I've been painting for about a month now, with just basic patterns with stripes from a comb and scales from a shower loufa.  How are you guys making your stencils?  I bought some stencil making material, but am wondering how you guys actually cut them and decide on shapes and patterns.  Thanks

I've been painting for about a month now, with just basic patterns with stripes from a comb and scales from a shower loufa.  How are you guys making your stencils?  I bought some stencil making material, but am wondering how you guys actually cut them and decide on shapes and patterns.  Thanks

I use a sharp razor knife to do the cutting. I like Olfa knives with the black "ABB"  grade breakaway blades. As far as stencil material goes I use anything from scrap paper to transparency film depending on how many times I'm planning to use it.

In the art community, stencil material is called frisket.  It's a roll of clear plastic film with adhesive and a paper backing.  Various types have different stickiness to avoid lifting paint off an art project, and the frisket can be easily cut with an Xacto knife.  Stencils for crankbaits are different from most art projects in that every stencil needs a mirror image stencil to do the other side of the bait.  I get around this by cutting my stencils from frisket but leaving the paper backing on them so I can simply flip the stencil over to do the opposite side of the bait.  Of course, this means the stencil is just held against the bait with your fingers while shooting paint instead of being stuck on the bait.  But frisket material is light enough and conforms enough to curved surfaces that I can do that and seldom have and boo-boo's.  Using flip-over stencils also lets you save your stencils for future use, which you can't do if you use stick-on stencils.  I've built up quite a library of stencils and only need to cut a new one if I want to do a new design.

 

Of course, there are other ways to make crankbait stencils.  If you have a model crankbait that you paint many times, you might want to make form-fitting stencils for both sides of that model.  In that case, I suggest you go to tackleunderground.com, the Hardbaits forum, and do a search on STENCIL to get the procedures for making that kind of stencil.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IhLo2KzSY4

follow that link, pretty cool!

You could think about electrical tape. It can stretch to fit around rounded objects if needbe. Cut little slivers to make points. Just an idea. I have done this with other things and it has worked pretty well