jigginpig

The massive screw eyes are gate hardware. Muskie screw eyes work just as good, but if you are going to make a dead-nuts copy you can just use gate hardware. They are the latch kits. You may need to modify them to mate them up. http://www.shed-doors.com/Pictures/Gate-HooK.jpg

Yeah, build it yourself. The standard way to get one is to buy five or six, see which ones swim right, then e-bay the duds to re-coup $$$ lost. It is a love/hate deal. I got into building big baits because I looked at the thing and said "I can do that!" Mike seems like a good guy, the Slammer is a great lure, but there are a large number of duds due to the "folksy" way the bait is made. Making all the cuts while the stock is still square helps the finished product swim better, imo.

Prolly just a flat or eggshell primer. Good surface prep is 90% of it, for damn near any process.

Oh Heck, let's just meet at Bullards Bar.

Hey youngun, where you at? I'm in Corvallis, I could bend your ear over some brews all you could stand.

Nice bugs. I would be tempted to make a couple sliders by rotating the head 180 on axis.

Yeah, color matters. But so do lots of things. Humans are a species that have unusually good vision compared to most other animals, and so we are heavily biased towards the visual aspect of the lures we select. The importance of color is extremely variable from day to day. I happen to think the importance of color becomes elevated as the mood of the fish tends toward negative. When the bite is wide open it has far less impact. I am adamant that one of the primary mistakes we as anglers make is becoming dogmatic. Keeping an open mind is a tremendous asset.

Those look tight. Which mold is that?

Can't help you, but I am curious to see if you can adapt the technique for scale. I have had good results with it myself, but mostly on artwork, not on baits. I have used it a little on more "busy" paint jobs. Please keep us posted if you forge ahead with it. SS

^Agreed! I just like to line through all my balsa. If the bait fails, I still land the bass.

My 2¢... Slap those baits. If they can't take the slap, I don't want to fish them. Balsa will always fail if you fish it hard enough, I think. Balsa that is made bulletproof might as well be some other wood. That is my case for line through on wood cranks. PVC gets screw eyes.

Well, far be it for me to disagree with a professional, which I most assuredly am not. But I do not think there is any wax in the stuff. It is acrylic. At any rate, cars have a tougher life, due to continuous strong sunlight exposure. UV tends to break down things quickly. I have used the stuff already with the Createx and Auto Air airbrush paints, and a water based dye that came with an Aztek airbrush kit I was given. Horrid little kit, actually. I have also used pearl powders in it with good results. You heat-set it and topcoat like normal. Nothing new about the stuff for lure painting, I can tell you with great confidence. It has been used by many people for several years. The only thing I was wondering about is how many other folks were using it as a transparent base/extender, and which dyes or pigments they were using. That is really my question, not weather the stuff is suitable to spray as part of a finish on a bait. I already know it works great to "seal" colors between color changes, for example, and to give paint jobs a lustrous appearance. Another thing I use it for is to hide sanding marks on a clear plastic bait before I shoot any color, so I can spend a little less time on prep. It makes the bait look very clear and nice to receive the first coat of paint. Obviously, you still have to topcoat. My next test batch of baits will use the Art Resin as a topcoat, and I am looking forward to trying it out. SS

Here is some real good info on the stuff... It changes name/label every so often. Look for the little atom on the label. http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

Looks to me like black and holographic pearl might be the only flake colors, rest done with paint? Flake is real hard to do anything neat and tidy with.

Honestly sounds like we are doing the same thing. I'm doing a shiner right now, but I would love to do an alewife. The alewife are far, far more colorful. A threadfin shad too... those are really pretty. Emerald and spottail shiners are gorgeous too, and have a mostly green palate. Post up pix as you make progress, I will too. I need to make a spray booth for the apartment, but plan on doing that soon. SS

Agreed! Not going to give them up either. Actually, I have a bunch of powdered pearls of various hues that I plan on juicing the pledge a tiny bit with, in addition to using them over a white pearl base. Not doing that with my current project, which is a foiled jerkbait, but for flat-side cranks and the like it would be easy to use a strong pearl or interference basecoat and do the dyes over for subliminal effects. I want the bait to "glow" underwater, like a little nearly invisible effect. Pearls are great light diffusers, but not great tinters or modifiers of hue. A little theory of mine is that the reason chartreuse is such a universal color is that it IS a great modifier of hue, and helps prop up that halo effect, making a bait stand out against any background. Anyway, yeah. I love my pearl hues. Pouring plastics helped me get a good feel for how far they can be extended, which is a l-o-n-g way. Can you tell I feel strongly that most baits are far to garish? SS

I don't want to veer off into politics, but Hobby Lobby is, uh, shall we say... paternalistic. I suspect they have no more or less theft than any big box purveyor of craft related detritus. But they do have a bit of an attitude. Sorta like Charlton Heston playing Moses, but with less authenticity and more hubris.

I quit shopping Hobby Lobby because they posted a tiny sign in the entrance that stated they reserved the right to search my vehicle if it was parked in their lot, which of course I do not give them. Michael's does the same thing with coupons though.

They both suck. BPS sucks a little less. Cabelas is super expensive. Stupid markup. Cabelas is more hunter-centric, BPS angler centric. BPS has better fishing gear by far. Tackle Warehouse for me.