How to Airbrush the Tiger Perch Pattern

This latest blog post will teach you how to airbrush the Tiger Perch pattern on your homemade lures.

The creator of this video tutorial, Splish Splash, walks us through each and every step, from a blank lure all the way to a finished paint job 🙂

He starts off by showing us exactly what items are needed to paint the Tiger Perch pattern and then gets right into the actual painting process. The items mentioned in the video are listed below, at the end of this post.

The first step is to spray on a good base coat of white. This is pretty typical with most lure painting projects. After the white, a pearl white is sprayed on to give the bait some glimmer.

Green is then sprayed on to give the lure a good base to spray the golden scales onto. The back of the lure is then sprayed black, to give it a natural appearance.

A scale stencil is then used, as gold is sprayed onto the sides of the lure. And next, a homemade stencil is used to spray black “tiger stripes” onto the sides of the lure. And then another homemade stencil is used to spray on the gill plate and the mouth of the “fish”.

How to Airbrush the Tiger Perch Pattern - Lures on Drying Wheel And the final step in spraying is to darken the back a bit more with black paint. Once the final layer of paint is applied and has dried thoroughly, a final topcoat of epoxy is applied and the lure is placed on a drying wheel while the epoxy hardens.

The creator of the video makes it look pretty easy, but don’t get discouraged if you don’t get it quite right the first try. Like everything else, you’ll get better at it with practice.

After your epoxy topcoat has had time to harden completely, install your hooks, split rings and any other necessary hardware and go catch some fish!

Here’s the video:

Items used for this project:

Balsa Lure Bodies (in case you don’t want to carve your own)
Lure Eyes
Lure Paint
Epoxy Top Coat
Airbrush
Scale Netting

To see a great video of these lures in action, catching Northern Pike in brackish water, click here

If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to like it and share it with your friends.

And, as always, if you need any kind of lure-making supplies, be sure to visit our website, at http://lurepartsonline.com

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How to Make a Balsa Jerkbait

Today you’re going to learn how to make a balsa jerkbait from scratch.

Jerkbaits are a staple in fishing. They have become popular for pursuing a number of different species of fish across a huge number of countries.

The “How to Make a Balsa Jerkbait” video tutorial below is from YouTube user “Splish Splash”. He does a great job of walking us, step-by-step, through the entire process of making the bait and making it easy to understand and follow.

The lure maker starts by explaining that he prefers to cut several pieces of balsa, instead of just cutting what is sufficient for making one jerkbait. He saves time doing it this way because it saves him from having to trace the pattern onto other pieces of wood later on.

Then, it’s on to cutting the balsa wood by hand, a coping saw. Due to balsa wood being soft, cutting by hand is very easy and doesn’t take long at all. Cutting by hand also gives you much better control of the saw, so there is less chance of making major mistakes while cutting 😉

After cutting them, the pieces are then sanded by hand. This smooths the edges of the wood and make the pieces uniform in shape and size.

Creating a throughwire for your jerkbait Next, it’s on to outfitting the lure body with a through-wire. To assist with making this easier, he has actually created a special wire bender to help shape the wire perfectly for the lure that’s being made. The video shows us the tool, so you can make one too, if you choose to do so. Using the through-wire construction, a one-piece connection is created for every piece of hardware on this bait.

After bending the wire, braided fishing line is then used to secure the parts of the wire together and keep it straight while working with it and rigging it in your new jerkbait body. The wire is then set into the body using nothing more than hand pressure. No power tools required!

Next, it’s on to adding weights to the lure. Homemade lead bars are used, which are cut to length by hand and then inserted into the two halves of the bait, using holes that are cut into the inside of the lure body using an exacto knife. Again, no power tools are utilized.

Now it’s time to assemble your new Jerkbait!

Water-resistant glue is used to hold the two halves of the body together, as well as holding the weights and through-wire in place as the two halves are put together. Once they’re glued together, a clamp is used to hold everything in place while the glue dries thoroughly.

shaping the edges of your jerkbait Now comes the fun part of shaping the lure to get it just right. The specs for the final thickness of the lure are found in the PDF file that we’ve linked to below. They are also mentioned in the video tutorial.

Keep in mind as you shape your lure that balsa is extremely soft, so very little pressure is required when sanding or carving!

Being too aggressive can cause the lure to be ruined by taking too much wood off with one swipe of your knife or one motion with the sandpaper!

Once the lure is shaped and you’re happy with the way it looks, it’s time to apply some epoxy to seal the body and make it waterproof. This is done using Envirotex epoxy that gets applied by hand, using a small brush. Once the epoxy is applied, the lure is rotated on a small homemade device. The rotation keeps the epoxy from dripping or forming hardened drips on the actual lure body.

Be sure to pay close attention to the tip that is shared, showing us how to eliminate bubbles in the epoxy base coat!

A little touch of sandpaper is used to smooth the epoxy base coat, and then another layer of epoxy is added. Once the second layer of epoxy has had time to harden, it’s time to paint!

finished jerkbait Painting can be done using several different methods; brush, airbrush, spray can or even some other way of applying the paint. For best results, an airbrush is recommended. But since this is your lure, you decide how to paint it!

And of course, once the lure is painted, it’s back to the final 3-5 layers of epoxy topcoat, to protect that awesome paint work that you just did.

Add some hooks and split rings and you’re ready to fish!

For a free lure stencil that you can print and cut out, click here

Items used for this project:

Balsa Lure Bodies (in case you don’t want to carve your own)
Stainless Steel Wire
Lure Eyes
Split Rings
Treble Hooks
Epoxy Top Coat

To see a great video of these lures in action, catching Northern Pike in brackish water, click here

If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to like it and share it with your friends.

And, as always, if you need any kind of lure-making supplies, be sure to visit our website, at http://lurepartsonline.com

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How to Make a Flying C Spinner Fishing Lure

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How to Make a Flying C Spinner Fishing Lure

The Flying C Spinner is a fishing lure that’s been around for a very long time and has accounted for the catch of hundreds of thousands of fish!

As with just about any lure, you can buy a Flying C spinner lure at retail stores or from various retailers online. But you can also make them yourself at home, saving you a ton of money and giving you the opportunity to tweak and fine tune the lure. This allows you to make it look the way you want it to look, instead of being stuck with what the factory says it should look like.

So today’s blog post will show you how to make a flying c spinner fishing lure yourself, opening the doors for you to catch fish on a lure you made, and saving you some cash in the process 🙂

The featured video today was put together by Paul Adams and, as always, Paul goes into great detail when it comes to creating the lure from items you make and shape yourself. Keep in mind, though, that at the bottom of this post, we will give you links where you can find most of the items used to make this lure, but without having to shape or form it all yourself. This saves you a ton of time and gives you a finished lure that looks as good, if not better than the retail versions.

This is a beautiful example of a flying c spinner made using a factory-made blade and hair or bucktail for a lure dressing.

Paul shows you how to bend and shape your own spinner blade, bend and shape the wire that holds everything together. He then shows us how to assemble everything properly to make a lure that works well and will attract fish. He even mentions items that you can use to create your lure that aren’t typically used in lure making, such as heat shrink tubing.

Using these alternative materials works fine if you want to spend the time cutting and shaping them. But if you prefer to save time and create a lure with a more “polished” look, please refer to our list of items below, where you can buy professionally manufactured components that allow you to make a flying c spinner fishing lure simply by assembling the parts.

So grab a notepad and a pencil and get ready to take notes as Paul walks you through the lure-making process in the video immediately below.

Items used for this project:

Spinner Blades
Stainless Steel Wire
Spinner Hooks
Clevises
Hook Dressings
Colored Tubing
Lure Beads

You can check out Paul’s blog by Clicking Here.

If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to like it and share it with your friends.

And, as always, if you need any kind of lure-making supplies, be sure to visit our website, at http://lurepartsonline.com

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How to Paint a Crankbait using the Crackle Method

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How to Paint a Crankbait using the Crackle Method

Ever wonder how to paint a crankbait using the crackle method?

Sit back, grab a note pad and get ready to learn this crazy new technique that will have you creating your own awesome crackle pattern crankbaits in no time.

Michael Orensteen will be your instructor today, giving you a step by step tutorial to create that distressed “crackle” look on your own custom baits.

What’s really cool is that this technique originates from people in the furniture industry. They needed a way to give furniture a distressed, antique-looking finish, so this technique was born out of necessity, allowing them to achieve the look they were trying to attain.

Michael did a great job of editing this video to keep it precise and to the point, eliminating any long sequences of ordinary painting, keeping the focus on the actual crackle technique itself.

When he wanted to learn how to paint a crankbait using the crackle method, he got with a good friend of his, who passed the info on. Michael then took that info and decided to share it with you via this awesome video tutorial.

To start, the bait is painted with a black base coat, contrary to the usual white base coat used on many other patterns. Once the black is finished, then the “crackle solution” is applied, using outlines drawn with a stencil.

The crackle medium is then applied and we’re off and running! From there, more paint is applied and a hair dryer is used to thoroughly dry each coat of paint. The steps are then repeated for each section of the lure, until the crackle finish covers the entire lure body.

Michael also shows us a set of stencils that he created himself, using vacuum formed pieces of plastic! Very cool stuff that he has promised to show us how to do in a future video.

So that about covers it. Everything else you need to know can be learned by watching the video below.

Items used for this project:

Airbrush
Lure Paint
Unpainted Crankbait Body
Stick-on Lure Eyes
Treble Hooks
Split Rings
Oval Line Tie
Crackle Medium

If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to like it and share it with your friends.

And, as always, if you need any kind of lure-making supplies, be sure to visit our website, at http://lurepartsonline.com

To check out the Lure Me In Custom Painted Crankbaits Youtube channel, Click Here

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How to Make a Wooden Fishing Lure on a Lathe

For today’s article, you’ll be learning how to make a wooden fishing lure on a lathe. British lure maker Paul Adams will be your host and instructor 🙂

Paul shows us how to build the Fat Head Wiggler, an old-school wooden swimming lure with a metal diving lip. He begins by teaching us how to prepare the template and the wood, cutting the template out and gluing it to a sheet of veneer to get started.

Once preparing the template is finished, Paul sets about the task of actually creating the lure in earnest, showing us how to cut the wood into the proper size and then mark the center of each end in preparation for securing it in the lathe.

Once we get past these few little steps, the power tools come alive and we see sawdust and wood chips flying everywhere as Paul begins to shape the wood.

How to Make a Wooden Fishing Lure on a Lathe

Paul works his skills on a wood lathe to shape the lure

Watching Paul work the lathe is amazing. He also shows us how he uses calipers to measure the wood, to be sure it’s the correct diameter and shape. Again, precision is evident in his methods and workmanship.

And, of course, once the desired size and shape are attained, Paul goes about sanding the wood body to get a perfectly smooth surface, to be painted later on. It’s amazing to watch how the various tools come into play to create the finished product.

There is a wide variety of power tools that are used in this video, including a wood lathe, a drill press, a band saw and a dremel. Other items used include sandpaper, epoxy, paint and various pieces of hardware to finish the lure. We have listed all of the hardware items below the video.

Sealing the lure protects the wood body from water damage

When Paul makes a homemade lure, he typically uses very few, if any, factory-made components. This is a great way to make something that you can say is 100% handmade and your own workmanship.

Some people, though, like to save time, or may not have all of the tools necessary to create the components themselves, so they opt to buy them and then assemble the lure. Either way, you end up with a nice lure that can’t be bought anywhere else.

To complete the lure in the video, Paul fabricates the diving lip from aluminum, creates the belly weight out of steel rod and even hand-draws a black & white emblem to put on the sides of the lure.

Paul is a true craftsman and artisan who has lots of creativity and uses it to create great lures and then teach others how to do the same thing.

So go ahead and enjoy the video below and be sure to check out the list of items needed, at the Lure Parts Online website.

Here’s a list of materials used, as well as links to them on the Lure Parts Online website.

Wood Lure Blanks
Stainless Steel Split Rings
Treble Hooks
Metal Diving Lips
Stainless Steel Screw Eyes
Epoxy Topcoat
Vinyl Lure Paint

You can check out Paul’s blog by Clicking Here.

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please be sure to share it with others.

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