Best Airbrush Stencils

[Flaswimbaiter]

I really need to improve upon my airbrushing. I have been watching some YouTube vids any many guys are using stencils to makes random patterns and dots. Where do you guys get your stencils from and which ones would you recommend for a beginner? Also, I have yet to find some of that random patterned mesh I see guys use, I search online and found everything but that. 

[AZ Fisher]

  I've found texture and pattern sheet stencils on Ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, Spraygunner and Coast Airbrush.

  If you want to make your own for a specific bait, check out Dakota Lakes Tackle on Youtube. He shows how to make vacuum stencils pretty easy. I find the blank stencil material at Hobby Lobby.  Cut an appropriate size piece of blank stencil, place over the bait on the vacuum bed, heat with a heat gun until softened and kind of melty, then turn on the vac and suck the softened stencil material down around the bait. Once cooled for 30 secs, remove the stencil from the bait and cut in your pattern or design.

  I will make extra stencil molds of a bait to cut up to make masks for certain parts of the bait. I cut out the face and gill plate, and also the pec fin. These cut out pieces are your masks. I place a small piece of doubled over painters tape on the inside of the mask to hold in place on the bait.  Then place my scale netting over and spray. Heat set the paint and remove the stencils or masks. The mask keeps the scale pattern from appearing on the face, gills and pec fin.  Then you can use the piece of stencil you cut the pec fin out of and use it to mask the rest of the bait when painting the pec fin and keep things looking clean.

  The mesh material can be found at Walmart, Hobby Lobby and your local fabric store. Fabric store will have the largest selection, search for "Tulle". I use the knitting or embroidery hoops to hold the mesh tight and place over the bait to spray thru.

 Make sure any stencil is as tight to the bait as possible to keep overspray and bleeding to a min. Lower spray pressures help also.

     Hope this helps...

[Outlaw4]

buy the wife a crikt. make all the stencils you'd ever need. win win

[Flaswimbaiter]

7 hours ago, AZ Fisher said:

  I've found texture and pattern sheet stencils on Ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, Spraygunner and Coast Airbrush.

  If you want to make your own for a specific bait, check out Dakota Lakes Tackle on Youtube. He shows how to make vacuum stencils pretty easy. I find the blank stencil material at Hobby Lobby.  Cut an appropriate size piece of blank stencil, place over the bait on the vacuum bed, heat with a heat gun until softened and kind of melty, then turn on the vac and suck the softened stencil material down around the bait. Once cooled for 30 secs, remove the stencil from the bait and cut in your pattern or design.

  I will make extra stencil molds of a bait to cut up to make masks for certain parts of the bait. I cut out the face and gill plate, and also the pec fin. These cut out pieces are your masks. I place a small piece of doubled over painters tape on the inside of the mask to hold in place on the bait.  Then place my scale netting over and spray. Heat set the paint and remove the stencils or masks. The mask keeps the scale pattern from appearing on the face, gills and pec fin.  Then you can use the piece of stencil you cut the pec fin out of and use it to mask the rest of the bait when painting the pec fin and keep things looking clean.

  The mesh material can be found at Walmart, Hobby Lobby and your local fabric store. Fabric store will have the largest selection, search for "Tulle". I use the knitting or embroidery hoops to hold the mesh tight and place over the bait to spray thru.

 Make sure any stencil is as tight to the bait as possible to keep overspray and bleeding to a min. Lower spray pressures help also.

     Hope this helps...

Great info thanks

[TerryF2858]

https://www.facebook.com/FishingStencils/

i have not bought any from them, but they look great

[Fishhead15]

a few of the stencils I use are from

anarchy models

insane custom stencils

whitmore farms 

and coast airbrush as previously mentioned 

I also make a lot of my own out of frisket film

 

[JD_mudbug]

When searching online for the random mesh, try random pattern tulle, random web tulle, or spider tulle. It will help narrow down the search results.

[Chris Catignani]

My daughter has a flower shop....some varieties come in with a mesh sock over the flower...this is what I use for scales.

[danthefisherman]

I will often use scissors to cut my own pattern stencils out of lamination sheets. Not the most clean or user friendly but gets the job done in a pinch.

My brother owns a laser engraver for leather work, so I picked up some mylar sheet to try laser cutting. I’m hoping this will allow me to make trout dot stencils customized and sized specifically for my baits.

[Flaswimbaiter]

16 hours ago, danthefisherman said:

I will often use scissors to cut my own pattern stencils out of lamination sheets. Not the most clean or user friendly but gets the job done in a pinch.

My brother owns a laser engraver for leather work, so I picked up some mylar sheet to try laser cutting. I’m hoping this will allow me to make trout dot stencils customized and sized specifically for my baits.

I actually just bought some sheet to make my own. How do you cut yours? X-acto knife?

[danthefisherman]

7 hours ago, Flaswimbaiter said:

I actually just bought some sheet to make my own. How do you cut yours? X-acto knife?

Yes, a sharp knife will do it. Trout and crappie dots are a huge pain to try cutting but larger patterns like perch stripes, crawdad shell, etc are perfectly doable.

[RM3]

The commercial ones I use are mostly texture types and most come from Anarchy Models UK and a few from Dru Blair. As far as "shape" types, stripes, gills, fins etc. I have quite a few from Insane Custom Stencils but the majority I use anymore especially for craws I've drawn out myself and transferred heavy card stock as a master which I use to create low tack frisket film stencils as necessary. Sometimes on larger swimbaits for bass and gill patterns, I can do better at replicating the patterns free hand rather than with a stencil.