sambennett

This is called "innovation" - most (and arguably some of the most important) innovations aren't groundbreaking new ideas. They're improvements and modification to accepted best practices. I won't go too far down my open source licensing rant, but will quickly say that open sourcing designs and innovations ensure that everyone can use them freely. The most important factor being that the big guys can't patent your innovation and later sue you for using it. My $0.02, your mileage may vary.

Hey Mark- Thanks for posting those - really neat. I agree with you that it's not "better" than airbrushing, but it's certainly something to think about. Like you said - the fish don't care. -SB

Hey Mark- I'd love to see what you've achieved with nail polish. Sounds like a neat way to get semi-transparent layering. Have you posted anything in the gallery? I'm not sure how to look up pictures that are just from you, so sorry if this is easy to do and I'm unaware. -Sam

That's weird. I still can't see 'em at Predator. I see some other poppers, but not the Chug Bug. I found them over at Bustin' Bass. Maybe that's what I was thinking about. Or I'm losing my mind and/or my eyesight. At this point anything's possible. As a side note - has anyone ordered the 3" minnow jerk from Predator? I want something similar to a smaller husky jerk. I did a handful of his 4" jerk baits last year and they turned out OK, but not exactly what I wanted for this round.

Hm... just went out to Predator to order a few Chug Bugs and I don't see them on there anymore. That's a bummer.

Hey Mark - I did a baby bass Sammy 100 for spring of last year and it worked out really well. My #1 topwater last year, even beat out my buzzbait. I don't mind the action "as-is" - they walked easily and cast a mile. I can see how adding a little weight in the tail would help, I just don't care to mess with it. I think I ordered 25 or so and painted them up for friends. They have a mouth/gill slot that can be a little difficult to keep clear during topcoating. I use thinned D2T. I decided not to worry about it too much and they still came out just fine. Some of them ended up blocked and I personally couldn't tell much difference. I saw that Predator has some Chug Bug blanks now. I'll probably do a handful of those this year. Those are smallie killers on my river all summer long.

I recently made lures from the 1/8" x 3" x 36" balsa planks I got from Hobby Lobby. It was the hardest stuff I could find. It was quite easy to cut my blanks, get the internals built and glue the two halves together. I have historically used blocks myself but enjoyed this new process quite a bit.

Those are really beautiful. Inside and out.

I got the Walmart variety and it's probably 5 RPMs or something like that. I haven't been able to overload it yet. Plenty of power. The first one I bought off of eBay died after about 4 hours.

Elements will serve you well for resizing and a whole lot more. Same with Gimp. I haven't used Gimp for a while, but it did everything I needed it to do and then some. As a long-time Photoshop user my only complaint was that some features took some poking around to find and the keyboard shortcuts were different. If you're not coming from PS you won't have this problem. I'm back on a Mac after my brief affair with Ubuntu, so I'm also back on PS. Heh.

Yeah, could be a few things. Could also be that you're lip wasn't set true to center, but could also be a problem with your ballast being off-center. Start with messing with the line tie, for sure.

I have added the denatured alcohol prior to mixing thoroughly and had some problems with the epoxy fully curing in small spots. Not 100% sure that was the culprit, but it's all I could put my finger on.

I got some of the silver leaf over the holidays and tried it out. Touchy stuff indeed! It was difficult to get it applied evenly on the bait and bunched up in a few spots, specifically around the eye holes. I was none too impressed with the results. I did try my first spray glitter and that worked out quite nicely, better than I expected. My only advice for that method is to do very light coats and let it dry. If you want it "super-glittery" I expect a dozen or so coats could be in order. For my purposes a single coat between the base coat and the details worked very well. Not sure what brand I used... some stuff the wife got for decorating pine cone wreaths. Hobby Lobby or Michael's brand, I assume. I think that silver leaf is headed out of the shop and into the crafting bin.