Sanding balsa popper bodies

All about flies Fly Tying
1

Two suggestions to consider for preventing the balsa from slipping when you sand:

  1. Use a very small drill bit instead of a needle. The cutting flutes will provide more grip.
  2. Coat your needle with Contact Adhesive to increase the friction. Let the glue dry before using.
    For me they both seem to help.
2

Ray,

Or ,you could sand the bodies AFTER you glue them to the hook.

Built in ‘handle’, and at least I used to have to sand the filler in the hook cut out anyway…two jobs done at once. Also lets you ‘true up’ the bodies to the hook orientation…sometimes it’s not perfectly aligned and you can sand it to ‘true’ without much trouble.

The hook is also handy for dipping the bodies into the sealer before final sanding and painting…the hook provides a method to ‘hang’ the bodies so they can dry…

If you use lacquer as the sanding sealer, you can dip three or four dozen in a row, by the time you dip the last one, the first are cured enough to final sand.

If you dip the next coat of sealer right after you final sand, by the time you’ve sanded/sealed again all of them, you can dip the first undercoat.

By the time you’ve dipped the all the first undercoats, you can start on the second undercoat.

Then you can immediately airbrush all the colors. Airbrushed lacquer dries right darn quick, so you can do the belly color, then the top color, any scale or ‘markings’ or such one after the other…

Paint on the eyes next. Do all the iris’s first and by the time these are done, you can go right back and do the pupils.

(Put on a gliter coat now if you want that effect…)

By the time all the pupils are dotted, the first ones will be dry enough for the first top coat…use clear lacquer ‘dipped’ for that so that it will all ‘level’ out.

NOW, you need to ‘wait’ for several days (two is plenty-keep the bodies somplace with good airflow or aim a small fan at them) so that all the solvents go out of the bodies…

Final coat should be epoxy,so the bodies won’t react with stuff…if you thin it down, you don’t need a turner…but one is nice to have, keeps things nice and even…

Tie in the tails, and you are ‘done’…

NOW, I think I remember why I went to foam for popper bodies…all that sounds like work, but if you don’t do that, they can absorb water and swell up, crack the paint, sink, just look ‘rough and unfinished’, or other undesirable things…

Buddy