eastman03

@Big Epp wow, must have missed your comment. Here I am responding 4.5 years later lol. That's what forums are good for. Covid hmmmm, yea that kinda messed stuff up lol. I won't lie to you; it was nice having LOTW basically to myself and a few other locals. The fishing was pretty dang good for big muskies. Opposite time of year now from your questions, ice up time. Maybe one more musky trip to go yet. The weather has been amazing this far into November, I hope it continues. These lures work alright, I normally use a lot larger lures for muskies, so these have been good for pike. I'm making more lures at the moment, maybe I'll do another photo tutorial.

I agree with Mark. I'm in the process of doing exactly that right now on a bunch of musky lures. I mark out and cut the lip slot when the blanks are still a block, then shape the lure. The lexan I use has a film on it, so I mark out and draw a center line on the lure and the lip and line it up by eye. I only make about 12 lures at a time, maybe it would be different if you were making 100. There is some risk of chipping out around the lip slop for sure. Two of my blanks have small chip outs on the edges. I'm not too worried about it as those edge areas will be filled with epoxy when I glue the lip/wire in. It can be worse if you are going to use a router and the router bit grabs the lip slot, I've been there. I just didn't run the router up to the slot, I left it just short and used my sander to finish the edges of the lip slot.

Finishing a lure while keeping the reflectiveness is a lure makers holy grail. There are plenty form posts about these struggles (I think I was asking about this a while back). Almost all types of "chrome" or silver paint, or foils tend to lose a bit of luster when finished. There are some methods that preserve the shine better than others. I'd have a look at the engineered angler's playlist of finishing lures. He trials a bunch of ways to finish lures to try to keep the shine. I would try for your foil a layer of polycrylic perhaps? That tends to be a pre-finish that seals the lure and lets epoxy stick to it. But I'm not sure, just a suggestion. I learned that technique from some of Engineered Anglers videos. He has a bunch of videos showing ways to get good finish, as well as different foiling technique.

I'd have a peak at your local buy/sell like facebook marketplace or Kijiji. Seems like a lot of people have gotten into airbrushing for a brief time and sell it all when they realize they don't want to do it anymore. I've picked up a bunch of Golden/Aztek/Createx paints for a bargain that way.