Jointed Swim Bait Painting?

[PondBoss]

I had a guy send me a jointed swim bait today.  I've never painted a jointed bait before.  Are there any tricks to doing it?  It just seems like it'll be tough with all the moving parts.  I use Epoxy for all of my clear coat I can't even imagine how that's gonna work out.  Please help

[mark poulson]

When I used to use epoxy, I would take the baits apart after I'd painted them, coat the insides of the joints with D2T, lapping it out onto the sides 1/4", and then, after it had set, I'd reassemble the baits, put them on my turning wheel, and coat their faces with either Etex or NuLustre.

[barrybait]

My wake/swim baits are hinged with screweyes and I am trying to get the sections as close as possible.  I use open screweyes and I am afraid that when bending them closed, I will damage my paint/clearcoat job.  This is only a problem when using upper and lower pairs of screweyes for the hinges.  After everything else is done, the bait is weighted, sealed, all screweyes installed, and pool tested, then I close the "open" screweyes and never open them again.  They are only bent closed one time then the entire lure with the exception of the tail is ready to paint and clearcoat.  Tail is painted/coated seperately.

 

The first time I used brake tubing that I had laying around but now I use the rings from craft stores.  I don't know  what they are called but the double rings that you might use to hold scale netting stretched out for painting or could be used for needle point type crafts.  Most are about 8 in circles where one ring clamps over the other but there are larger sizes and they can be made of wicker or plastic.  For my 8" baits I am using  about a 12 or 14 inch ring.  Then I bend some wire of varying lengths with a 1/4" hook shape on each end.  Use a rubber band and wrap it several times around the ring and hook both ends of the rubber band to a one inch wire hook you made and hook the other end of the wire to your line tie on the lure.  Now do the same thing at the other end of the lure.  If you have a pin for the tail use it for the wire, otherwise you have to use the back hook eye.  Now it is streched out nicely accross the ring but it bobs all over the place so to add stability, add one more wire/rubber band rig to either the front hook eye or to one of the hinge eyes.  Now the lure is nice and stable and ready to paint and/or clearcoat.  When painting, if you push lightly on the stability wire, it will open up the joint and make it a little easier to paint without having to touch the lure at all and it makes it easy to hang the bait by the ring inbetween applications.

[BobP]

I paint and clearcoat the parts of a swimbait separately and then glue in the hinge joints ( I use hand twisted screw eyes).  Another thing - epoxy will thin out over sharp edges as it cures.  If the swimbait has sharp edges at the joint and the body segments bang together during fishing, the epoxy will chip away the first time you fish it.  So at least round over the edges of the body at the joint, or better yet frankly, consider a different clearcoat option.

[Richard Prager]

I hate doing jointed baits. The painting part is so bad but the clear coating if using epoxy is a PIA and time consuming. At least it is to me......I recently did a sebile for a friend and wrapped the green twist ties that is carried in the garden sections around the joints to keep them straight. It comes in like 50 foot rolls. You can just wrap it until the bait is straight and then cut the wire. This worked out alright, but like I said time consuming. If you are making the baits for yourself, then it would most likely be worthwhile. I'm sure there are better or other ways, but that's how i did it and hopefully was my last one! LOL