 degrees for about 2-3 hrs. I wouldn't eat it, but it's pretty stable and doesn't present much of a health hazard. Some of the product also has a moisture indicating coating that starts out blue and turns pink when it needs drying.

Sorry Ben.....my fingers were moving faster than my mind.....again..

BobP makes some good points. I do a lot of controlled depth fishing and rely quite a bit on the books by Mark Romanack that contain the depths achieved specific to each lure. The info is only accurate for trolled lures, doesn't apply well to hand cast lures unless you can make the incredible long casts some dudes brag about. Retrieve speed, type of line used and rod tip placement affect your depth. I have a Raymarine side scan sonar but as the lures are typically so far behind the boat, don't register on the screen. Standard sonar registers the depth of our downrigger balls as deep as 250 ft. but thats a different subject.

I just use the snaps for the line eye, getting lazy and the fingers don't work quite as well as they used to. I have used the oval rings for hooks with shorter shanks but normally apply the round one for most lures as they are a little easier to install.

I've never used water.....maybe that's wrong but my results have normally been pretty good. There's already a water component in Future...perhaps that's enough.

Yup, mixes well with the WalMart Apple Barrel and Plaid acrylics.....for the colors I've used to date. The only issue I've seen is thinning some of the Plaid metallics......may want to refrain from excessive thinning, will allow the metallic particles to separate and drop to the bottom of the cup....or siphon bottle.

I've used the "Future" for thinning acrylic paints, but it's no longer available, has been re-branded under the "Pledge" name by SC Johnson as "Pledge With Future Premium Floor Finish". Same stuff, just a different name. There may be some generic acrylic floor finishes that are the same as this product, but wouldn't recommend using them unless they have the same chemical make-up. The Future has a mix of water, acrylic polymers (what's in the acrylic paint), a plasticiser called TBEP for leveling and gloss, and DGME, which is a glycol for better mixing. Unless these products are present, don't use it for thinning. Mop and Glo is a floor finish, but has a different chemical make-up, would make a mess of your paint.....been there, done that.

I did up a few similar colors for my brother for a Pro Am on Tablerock. Used transparent gold as a base and medium red transparent over it for an orangish red/brown. Looked pretty ugly to me be he claimed it worked well for him.....outfished his pro that day.

I give gentle heating of wood prior to sealing two thumbs up. When I still built wooden musky lures I used a penetrating epoxy called Rot Doctor. Never used balsa but plenty of basswood and white cedar. I heated the lures with a heat gun prior to application of the epoxy as it enhanced thinning of the product and allowed it to get drawn into the pores as the wood cooled. A second coat was needed to give it a little smoother base for application of paint as the first coat virtually disappeared into the wood.

Just ran across this on "The Hull Truth" forums.....no help for the cleaning but looks like a kick-butt recipe once you figure out how to get the filet's. http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/recipes/recipe9.html

Quite right, will give a more detailed description of the process.

As I ended up bleeding a lot when cutting stencils with an Exacto knife, I now make my stencils out of copper foil that I chemically etch. They're re-usable and easy to remove built up paint from, just dunk 'em in the appropriate thinner/cleaner when done. The copper is very conformable to the shape of the lure and multiple templates can be soldered together for a full 3D stencil similar to the vacuum formed plastic ones. I make up my own etching patterns on my Windows "Paint" program, print them out on the back of used label paper with a laser printer and iron the toner onto the copper. The etchant eventually removes the copper from the un-coated area of the foil, thus creates the desired pattern.

I painted some large jointed swimbaits that have a replaceable soft plastic tail. I used standard paints on the hard plastic portion and CSI transparent vinyl paint on the soft plastic tail to get a match. It seemed to do the job, looks ok but I'm concerned with longevity. I know there's specific paints for soft plastics but as I don't really use the CSI stuff anymore just wanted to use it up. Experiences?

I have a powder airbrush from CSI and have never tried to restrict the orifice for a finer line but have had good luck using a plastic worm inflator (the one with the little needle) filled with powder. Depending on how close to the lure you hold it and how fast you move it, makes a much finer, crisper line than the airbrush. Make sure you pull the needle out of the blower bottle and reverse it so the squared off end is doing the dispensing.

For smaller lures, I use the little 99 cent minnow nets....depending on mesh size. They already have the nifty handle to hold the mesh over the lure. Recently I picked up a 99 cent butterfly net at Dollar General that had just the right mesh size and shape for a new project. If you're not afraid of being labled a perv.....just skim through the girlie section of your local WalMart, can spot some pretty neat meshie things. Don't actually buy them unless your significant other is with you, makes it a lot easier than having to explain why you have a bag of that stuff stashed in your workshop.

The only issue with powder painting in an unheated garage is if it is extremely cold and you allow your spoons to cool too quickly. I started powder coating trolling spoons a number of years ago and had issues with the finish getting small cracks and crazing when I quickly heated a spoon with a torch, sprayed it with the powder and just set it on the cold workbench to cool. Now I use an electric frypan that my wife can't find to preheat the spoons and post powder-coat cure. When there is no room left on the pan for more spoons, I'll turn it off which gives them a chance to cool for a more prolonged period. I still bake 'em in a toaster oven for the final cure period, but again, there is a longer cooling period involved. I keep my powder in Glad plastic containers with the screw on tops, keeps it dry regardless of where I store them. I place a dessicant canister in the container to address any moisture issues for good measure.

Found it....here's a link. http://www.powder-coater.com/tapes.htm

There is a high temp plastic adhesive tape just for masking powder paint projects. It's a dark green transparent product, actually works pretty well. I picked up a couple rolls a few years back but don't remember the Ebay vendor that had it. I'll snoop a bit and post a link.....

I'd purchase some myself if I didn't already have quite a bit of shelf life challanged D2T to dispense. Way-ta-go RiverMan, into the breach!

So much for truth in advertising...caveat emptor

Well, inquired again and they insisted it's waterproof....here's their reply: Yes, our color and clear is waterproof, it is 100 % solid, no vocs and is odorless and non toxic Thank you Ecopoxy Systems[/font]

Whoops....didn't see the comment about "water resistant" versus "waterproof" in their info....my bad. I contacted them to inquire as to it's compatability with fishing tackle and they indicated it was perfectly suited. Will re-evaluate....Thanks Salty's.