waynem

Thanks for the advice. The photo shows the completed bait and you can see the worm burn on the top. The lower one will be a 4 piece bait after I use the Devcon topcoat. I started with a 6" muskie basswood blank from LurePartsOnline. I found I could get more accurate angle cuts if I glued and screwed square blocks on the ends before making any cuts.

Wow, you folks are great at helping someone out. I'll try the epoxy route and I'll try to post up some pictures when I've finished. As far something to keep the body turning while the epoxy dries I have a solution to that. We have an old Farberware horizontal rotisserie that we use on occasion to cook a prime rib or roast. It turns at just about the right speed. So I've jury rigged it (heat off) at times for rod building to keep the epoxy on the rod guide winds from sagging. I'm sure I can rig it up to keep the wood lure bodies spinning as well. It doesn't make the wife too happy, but i'm willing to live with that! Thanks for the advice.

I've made a couple of large wooden swimbaits- MS Slammer types using bodies from Lure Parts Online and sealed with low viscosity Hot Stuff CA glue. I then painted with Krylon spray can paints. The paint job actually held up pretty decent when fishing the bait for a couple of weeks. However when i put it in a box that had soft plastic bait, the paint softened where the two made contact. I understand that this is caused by the plasticizers in the soft bait attacking the paint on the wood bait. So I now get it that I need to put a clear topcoat over the spray can paint that is resistant to soft bait plasticizers. Here's my situation: don't have an airbrush and don't plan to get one in the near future. I only plan to make 6 or 10 baits. What I would like ideally is a topcoat that I can just apply by hand with a small brush that will again be resistant to plastic worms. I've seen mention of Dick Nites S81. Would that work or can you provide other suggestions? Thanks in advance.