Need tips on painting wood lures!

[REDFISH]

Good evening everyone, I just popped in here to get some advice for painting wood plugs.  I have some basswood plugs that are blank and Im dying to paint em and try them out.  Making lures is a new passion of mine, i pretty much have everything down execpt for the paint.  I know most people probably airbrush but I want to hand paint with a brush.  Should I use a primer? Should I clear coat with some kind of poxy or something?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 

[bigjim5589]

I've never tried making wood lures, but have made 100's of fly rod poppers. Even played with basswood some. Because wood swells when it gets wet, you need to seal it real good. A good primer should be used too. Both will help to keep the wood from absorbing water. A good final finish of epoxy is a good idea too, as it will help protect the paint & limit damage to the wood surface if you should hit anything hard with it.

When I've used balsa, cork or basswood, I usually give them several coats of primer, with a light sanding between each coat. I use a common primer called Kilz. For fly rod lures it works fine, but you may want to use something better. The guys who paint crank baits can likely give you a better product to use.

I then do my painting & finish with a coat or two of Devcon 60 or 90 minute epoxy. Epoxy does have to be rotated to keep it from sagging until it sets.

I've never had one get water damaged, and have had a few that I caught a bunch of fish on & they still looked great!

[AJLures]

Use a Waterbased primer, then Paint with acrylics and then clearcoat with 30-min epoxy or waterborne lure clearcoat.

John

[fishin-family]

I personally like to use a thin fiberglass coating to seal the wood then I go with either HOUSE OF COLOR self etching automotive primer & then 1 of their paints. I prefer their chameleon colors they are very expensive if you buy them by the quart but you can get them in 1/2 pints they call them spray bombs.you can paint probally 500 lures with that. Being that I paint most of the cars I build it's easier for me to paint them with that. They also mix custom colors. I had 1 mixed up for me that is a chameleon color that goes from gold to silver to red & then to copper. It's great for shad patterns. I'll be posting some pics of the lures I've been making in a few days. You gotta see the 1 that goes from Dodge Viper blue to silver to black to gunmetal when you look at it it looks like a blue back herring.