Tried my hand at airbrushing crank baits

Still working on it,definitely getting better here’s a few recent ones

Still working on it,definitely getting better here’s a few recent ones

Those are beautiful!!

Those are pretty sweet crankbaits.  Did you clear coat afterwards?  I don't suppose you'd mind giving a little breakdown of your spray equipment and costs to get started?

Those are pretty sweet crankbaits.  Did you clear coat afterwards?  I don't suppose you'd mind giving a little breakdown of your spray equipment and costs to get started?

Yes they are clear coated after paint.
These were painted with a cheap master brand airbrush from amazon, you get the airbrush and compressor for under $100. I also used cheap acrylic paints thinned down for these baits. The cheap stuff works to get you going and see if it’s something you’d be interested in. Problem with the cheap stuff is they clog very easy  and are not easy to clean.
Since these baits were painted I’ve upgraded all my equipment starting with an iwata eclipse hpcs airbrush along with a badger sotar 20/20 detail brush. I’m slowly upgrading my paint collection to all airbrush ready paints. Comart,wicked colors and testors aztek line.
 For clear coats I started with two part epoxy which is kind of a pain when coating more than one at a time, then I switched to kbs diamond finish that stuff was amazing...just dip and hang, but it’s shelf life is fairly short. Now I’ve switched to a uv resin which requires a uv box but works really well.

Cheap to get going would be
Master airbrush and compressor $100.
Craft paint from Walmart $1. A bottle so say $10.
Selection of blanks $20.
Bsi 30min slow cure epoxy $9ish with coupon from hobby lobby.
 
More expensive but way better
Iwata hpcs $150
Any compressor  (California airtools 1gal)$100
Quality paint $5-8 per bottle so say $50ish to have a selection.
Blanks $20ish.
Clear coat depends on how easy you want it to be. $9-$90.
The benefit of buy the better gear to get going is that it holds a good resale value and if you decided you didn’t enjoy it you wouldn’t be out much $.

Beautiful work, Mike. 

Nice 

Thanks for detailing out equipment and providing some insight.  Again, those are some sweet looking cranks.