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soky72

Sealing Muskie Baits?

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Guys first things first, I just want to say what an awesome forum this is. I've been reading this one and few others off and on for 2-3 years but am only now trying to make a few baits. My question has to do with sealing my wood blanks. Ive read it all, BLO, Urethanes, super glue, epoxy, etc.... and I really think I want to try and do something that will involve soaking the blank for a little while in a thin medium to really get into the wood. Maybe a spar urethane (Minwax satin or semi gloss) thinned with mineral spirits 60/40. My question among many is the next step. Could I get away with dipping the blank in something like Killz primer or should I go ahead and put a coat of etex on the blank before painting? I'm already seeing there are multiple ways of getting the job done depending on how much time you want to spend. I'm not going to be mass producing any lures and am mainly worried about making them as bullet proof as possible against those toothy critters. OH and while Im at it how long do you normally wait between coats on the etex? Thanks in advance for any information you can provide. 

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Years ago, before I was turned on to AZEK by JR Hopkins, I tried some wood restorer to try and seal my wooden blanks.  I bought it at Home Depot.  It was a solvent based, penetrating one part material that was designed to strengthen rotten wood, so it could be filled and painted.

I soaked my wood lure blanks in it overnight, to try and achieve a waterproof blank. 

It did make the blank waterproof, but the same solvents that helped it penetrate deeply also took forever to flash off (dissipate), so I was never able to paint and seal the lures without some kind of bubbling, as the solvents rose out of the blank during the painting/topcoating process.

I know there are newer, probably improved systems out there, so that might be something to look for.

Otherwise, soaking in linseed oil works, but you do have to soak it, then let it cure out, and only use solvent based paints over it.

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Fishon I muskie fish on Green And Barren River in south central Ky.

Mark if I use Etex after I let the lures cure out would that be sufficient protection. When I say soak I'm thinking more like 5 minutes so the concoction can get into the drill holes and lip slot. Maybe closer to a dip than soak.

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i didnt know muskies were in kentucky...i would of thought that it would be to warm for them...?  can you post some pictures of your baits.?

Sure do, Cave Run Lake and Green River Lake are excellent Muskie fisheries as are several smaller lakes and rivers. Tennessee has great Muskie lake as well with Melton Hill. 

I actually have my first 5 "grandma" style blanks hanging after dipping them in spar urethane and mineral spirits. These will be my first attempt at lure building hence all the questions. 

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Any timber lure , also commercial ones , would get ruined by toothy musky and/or pike sooner or later , .......the question is only , whether after 3 , 5 , 20 or even 50 fish !

 

So this is , why we want the best possible wood sealing method and also a durable topcoat ,.........though I strongly believe , that ANY topcoat would get pierced and receive nicks and holes reaching down to the sheer timber , maybe already from the very first fish !

 

This is why I consider a topcoat only as a "first line of defence" , ....the second one ,...much more important to me , ..... is a properly and deeply sealed lureblank , so that possibly no water could enter the wood leading into reduced buoyancy(thus lure action failures) , paint peeling and in worst case into having the lure cracked up .

 

If possible , I want my sealer to possibly penetrate all the way through to the core of the blank and not enterjust  a few millimetres below the lure's surface and leave the very core untreated .

 

Though I do not know , whether my sealing methods do provide such full penetration , I still have good feelings about them , since the lureblanks become singnificantly heavier after the soak , ...evidence to me , that they have soaked up the sealer fluid well , ........whilst the drying time after the soak they'd become lighter again, as the thinner inside of the sealer fluid evaporates leaving the sealer itsself remain inside of the timber .

 

 

 

OK , sofar , so good , ........for many years I had used a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine(paint thinner) , ....soaked my timber blanks into it for 4-5 days , after hung them to dry for 2-3 weeks, ......when the typical linsseed oil smell had vanished , they were ready for priming , painting and finanlly topcoating .

 

But as I had found , this method worked well only when using abachewood(widespread , but yet exotic , luremaking timber around here in Europe) , ..other timbers did lose too much buoancy even after drying , on other timbers(in particular pinewood) the sealer did react with the containing resin generating a tacky surface for painting or cracking up the grains .

 

But the biggest drawback apperared to be, that the linseed oil sealer might kinda "sweat out" of the timber after months or even years , yellowing brighter colors on your lure , in worse cases causing ugly brown stains underneath the topcoat .

 

To avoid this , you must apply at least two epoxy coats on the dried blank prior to priming , ....this keeps the oil separated from the primer and paint and such stains or yellowing should not occur .

 

But I did not get deeper into improving that linseed oil sealing back then , since by that time I had discovered another sealing method for me , ...which is called propionate lure sealer .

 

Basically propionate consists of special plastic pellets to be dissolved in a strong solvent like acetone to make up for a liquid sealer , which can be diluted to required consistencies .

 

It is far easier to work with compared to linseed oil , drying time is a lot shorter and one would not have to bother about yellowing or oil stains , also it is suitable for far more different timbers and also hardens the wood , ...inside and especially generates a hard coat on the surface(not as hard as epoxy , though).

 

I might not go without it anymore , though these pellets are very difficult to obtain .

 

I'm using propionate for a few years now , and as it seems, it is the "real Mccoy" in terms of pike lure sealing for me , ...though the linseed oil method also protects the wood very well, ..but if not of all of it's issues .

 

Please check out the two "Lost Lure" video clips linked in this thread of mine to figure out about the propionate sealers quality :

 

http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/29163-a-lost-homemade-lure-came-home/

 

Here are two more video clips , ...2 out of 9 parts dealing on the making of a "Whirligig" lure , ......these are the parts , where I'm talking about the propionate sealer , ....first clip shows the soaking as from 55:00 on :

 

 

Second clip diplays the dipping , after the acetone thinner would have evaporated leaving the disolved propionate plastic inside of the wood cells to harden and remain in there  , ..starting right at 00:00 :

 

 

Greetings , Dieter :yay:

Edited by diemai
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All of those ideas sound good but what actually happens in a lot of cases is the same thing that happens in a bucket of finish. Ever get that dried skim on top and still fluid under neath. They seal off the out side and don't let them dry properly under neath. Although those sanding sealers and polyurethanes sound good, they are a problem waiting to happen. Take a scrap piece of wood, soak it in one of those oil base sealers, let dry then leave it in a bucket of water over night, then weigh, measure it. Musky Glenn

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I have never used these kinds of heavy sealers that involve days of soaking and so on. There is a terrific thread on stripersonline.com titled 'Plug sealing experiment' posted Dec 11, 2007, by Woodbuster. There is a massive amount of very useful information there, if you want a good read.

 

Stripers have sharp teeth like the muskie, and so these sealing techniques are used extensively by stripers members.

 

I am not providing a link, as I don't think it is fair to the other forum, but well worth a visit.

 

Dave

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I have never used these kinds of heavy sealers that involve days of soaking and so on. There is a terrific thread on stripersonline.com titled 'Plug sealing experiment' posted Dec 11, 2007, by Woodbuster. There is a massive amount of very useful information there, if you want a good read.

 

Stripers have sharp teeth like the muskie, and so these sealing techniques are used extensively by stripers members.

 

I am not providing a link, as I don't think it is fair to the other forum, but well worth a visit.

 

Dave

 

If your talking about striped bass Dave they don't have teeth anything close to a Musky although they can still play havoc on lures. I've lip landed a lot of striped bass and haven't lost any fingers yet. The teeth of a Musky remind me of the dentures of an Alligator Gar. Not something you'd want clamping down on a body part.

 

Ben

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