Seeking Craftsmanship Advice (scale Mesh)

[enzyme]

(This can be can related to other popular scale mesh threads but completely different method)

Hi, long time lurker, first time posting.

So my attempts to use tulle mesh to do scales on an inline lure mold (rooster tail) w/o an airbrush utterly failed. I was using powder and tried various ways to apply the second layer over the clamped mesh but just ran into so many problems....

In my failed attempts, I accidentally achieved some very nice effects with 2 different techniques. Both of these I find much more desireable (if perfected) than using the mesh as a stencil ( I am not ready to invest in an airbrush anyhow).

I am looking for some advice to fine tune these methods for better results.

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method A

First layer of powder on, mesh fabric clamped on snug around the body. When heated back up, the paint softens and expands. It seems to "bulge" through the mesh holes and the fabric is melted onto or glued to the body.

After peeling off fabric, I get the mesh pattern on the body. The pattern really has some nice depth to it, making it look very 3D. So rather than painting the pattern on its like molding the pattern onto the paint.

I tried it with different patterns and various mesh sizes. I did one with a fine pattern, the result was like the diamond pattern spinner blades (this). Depending on the thickness of the powder coat I got variety of effects even with the same mesh. On the good ones, it looks really nice because indented surface is matte, and each individual hole of the pattern is nice and glossy with its own reflection. I can post some pictures when I get home tonight.

Problems / concerns:

- After peeling, on the outline of the indented surface, if observed closely, the outlines are not clean but rather small jagged cracks because part of the material was "in" the paint. I tried heating one up to see if it would smooth out but the pattern got degraded, began to look messy, lose depth and detail. (maybe too much heat). I peeled after the paint completely harded again so maybe if I had removed the mesh before the paint completely hardened, IDK.

- After peeling, the indented surface is matte and can look powdery. I am wondering of that surface is any more vaulnerable to breaking or chipping than the glossy surface. Should I heat it back to a gloss? (which will lose some depth and detail)

Any thoughts? (I truely apologize for the wall of text)

[smalljaw]

This is something that really has to be looked at in order to give suggestions on what to do. I have an idea but not seeing exactly what you are doing and the result you're getting makes it difficult to the point of impossible to help. If you get some pics up then it will make things easier and you'll get a ton of suggestions.

[enzyme]

completely understand. I will post some when I get home this evening.

[cadman]

I also have an idea of what you are talking about as I have tried many times to do things with powder paint and get creative. I also have not had any real success at it. With that siad pics would be helpful. I will warn you though if this is a secret you don't want to let out don't post any pics. There are a lot of guys other than members that read these forums and will steal your idea before you even perfect this. Don't ask how I know.

BTW Welcome to Tackle Underground.

Edited April 26, 2012 by cadman

[atijigs]

I may be wrong but I think what you are trying to achieve is a pre cure pattern that you like. The problem with powders is that if you want a durable finish you have to cure the finished work of art in an oven. You will lose your fine detail and 3d effects as the powder and colors flow out at different rates. You will be left with a nice durable finish that vaguely resembles the pre cure product. If I am understanding the post right and you are not planning on curing the final jig, dip your mesh in the second color and lay it on the still warm first color. Unfortunately most of the 3d (not all) depending on colors will be lost if cured or even heated too much. I apologize if I am not visualizing this correctly. Just trying to help.

[enzyme]

Atijigs

I am only weeks to months into actually hands-on with powdering. I have a bunch yet to cure, haven't even cured yet. Not that I wasn't planning to cure, I assume I had to. I gave up with doing a second color, I was just reheating the first layer again after clamping on the mesh, let it melt / soften up enough to interact with the mesh, dry then peel.

I didn't think about what the curing process would do to, thanks for bring it to my attention but everything you mentioned makes total sense because when I get the indents with very obvious cracking, I try to heat it back up smoothen it and sometimes it does just that, loses the 3d effects, depth and details. Looks like something that's over-saturated with paint.

i just thought of maybe I could just throw a second coat of clear over everything but so far my experiences with clear top coat is big time loss of detail. Is there any different mediums I could use to seal it if curing had to be left out, some sort of spray? What about if i bake it at a lower temp for a longer period, will that not achieve the curing purpose?

[enzyme]

Cadman

Thanks. That sounds like serious stuff. Well I am pretty sure there have been some creative minds that have thought about this very thing before and crafty hands that have executed this with satisfactory results before. I don't think its any sort of ground breaking idea, definitely not something that would be mass produced and I get rich from =P. Actually its darn time consuming and probably more trouble than its worth but it found it has potential to be very aesthetically pleasing and only in it for the self satisfaction.

If somebody told me they already came up with this, I would just shrug and wouldn't doubt them or care. If they said I stole their idea, then I would say 'screw you', because I found out on my own, I accidentally discovered it by screwing up trying to paint over the mesh with a second color using a very inefficient way.

[atijigs]

. You can clear coat the jig with D2T without curing and should be able to keep your desired pattern. The epoxy will provide the durability and may even enhance the detail. It is not an efficient method but could possibly give you the end result you are looking for. Good luck.

[cadman]

I can tell you what I know, as I have played with this as well, and again the stuff I tried was so time cosuming like you mentioned, stealing the idea is really not worth it. Anyway about 6 years ago I got really heavy into applying as many thin coats of powder paint as possible. What I came up with was 6 colors max, with a glitter coat and then a top coat. I achieved this and currently can do this regularly as you can see by my avatar. I then wanted to get the diamond scale effect on my jigs like the airbrush guys do. I do have an airbrush, however I didn't want to use two processes. So I thought I would try some things with powder paint. I have tried on and off doing this going on 8 years and have not gotten the results I want. So here's what I've tried.

#1 Hot painted jig.....put on diamond tulle (veil material). It stuck to the jig and damaged the paint. Also damaged the tulle.

#2 Hot un-painted jig.....put on diamond tulle over raw jig, sprinkled on powder paint over tulle and jig. Found out that tulle does not work well with heat and is very fragile.

#3 Hot un-painted jig..... put on wire mesh over jig, sprinkled on powder paint over mesh and jig. Powder paint with un-even coverage, mesh has to be taken off carefully to keep paint from smearing. Then tried taking mesh off after paint has cooled. Mesh came off but it stuck to mesh and then some mesh chipped off as well. Didn't look very good.

#4 Hot painted jig..... put on wire mesh over jig, very hard to work with and tried not to damage the finish. I did imbed the pattern onto a jig, but this was very tedious. Didn't look the best. Definitely not something I could sell.

#5 Hot un-painted jig..... put on hi-temp tape that was cut in stencil form. Stuck it on a hot jig and then applied powder paint by sprinkling over stencil. Tape didn't stick to well to hot jig.

#6 Cold un-painted jig..... put on hi-temp tape that was cut in stencil form. Stuck it on a cold jig and then applied powder paint by sprinkling over stencil. Heat jig and paint with heat gun, paint didn't stay on jig and tape started to burn.

#7 Hot painted jig..... put on hi-temp tape that was cut in stencil form. Stuck it on a hot painted jig and then applied a second color of powder paint by sprinkling over stencil. Tape stuck to first coat of paint and damged entire paint job.

Things that I have tried once imbedded powder was on, although did not look good.

1..........Baked painted jig, even with a thin coat, all the rough raw edges smoothed out from the heat.

2..........Put powder clear coat over imbedded jig, the clearcoat softened the edges and didn't get the effect I wanted.

3..........Put on epoxy over imbedded jig same results as above.

4.......... Any act of heating the jig to cure even at a lower temp softened all the edges and didn't get the clear defined edges of the diamond pattern.

So, what would be the best solution if it was a perfect world. Stick on metal, bendable or formable diamond pattern mesh. With that, that is all I have currently tried.

Let us know if you come across something different

[atijigs]

Did the powder water ever pan out for anyone? I never did get around to trying that.

[tbrinlee]

Here's my $0.02 and since this is free advice it's probably worth about what you paid for it... nothing.

Once you lay the powder base coat down, I would switch to acrylics and never go back to the powder (or oven). To me you want the powder base to protect the lure. After that I would be depending on the epoxy finish to provide the scratch protection for the acrylic.

The only way I know that you could layer powder coats in an oven is if they had different melting points.

Tony

[smalljaw]

I know of a way it works, the problem is the consistancy. I can get get a little better than half of the jigs painted with the scale to actually take but it isn't fool proof and it isn't consistant. Those he for a bit know I use a spray gun for power paint and I too decided to see if I could do scale patterns and like everyone else I couldn't find a way to make it work, I even got plastic scaling so the paint wouldn't stick and it was the plastic that gave me an idea. The way this works is with wire mesh, you put the wire mesh around the jig you want to paint and make sure it is against the lead. Heat the jig with the mesh on it and once it is heated quickly appy the paint and remove the mesh, like I said, it works about 60% of the time. What makes it hard is the metal conducts heat so you can't just heat certain areas and of course the paint doesn't melt in a predictable fashion so it wouldn't matter much anyway. Well the reason my method sometimes work is the jig still heats the same way but the wire mesh also heats so when you apply the paint it also melts and covers the mesh as well as the jig so as the paint on the jig melts it comes into contact with the hot mesh and it will bond to that instead of simply building up or going under the mesh and that make it tricky in that you must paint and remove the mesh in a quick manner, if you take too long the paint will dry to the mesh and chip as the mesh is removed, if it is too hot the paint will come off the jig and mesh in big strings and that will ruin it. Like I said, it can be done but it is so time consuming that it really isn't worth the trouble because even without scale you can still use blending and shading to get a nice bait.

[cadman]

Here's my $0.02 and since this is free advice it's probably worth about what you paid for it... nothing.

Once you lay the powder base coat down, I would switch to acrylics and never go back to the powder (or oven). To me you want the powder base to protect the lure. After that I would be depending on the epoxy finish to provide the scratch protection for the acrylic.

The only way I know that you could layer powder coats in an oven is if they had different melting points.

Tony

Tony,

On getting multiple colors on a jig, that has never been an issue for me, because I have been doing this for so long and when I started this years ago, I was determined to try to put as many colors of powder paint on a jig as possible to see if I could do it. As you can see it can be done, however it is more time consuming as you have to know what colors go over what, and there are always surprises. So if you are not sure always do a test piece and bake it to make sure you get what you want. Also another note is I have majority of my colors custom made. So I have never had problems with mixing paint manufacturers or problems with different heating times recommended by the paint manufacturer. When I eventually get all of my colors on, the different powder paints will all eventually cross-link in their properties when they are baked. So no need to worry about differnt oven cure temps as all of it works itself out in the end.

[cadman]

Did the powder water ever pan out for anyone? I never did get around to trying that.

I have not tried it either. I have read on other forums, that there were mixed feelings and results.

[tbrinlee]

Cadman;

Obviously you have a lot of experience at this. Told you my 0.02 probably wouldn't be worth much.

Tony

[cadman]

Cadman;

Obviously you have a lot of experience at this. Told you my 0.02 probably wouldn't be worth much.

Tony

Tony it's not that, I take all info from everyone and if I have some experience in a particular area, I try to help out. I just thought I would pass along some things that I have tried and have worked. I don't want to sound like a know-it-all, because there are a lot of things I don't know either.

[enzyme]

Last night I did a few more and exercised whole lot more caution and patience. Some of them turned out really well. I took lots of pictures, will get them up after work in a few hours. Sorry to keep you guys waiting.

About the powder water, really wanted to try that. It would be a whole lot easier to just paint over the mesh using a non-heat method. Dipping and sprinkling a 2nd coat on top of mesh is just too hard to control. The threshold of 'not hot heat' and 'too much heat' is almost nonexistant. More often than not I experience both at the same time, resulting in spotty coverage and overbleeding.

I have a bunch of bodies that I am trying to strip the paint off to reuse. I am soaking them in acetone nail polish remover. But the ones that I painted with glitter (mixed with clear) leaves a tough gooey gummy residue and does not crumble off. Is there an easier way to get it off? Should I take the heat gun to it?

[enzyme]

Various results using 3 different tulle mesh. All on 3/8 tube. Be gentle =)

Blue mesh on white. I really like this look. i would love to be able to get a finished ready to use product to look like this. The color on the mesh can give some good contrasting highlights with certain color combos. I just wouldn't know how to do the open ends and the seam.

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After peeling the mesh. I could have done a better job. I didn't reheat slightly to soften the paint and just peeled. Quite hastily at that.

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Since I had lots of cracks because I didn't do a careful job at peeling, I had to re-heat a little more than I wanted to in order to not rid of the cracks. If I redo this one, I could probably retain a little more detail and depth.

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A smaller white mesh. This one is the one I had best results with. The material made it easier to work with and was more heat resistant than the other ones I had.

pre-peel. Again I just love it with the mesh on. And if somehow this can be cured or protected, I think the mesh on will offer a tad bit more protection than it would after you peel. Maybe it might be able to preserve the pattern better in the oven too, maybe.

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After peeling. This time I heated it back up ever so slightly a few seconds at a time, then peeling very slowly and carefully, Peeling only millimeters at a time, rinse and repeat. Very little cracks but the grooves are very powdery and flakes whenever I touch it.

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I slowly and lightly reheated it so the grooves are no longer powdery or flaking off. Didn't appear to lose any detail and you can kinda see the indents are hard and shiny. Looks more like reptile scales than fish scales but mehhh.

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Random

Experimenting. Dipped in paint two times to get a thick layer. While the mesh was on, heated until the mesh was embedded very deep in the paint, the paint expanded and bubbled through the mesh. Removing the mesh was hard and lots of cracking. Ugly, I find it disturbing to look at. (hey maybe if it was a different color, fish might mistake it for a clump of eggs lol)

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Severely cracked so I had to heat until the cracks melted. And this = what it looks like when getting too close to the gun for too long.

[mark poulson]

Those are some interesting results. Thanks for sharing.

[atijigs]

I think I have a workable solution for you. If you want that pattern to be able to be painted and cured you will need to transfer the pattern to the mold. The easiest way to to do this is get several the way you want.(leave the mesh on). If you can over exaggerate the pattern even better. You then make a high heat silicone mold of your pattern with the mesh on. You now can pour your tube jigs and the surface texture will be on the jig. Just powder paint and cure. The reason for the over exaggeration of the pattern is you will lose some detail anyway just from the painting unless you paint them electrostatically.

[enzyme]

ATIJIGS

I don't think that will be possible. The idea is possible but in my case I don't think it can be done. It might work with the hexagon pattern but that is still a stretch. You see, the material of the tulle is so fragile and thin that if I try to accentuate the pattern it would not look as good. To exaggerate it, I would need to make the mesh sink deeper in paint, then be able to be re-heated enough to be removed w/o damage to the top surface. The margin of error will be even thinner because obviously the deeper mesh is in the paint the more heat it will take to soften enough to be removed. That extra heat might already be enough to liquify the top surface before the indents are soft enough to let go of the mesh cleanly.

[atijigs]

If you can get the pattern just how you like it there is no reason to remove the mesh. The silicone mold will reproduce exactly what you see. When you have the pattern cast in the jig you will loose some detail in painting. (unless you are painting electrostatic ally)..I would not even worry about the powder not being melted completely(fuzzy) when I went to make the mold. The painting will take care of the minor roughness in the finish of the jig.

[enzyme]

IDK Atijigs, I am just beginning to get into this whole thing and that sounds like its way over my head. I am still shying away from getting an airbrush set still, making molds sounds really out there for me right now lol, and it doesn't sound to inexpensive. What is the cost something like that btw?

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@Cadman:

As far as the tag ends go, I actually didn't do anything special to it. Being that I didn't know how far I could get on this I didn't spend any extra time on it. On the ends of the lure, while heating up the paint to interact with the tulle, all I did was use a wire shaft to slightly pet it down. On seam though, by the time I remove the clip, most of the tulle is embedded in the paint. I just snipped off whatever that was not stuck, leaving 1/4 in gap. Again, I didn't really spend any time trying to take care of the loose ends as I was more focusing on the paint/ mesh thing. I think I can get it to work though if I spent some time on it.

I will give the your epoxy method a shot. But let me remake a few, I want to try some more contrasting combos and this time I'm going to take care of loose ends. No pun intended.

[SNOWMAN CUSTOM BAITS]

I have a hard enuff time powder painting a shakey head and making it look smooth much less doing something like this . How about putting a light coat of whatever color you want the scales to be on after you pull off the netting then lightly sand until you can see the raised part of the first color then cure . Lot of hand work and I don't know if it will work but just a thought I had while read this post

[enzyme]

So I am planning to make a few for a fishing trip to the Miss River. i was thinking about making a few with the mesh on. I was wondering if I could skip the oven curing and using a coat or two of clear nail polish. That is all I have right now, it seems to work pretty well with my jigheads.

Or is there something critical about the baking that can't be substituted? I'm sure the hobby store nearby has some epoxy that I can use but nail polish is much cheaper or is it that much more beneficial to use epoxy?