fishin4info

I am painting an Aquamarine Blue which is not transperent. On this particular bait I am painting it over a flourescent yellow. I have made the stencils out of lexan for this bait. I am going to try and paint through the stencil with white and then paint a light coat of blue over the white, hopefully that will help. This shade of blue just seems really thin, it is like spraying water.

I use a double action airbrush to apply the paint.

Is there a way to thicken createx paint? I am trying to paint aquamarine blue through a stencil and it is to thin straight out of the bottle. It starts to run as soon as I remove the stencil. I have tried applying light coats but that isn't working for me either. With several light coats, allowing each coat to flash, when I remove the stencil it pulls some of the paint off with it. I have tried painting this bait three times and have had to peel the paint off each time.

Have you guys ever tried raising the grain. I have done this on finishing some furniture but it was made of oak and being stained. The process is pretty simple you just take a damp cloth and moisten the wood, let it dry and then lightly sand the grain down with 220 grit. The moisture is what raises the grain up some from the surface of the wood. Make sure you only sand the raised grain down (don't get to aggressive sanding). I have never dealt with the Western Red Cedar but assume that doing this may produce similar results.

When I first started making baits I had a hard time figuring out how to weight a glide bait very similar to the Magic Maker. I had just cut out a piece of wood attached hooks and played around with weight placement with no luck, the bait would almost pull straight ahead with maybe a little lift. So I went back home thinking the same thing that it had to be weight placement. I looked at some purchased baits and could tell where they added the weight because they did not do a good job of sanding down the filler after they melted in the lead. The placement of the lead was almost identical to where I had placed mine and the bait weighed the same. I went back out to the garage fired up the router and put a radius on the edges of the bait. I went back out to a local park with everybody starring at me, cause I was throwing a chunk of wood bigger than any fish (Bluegill) in the pond. It glided perfectly after I put a radius on the edges. Conclusion, to some degree shape has a lot to do with the action of the bait. I believe the more you put the weight towards the center of gravity the more the bait will turn, but in my experience you can get it to turn to much to where it will turn 180 degrees on itself and will get caught on leaders and your line. Also I try to keep the weight as close to the belly as I can. Maybe you did the same thing and this helps. If not maybe a picture of your work would help others in determining the problems with your baits. I have not made baits out of oak (open grain looked to be a problem with sealing and painting) only poplar and maple so there are always going to be differences in weighting based on densities of the wood or other material being used. Hope this helps.

Is there an amount of time to allow createx paint to fully cure before it should be topcoated with envirotex? I know the paint is dry to the touch after 30 mins or less but is it safe to topcoat or should I wait a couple of days? Does anyone have experience on putting 2 coats of envirotex on baits. How long do you allow between coats? Do you let the first coat cure fully before you put the second coat on? Do you put the second coat on the next day? Envirotex directions say to allow 72 hours to fully cure (depending on temperature). Anybody have opinions or experiences that they would like to share?

I have used steel wool in the past over envirotex to create a flat look but I will let you know that it will not look flat once it is in the water and wet.