Starting small...by "Fatfingers"

Well, I'm back in the basement again.

Feels good. I took a pretty long break from building and went into the hardwoods of Ohio for my annual bow hunting foray. It was a good break. The bigger bucks did not want to play nice, but I still had a good time and I put a doe in the freezer in the first few days of the season. Gun season starts Monday. I don't care much for gun hunting these days; not much of a challenge and I love archery much more. Gun season signals the end of the whitetail season for me. I may go into the woods with a few friends with my muzzleloader, but its more of a social thing (to use a gun) than a challenge like taking a mature whitetail at 15 or 20 yards with archery gear. I don't shoot the smaller bucks anymore, so I spend most of my season just watching them walk close to my stand and then eventually wander away after they're done feeding and so on. Very pleasant stuff; a lot of quiet time and peace.


I decided to carve a few bass baits to get started. I don't normally make smaller baits, but I got the itch to build a few topwaters. There is a nice pond across the road from me and once in a while in the summer I enjoy walking over there with a bait caster to see if I can trick a bass into slamming a painted chunk of wood on the surface of the water. There's something about a surface strike that never gets old. I still go back to it every year despite the fact that I pretty much gave up on fishing for anything but muskies years ago.

I spun these on the lathe. Nothing fancy as you can see, but still they'll be fun. The biggest one is 4 inches long and the other two are 3 inches. The bottom one will be a popper and the other two will have small stainless steel props.



After roughing them out on the lathe I sanded them a bit, soaked them for a minute or two in Minwax sanding sealer and set them aside to dry overnight.
The Minwax sanding sealer penetrates the wood nicely and seals the bait so the water cannot run through the wood if the clear coat gets penetrated by hooks or teeth.

After they dried, I lightly sanded them again and put the screw eyes in. I try to put in as few screw eyes as I can before I paint. Usually I install just enough to allow me to clamp on a set of small vice grips to hold them while painting and one or two more to all the bait to be hung up after painting. Screw eyes can get in the way when applying the netting for the scales so I sometimes don't put any on the belly of the bait until I'm done painting. Other times I just poke a small slot in the netting and push the netting over the screw eye. It depends on what mood I'm in or how much detail I intend to add to the belly of the bait.

After I glued the screw eyes in with Devcon 2 ton epoxy, I applied a very thin coat of Devcon 2 ton epoxy to the baits to further seal them and cover up the grain. I personally don't care to see the grain show through the paint so I cover it with some type of epoxy before painting. Have to be careful with small baits though, because they epoxy does add a bit of weight believe it or not.

Finally to finish them off and really get them smooth and ready for primer, I lightly wet sand them with about 320 wet/dry sandpaper.

Is all this necessary? Nope. But eventually its a matter of how you personally want to build a bait, whether it is for sale, to give away to your buddies, or even a bait that will never see anything but personal use. I have arrived at a point where I just don't want to hurry a bait anymore. If it takes a bit longer to build, that's okay. I'm in no rush. Even the baits I sell are not rushed because I refuse to allow customers to "place orders." I build what I like and if they want to buy it, fine. If not, I get an amazing amount of satisfaction from giving a few to friends, and the local musky clubs.

I think its good to try to keep all this building in the realm of pleasure. That has been my experience anyway.

I'll post a bit more about these three baits as they proceed. They won't be as fancy as some others, but it will be fun to be back at it again and I enjoy writing about the process, sharing ideas and tips with others, and most of all making friends along the way. In the end, that is the best part for me.

I've come to know Etch as friend, and Rowhunter and I talk from time to time...and rjbass, Tater Hog...and there are many others and of course, I'm going to fail to mention someone, but you get the idea. People from all over America and elsewhere, people I would have never had the pleasure of sharing this with...that is where the real rewards comes from...

Lol, I'm ramblin' again.

More later...

Big smile on my face, as I am on the edge of my chair

vince you are a class act , as a man and a builder/painter, proud to call you a freind, , your skills are legendary in the bait making, drool drool drool i would buy a book in a heart beat, if you ever wrote one on lures/builders, you have a incredible skill with writing, you can tell a story that draws you right in, btw great little bass baits, cant wait to see you dress them up, and you are so right about the building for you part

Etch

i really would like to say thank you for sharing your knowledge and your past experiences with us it will Not go unappreciated.....
Reading your posts is like reading a fine novel once your done you read it again and again with each time learning a bit more and picking up stuff you over looked for that i want to say Thank You Fatfingers Thank You...... :read:

Ivery much appreciate your almost zen like approach to building & life. Been around long enough myself to realize life and the things I choose to do with it are better off spent not chasing the Bullchit!!!!
Can't wait to see the finished products!!!



Bluesfish

Excellent ramblings, agree with you totally !!!! Looking forward to the end results.

cant wait to see what they look like when you complete them!

fatfingers This was a pleasure to read!!!! I think Rob's right you've definitely got a book in there somewhere!!!I love to read your posts and look at your fine creations!!!!!Keep up the fine work and the inspiration you share with us all!!!!!!


FC

Glade o see your back at it, picked up a ton on INFO from your postings, you have added to my enjoyment of plug building. cant wait to see more.
GOOD LUCK GOOD PLUGGIN

Thanks, you guys.

I spent part of today in the basement roughing out some baits. I have about 20 underway now, including the three shown above.

I have no particular discipline here, I just do whatever seem to make sense and whatever if fun at the moment. But it seems I usually start the winters by carving 40 to 60 bodies and the painting and finishing start in the midst of carving and shaping the 40 to 60 baits. I like to just jump in and do a little here and there and it all slowly comes together.

This go round I'm going to concentrate on about 6 or 7 models instead of experimenting as much as I usually do. I'd like to have a couple dozen to give away and a few dozen more to sell and a dozen or so for my own box.

It seems like every year I'll get to the actual fishing and scratch my head and say, "Why in the world didn't I build a ________ for myself? There's always something missing from the box somehow. But I get in a mood and I'll bump into an old buddy on the water and give him a few baits and then next thing you know, I'm shy a color or a style or three. I'm sure you guys do the same thing.

I gave my fishing partner a bait last August. It was a bait that I had made about 4 years ago and it never really produced fish. Well, as you might imagine, he immediately began slaying the muskies with it...the same day I gave it to him! So I went about trying to hurry up and knock out a few of that color before the season ended, but I simply can't build all that fast and the late season bite seems to slam shut pretty quick here in Ohio. It was over before I got that model duplicated...so it will be one of the first on my list. I'll be sure to share that color pattern in case anyone is interested. It isn't fancy; in fact its an easy paint job that should produce for a variety of species on a variety of waters. It called Tennessee Shad...remind me to show how to do that if I forget.

I'm rambling again. As you can tell I'm excited about a new season of bait building and I'm really looking forward to hanging out here with all you guys. It should be fun. I'm particularly interested in trying some salt water bait profiles/patterns for musky and I'm hoping to share my stuff and I'd be interested to see how it all crosses over from freshwater to salt water and vice versa.

More later.

great reads fatfingers.....looking forward to seeing new and more stuffs.....

Finally getting back to these baits.

Here they are with a white base coat.

Before painting the white base coat, I first soaked the baits for about 15 minutes in Minwax sanding sealer. The purpose of the sanding sealer is to keep the water from penetrating the entire bait in the event the finish is breached by hooks or teeth.

After the sanding sealer, I applied one thin coat of envirotex to further seal and more importantly smooth the finish so that the wood grain does not show. After the envirotex dried, I sanded out any dust boogers and other imperfections to get a nice smooth grainless surface to work with.

Next, I applied a coat of white paint. Note that no primer is needed because I am applying the paint over the envirotex and the paint will be sandwiched between layers of envirotex so it cannot "lift." Normally I would apply another coat of envirotex over the white, but since these are top water baits, I don't want too much envirotex because it has a bit of weight to it and I want to go easy with weight because these are top water baits. Instead I covered the white with a clear spray enamel to seal it.

After the clear enamel is dry I'll be ready to apply some base colors and then finally some scale details and eyes.

I'm not going to get too detailed on these as these are just for largemouth bass and I'm just using these as a sort of warm up for this winter's building...after having been out of the basement altogether since the beginning of October 2009.

We'll start with something easy just to get back in the swing of things.

For the newer guys, the key thing to remember here is to take your time and prepare the bait for the final coats of paint. Don't hurry this part; get a nice smooth surface and a clean white area first...then your colors will really 'pop.'

More later...

Nice canvas right there DaddyO....

etch wrote:vince you are a class act , as a man and a builder/painter, proud to call you a freind, , your skills are legendary in the bait making, drool drool drool i would buy a book in a heart beat, if you ever wrote one on lures/builders, you have a incredible skill with writing, you can tell a story that draws you right in, btw great little bass baits, cant wait to see you dress them up, and you are so right about the building for you part

Etch

I WOULD BUY THE CLIFF NOTES!

VINCE WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU... I JOIN THIS DAM SITE just to MESS AROUND WITH YOU!!!! I hope snax shows up too!

Mr. Crappypants! CALL ME! I lost your number again!

you would still need your wife to read them(the cliff notes) to you, you can just look at the pics and with your best gobber accent say golly gee them are pertty

Etch

Etch and Tater, you guys are nutz!

Here's a couple of the baits in progress:


(REMINDER: A LOT OF WHAT I'LL BE WRITING ON THIS BOARD WILL BE FOR THE YOUNGER BEGINNING BUILDERS...so if you older salty dogs find this stuff to be sort of elementary, you'll understand why).



Lets' talk first about the little one on top...

See that sort of watermelon green? It also looks a bit like olive green in a way. Here's how you can mix that color, which works well when you're trying to make a natural bait fish color...and its really easy: Just take some yellow and mix in a couple drops of black. It turns this nice olive/watermelon green color and it is a color that bait builders favored in days gone by. A lot of the old pikies and other musky baits used that same olive color 40 or 50 years ago and it still catches fish today.

I simply sprayed that green on the top and then shot some candy red on the belly.

When I was done I added the black speckles. The black speckles are easy to achieve...you just water your black down a bit, turn your compressor pressure down and gently but quickly rock the trigger on the airbrush back and forth quickly and it will spit little tiny specks of black onto the bait instead of spraying it.

Practice a bit on a piece of scrap wood before you start shooting at the bait till you get the hang of it, but its really a piece of cake.

For now pay no attention to that long screw eye sticking out there...that is just a temporary screw eye to give me something to hold while I work on the bait. Later I'll put the final screw eyes in and give it a nice clean look.


Now lets talk about the bottom bait:

Again, starting with a white bait, I just stretched a piece of netting over the bait and secured it with some clothes pins. The clothes pins hang under the belly of the bait and sort of pinch the netting against the bait. I have a small vise that clamps onto my paint bench and I place the bait in the vise by clamping the tail eye screw in the vise...that way stretching the netting and clamping it with clothes pin is easier.

I then shot some ligher olive/watermelon green on the sides and a tiny little bit of gray on the top of the bait. Next, I removed the netting and I faded some candy red over the top of the bait. (Candy red is an enamel paint which you can shoot over gray and black without covering the gray or black...it only covers lighter colors...in this case it covered the white voids left in the pattern created by the netting.

Try collecting as many kinds of netting to create scales as you can. The stuff is cheap and you can either buy it or use the stuff that comes with your groceries...oranges, onions, and some fruits are packaged in various types of netting.

The netting I used for the bottom bait came from a clothes bin which was made for storing dirty laundry. The bin costs like $3 and I just bought it and cut all the netting from the frame and threw the frame away.

If you have any questions, just post 'em up.

Now if you use your imagination, you can probably see what we might do to these baits next. The bottom one might look good with black tiger stripes. Maybe the top one would look good with some gold bars on the sides. Or maybe we'll just let them both be as they are...sort of plain. Of course we'll have to add some eyes too and some stainless steel propellers.


The popper is still to be finished. It'll be on deck next. Stay tuned.

Im a younger builder and your info ids helping me alot. But, I think I may need one of those plugs to take a closer look at so I can see the affects better

nice....great read

Here is the bass popper completed.

I simply shot olive green over the white back, then shot some gold pearl over the belly after draping some very fine netting over the belly to give it tiny scales:

awsome lookin fatfingers

Here's a picture showing the belly scales. This is much easier than it looks...just drape the netting over the belly and lightly spray the gold over the white belly through the netting...nothing to it:


I shot some red into the "mouth" of the popper...red is kind of classic for that area on a lot of popper.
Lastly, I shot a little gray through netting over the back to give it some darker "frog" type spots (see picture in the post above this one:

Here's finished "buzzer" also...I kept it simple too...just added a few "dots" of glitter near the head and pasted some red "stick on" eyes to it, then added the buzzer.:

fatfingers wrote:Here's a picture showing the belly scales. This is much easier than it looks...just drape the netting over the belly and lightly spray the gold over the white belly through the netting...nothing to it:


I shot some red into the "mouth" of the popper...red is kind of classic for that area on a lot of popper.
Lastly, I shot a little gray through netting over the back to give it some darker "frog" type spots (see picture in the post above this one:

Nothing to it???? you are being modest, beautifully clean, just awesome stuff, thanks,

Vince,

very informative! thank you... I am learning alot from you guys...... and I agree w/ Skip, you being way to modest! that thing looks great...... looks like alot went into that plug to me....

Rocco

Simple for you, for me it would be a major masterpiece Very nice work.