Thats a good shape!

 

Looking good so far

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I am loving it. I look forward to your progress. I

 

Good start bud! If you need a tester of your finished products just let me know. I will be glad to help.

 

Looks great John , cant wait to see the finished product .

 

TY! I now have the wire in and ready for paint but I didn't put a belly weight in this one. Don't know if it's a necessity or not. Hopefully it won't roll and tracks somewhat true. I guess we'll see. Sure wish I had an airbrush right about now. I have all these paint schemes in my head that I want to make but am limited to spray bombs.

 

If you have a few bucks laying around , Harbour Freight has a great airbrush . I believe its $15.00 , but its a two stage which is what you want . Then head over to Pat Catans and buy a few bottles of createx . It wouldnt take very much to get ya going . As far as weighting the bait goes , it really all depends on the bait itself . First I would try setting it in water and see how it floats with your screw eyes in it . Sometimes placement of your screw eyes makes all the difference in the world especially with a small bait such as that . Plus you hooks will help also , do a little experimenting and make the call from there John . If you have ANY questions at all give me a call and I will help ya out .

 

Thanks Bulldawg. I plan on picking up an airbrush soon but I spent my last $20 on a rainsuit. I may be shooting you some questions as I go. I learned a ton already by reading posts from your friend Vince. I hope to be half that good one day.

 

You will want to put some weight in there on the bottom. Split shots work well. Looking nice.

 

I plan on testing this one without weight first and adding it if needed.This is one of many more to come and I'm looking forward to the process of tweaking them as I go and playing with different actions. I appreciate any input and advice I get along the way.

So far so good on this one. The wire is in place and centered and it just got a coat of primer. It doesn't show up but I also made eye sockets to sink some eyes into. not sure what paint scheme to go with yet.

 

All eyes,

Looks good so far, with a bait that small you may be able to get away with just adjusting the hook size to use as ballast.

Look forward to the finished product. I second the HF airbrush, $17 on sale thats where i started and just bought another for base coats, well worth the money...it's not an Iwata, but you can learn all the techniques and tweeks on that and then upgrade. Practice and learn to thin your paints correctly, it will save you a lot of headaches. Grab an old pair of nylons and stretch across all the createx paint bottles to filter the tiny chuncks that will make you want to stroke out.
Best of luck,

MS

 

I plan on testing this one without weight first and adding it if needed.This is one of many more to come and I'm looking forward to the process of tweaking them as I go and playing with different actions. I appreciate any input and advice I get along the way.

So far so good on this one. The wire is in place and centered and it just got a coat of primer. It doesn't show up but I also made eye sockets to sink some eyes into. not sure what paint scheme to go with yet.

You cant go wrong with a firetiger or natural shad color . Firetiger is pretty easy and it can be modified any which way you like it . As far as a shad color goes , put on a pearl base coat , then put black on the back of the bait . With a iridescent purple right over the black , but when you put the purple down lay some scale netting over it to get a scale effect .

Certain colors have different thickness's , and thinning is a must . I use a pledge floor finish and water to thin the paint out . It makes a world of difference .

 

Thanks a million for the tips. Stretching nylons over the bottle is something I would have never thought of. It sure would help keep the boogers from ruining a good paint job. That's worth it's weight in gold.
Also I was going to ask about thinning the paint but you guys beat me to the punch. It seems like I've read about Pledge on here before but forgot all about it. I still won't have an airbrush to use on my first one, but these tips will help me a ton when I get started. Thanks again for the great advice.

 

I am glad you are experimenting for yourself, seeing what works and what doesn't. As long as you have a plan to add ballast. I will say with 99.5% certainty (not exagerating)you will need ballast. I probably made 70-80 baits out of basswood, mahogony, and cedar (all except one -not including my 2 double jounted- swam fine, perhaps not at my intended depth, but not off by much. The one that didnt swim well at all was the one where i did not add ballast)before trying balsa. Since i have tried balsa (perhaps 8-10 baits or so) most, if not all swim shallower than i had intended, and this was an iterative process where i kept adding more wt as i made more baits. Heck, i still have yet to make a single balsa bait that swims as deep as i would like. Some are close like swimming at 2 feet instead of 3, but some are way off. One i made that i intended to be a 5-8 foot diver ended up being either a topwater or subsurface depending on how fast hou reeled. At the same time these balsa lure aremostly bigger lures than i had been making, so my background experience of guestimating how much ballast to add may not have been effective. Due to its low density, balsa is the most "finicky" wood to work with when ot comes to amount of ballast to add (its more than youbwould think, especially the bigger-ie more volume- of balsa wood you have and the deep divers are the hardest baits to make.

Having said that, i can tell the bug has bitten. Pretty soon, you wnt want to fish anything unless you made it. Please dont take this the wrong way. I am always excited to see newbies and you are off to a great start!

 

I just realized one imprtant variable that i dont have much experience with. The fact you thru wire and i dont, other than 3 or 4 baits. This will help(more weight down low=better, basically), and it sounds like it wont be a big deal to add ballast later on. I have never done that. Though i have a few i would like to.

"keep on plugging away"

 

Thank you again for all the input James. It sure helps to have guys like yourself to save me time and frustration down the road. I figure I will probably be needing weight but can always add it later to this one if it needs it. Just have to learn some more about where exactly to place it/them.
My bait is basically finished now. I spray bombed a purple perch pattern that started off as firetiger that I stripped back down. The green paint that I had was old and spackled chunks everywhere. So I went with some paint I had on hand and came up with this. The top is a deep purple (purple over black) but it's hard to tell from the pics. Check out my thumb! It's certainly not perfect but I wasn't expecting it on my first one.
It looked better before I tried to get fancy and put the fins and bleeding gills on. My biggest mistake was that I put a coat of slightly hardening epoxy on the lip I made. It looks wavy but isn't as bad as it looks. I may be able to fix it? Anyways, here is my first crankbait, dust boogers and all.

 

All eyes looks like you ben at it a while even thou it's your first one.great job

 

That looks great bud! Excellent job for your first one.

 

Thanks a million guys! I never would have gotten into this fun hobby had it not been for all the help from you guys on OGF. Vince got my head reeling a couple of years ago with his amazing work and I finally got around to giving it a go. The baits that himself and others make on here have finally pushed me over the edge. I can already see where this is headed and it aint pretty.

 

Now it's official.

 

Here is a good view of the lip and what I was talking about. It looks lumpy and wavy but from the side is flat as a pancake. I got some epoxy on it while I was finishing it and decided to coat the whole thing instead of take it off.
...note to self

 

Well done Alleyes!

Did you end up adding ballast? Let us know how it swims..

A little denatured alcohol on a paper towel will take care of any epoxy on the lip when its wet

AWESOME work, look forward to your next post

MS

 

The back of this bait looks almost black under normal inside lighting and even outside this morning. But look how purple it is when the flashlight hits it. Kinda cool. It's a candy purple sprayed over black and I think it made for a nice effect.

 

For your first bait...THAT is a Hell of a job! Well done...

 

Well done Alleyes!

Did you end up adding ballast? Let us know how it swims..

A little denatured alcohol on a paper towel will take care of any epoxy on the lip when its wet

AWESOME work, look forward to your next post

MS

Thanks man! "when it's wet" is where I went wrong.
I do have a feeling as James T was saying that it will need a ballast. The fronk hook wire sure helps to balance it but I doubt it will be enough to keep it from rolling at faster speeds. I plan on cutting some split shot in half and using them as sticky weights before I go drilling any holes. It won't be the same as internal weighting but it should give me a better idea as to exactly where to put them for max action.
That's a guess but it looks good on paper.