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Painted Eyes

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Can anyone tell me an easy way to paint the eyes on my crankbaits? I have tried for a year to master this part of the process and still fail every time. I have tried nails, drill bits and qtips etc . also, I have used nail polish, enamel paints they all fail. Help!!!

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I struggled with painting eyes using all the ways you mentioned. I finally started using stencils and haven't looked back. All you need is a clear piece of thin plastic and a hole punch in multiple sizes. Just punch a series of various size holes in the clear plastic and shoot them with your airbrush. The clear plastic allows you to see exactly where your putting the eye so make sure to clean it after using it.

 

It's best if you'll thin your paint a little and lower the pressure on your airbrush. The thinned paint allows you to spray with lower pressure and the lower pressure keeps the paint from being blown under the stencil and creating a big blob instead of a round eye.

 

Ben

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I daub on eyes and found that the paint you use and the dauber are critical to getting a good eye.  First, I use an acrylic paint called Delta Ceramcoat, meant for decorating pottery.  It's thick and viscous.  Second, I use Swisspers cotton swabs from Walmart as a tool.  They have more compact and tightly woven ends than regular Q-tips.  For the black iris, I use Createx black and some small paint daubers I got from lurepartsonline.com.  Some guys prefer to use the heads of nails as their daubers, I guess it really doesn't matter as long as they get the job done.  When I tried doing eyes with regular Createx paint, I found that it was usually too thin to make a really solid opaque eye. 

Edited by BobP
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Yes, the paint is thick enough that you can touch the bait with the swab and still get a good opaque coating.  The amount of pressure you use and the amount of paint you load on the swab determines the size of the eye.  I squeeze a few drops out of the bottle onto a piece of foil and work from there. I just hang mine up to dry after applying the paint.  If you try to speed dry it with a hair dryer it can cause the paint to crack.  I daub on the eye, wait an hour or two for it do dry, then daub on the iris.  If you misplace a daub, you can dampen a cotton swab and roll (not wipe) it over the mistake a few times to remove it.  I'm sure using different size nail heads to hold the paint also works just fine but it seems more "touch finesse" is required for that method.

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Sharpies.... sharpies all the way! I had the same problems with stencils and eyes and pretty much most everything detail on my lures, and then someone (i think Mark) said they used sharpies so i got a couple to try. youd be surprised how well they work. You also dont have to worry about drying too much because they dry pretty fast. 

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Sharpies.... sharpies all the way! I had the same problems with stencils and eyes and pretty much most everything detail on my lures, and then someone (i think Mark) said they used sharpies so i got a couple to try. youd be surprised how well they work. You also dont have to worry about drying too much because they dry pretty fast.

Hey jonister,

Sharpies huh? Good idea. Do they hold under clearcoat and what clear do you use?

OP- I find that the thickness of the paint is critical for me. I use drill bits.

Edited by Ces
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Sharpie also has a new water based paint pen out now. I picked up a pack of the fine point metallic colors (silver-gold-copper) to see if they would work for signatures but I haven't tested them for painting eyes, I assume these would work okay for that as well. I have clear coated over them with etex and Alumi-UV with no issues of running or bleeding so far. I purchased mine at Michael's for about $5

Edited by joetheplumber
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How they working for sigs Joe? Microns give me fits for some reason..I blame it on being a lefty lol

Sharpie also has a new water based paint pen out now. I picked up a pack of the fine point metallic colors (silver-gold-copper) to see if they would work for signatures but I haven't tested them for painting eyes, I assume these would work okay for that as well. I have clear coated over them with etex and Alumi-UV with no issues of running or bleeding so far. I purchased mine at Michael's for about $5

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