dfish Posted March 18, 2010 Report Share Posted March 18, 2010 (edited) I want to repaint my lures and I was wondering which air brush set up would you use and would you apply a primer coat first. Edited March 18, 2010 by dfish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotorhead Posted March 18, 2010 Report Share Posted March 18, 2010 I want to repaint my lures and I was wondering which air brush set up would you use and would you apply a primer coat first. I'm of the opinion that a primer wouild not hurt and you would get a better finish. Just make sure if it is a repaint that there are no oils or other contaminents left on the lure after you rough it up a bit (light sanding). Your fingers have body oil in the skin and can cause problems with the paint adhering to the lure. If you use Createx it is a good idea to heat set the paint after each color is applied. As for the airbrush, there are as many recommendations as you can count on this site as to the best brush to use. If you are going to get serious about painting then get good equipment, the Iwata HP is a good brush but so are many other brushes that might be a littler cheaper in price. Make sure you have a air compressor that can provide enough air and include a moisture separator. But the key to a good finish is taking your time and practice, practice and more practice. If you use a water based paint and you screw up and you will you can wash the paint off and start again. Just Post questions on this site and you will get great answers from some great guys. Rotorhead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobP Posted March 18, 2010 Report Share Posted March 18, 2010 (edited) I won't belabor airbrush choices because there are tons of info in this forum already - just use the search function at the top right of the page. "Primer" is a topic that comes up often and about which there is a lot of misunderstanding. First, what is PRIMER? Guys tend to throw the term around with abandon and that leads to a lot of misunderstanding and ruined paint jobs. I take it to mean a product that you apply to a lure to make subsequent paint layers adhere better. It is NOT a color basecoat, which is an all-over spray of acrylic paint used to hide underlying paint or wood grain. It is NOT a waterproof undercoating, per se. I've repainted more than a hundred plastic lures without using primer and no paint job has ever failed. I scuff up the bare plastic or the existing finish with 400 grit paper until the shine is gone to give the acrylic paint something to grip. And I heat set the paint before topcoating it. Topcoat dry paint with a good product and it will last just fine. The topcoat is critical. As long as the topcoat is intact, the paint will be fine. If the topcoat fails, nothing will keep paint on the lure. Things become more complicated if you're talking about raw wood baits. You must use a coating on bare wood before you shoot water based paint on it or the wood grain will rise and the surface will have an ugly rough texture. It's good practice choose a coating that is waterproof and durable for this - you kill 2 birds with one stone. You prevent wood grain from rising (waterproof) and you add lots of durability to the bait, which is going to lead a hard hard life. I guess you can call this "priming" but I call it undercoating because I don't like to use stuff that is sold as primer. Primer is not as durable as I want and it often contains solvents which stink (literally) and/or which react badly with one of my favorite topcoats - moisture cured polyurethane from Dick Nite. JMHO, the most fool proof wood undercoating is a "finish epoxy" (Etex, Devcon, Flexcoat, NuLustre - you name it) thinned a little with denatured alcohol so it penetrates the bare wood slightly. Once cured, epoxy is pretty much chemically inert. Any type of topcoat will coexist with it just fine. And it's handy to use if you have a finish epoxy on hand for topcoating lures. My other choice for undercoating is propionate (often known as "prop") dissolved in acetone and applied to the bare wood in multiple dips. I've never had a bad reaction (bubbling or wrinkled paint) with either product. There may be other undercoats/primers that work just fine with the paint and topcoat you choose. But you won't know for sure until you apply the topcoat. If the paint wrinkles and bubbles and ruins the lure, you used the wrong "primer" with the wrong topcoat. Edited March 18, 2010 by BobP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
