To seal or not to seal!

[RiverMan]

Skeeter brought up a good point in another post about sealing the baits prior to painting that has me wondering what others think. It seems to me that if the water gets past the etex/devcon barrier on the outside you are probably done for anyway so why bother taking the time to seal the wood? What do you guys think?

Jed

[Coley]

I seal the wood to keep the primer and paint from soaking in.

Coley

[weighinalimit]

I seal the wood to keep the cedar from bleeding thru paint, use fast dry clear laquer in a pan, load the dryer w/ baits & hold the pan so baits are rotated thru. saves me time(at least I think it does)

[BassNator 1]

I dont seal it prior to paint, but thats why I coat it with two coats of the Painters Touch Prime. BUT.... I am using Balsa and Poplar on my lures. Some wood actually will soak up any fluids put on the lures, but I have not experienced any issues with that on the two woods I use. As Coley said I will have to keep an eye on that, but I have had no problems with it as of yet. Just My .02 cents worth! Cody

[RiverMan]

It's interesting that all of you mention sealing the wood for the purpose of preventing color bleed instead of water protection. I'm using poplar too Bassnator most of the time and find that a single coat of white paint is adequate to prevent my paint from going anywhere once it hits the bait. Mostly I use a flat white paint from a rattle can as my primer. I tried dipping a couple baits today into some diluted water based kilz primer/sealer and the finished result looks very promising. I will probably give this a try for awhile and see how things go.

Thank you!

Jed

[BassNator 1]

Riverman.... I do my primer from a rattle can too.. and I do it twice! I get a real good coating on it twice, to me after I sand it down good its so smooth, like a babies behind... there isnt a trace of wood grain on it! Thats how ya do it! Mine is NOT to protect the water, its to get a good coating for my paint to hold on to. My final clear coating should do the trick! Cody

[Lure--Prof]

I second Coley, and will add that I don't want anything in the wood bleeding out into the finish, especially moisture. I will guess also that the dryness/absence of resin in poplar, balsa and basswood would minimize the chance of this happening.

Dean

[johnnytheboy]

i have been using a normal wood water based primer and thining it down to a milky consistency and putting enough on for it to soak right into the wood, from there i have been thickening it till i'm on about 100% wood primer, i sand in between each coat working right down through the grades of sand paper and it realy ends up smooth i finish it of by keying it and using a rattle can as a guide coat for sanding and priming before the paint goes on, its realy just for smoothness and good adhesion of the paint layers, when the lure picks up knicks and chips which come hand in hand with pike fishing i dry them out just dab a little clear nail polish on it at the end of the session to keep it sealed, i've seen some poorly finished lure where paint flakes off i think its gotta be down to the layers of paint not having a good adhesion, i'd rather they chiped than flaked as a chip is easy to mend flaking paint requires rework.