GB GONE

Ooops... To your original question, if I was doing sticks, I'd get a couple presto pots and run my sticks from there. Either fill hand pour molds or use a large injector. Both ways will be super quick for a single color. If you are going to do laminates at any point, go with injection and never look back. Jim

If it is quantity you are after, go with injection. If you are looking to make some better money, go with hand pour and get good. Please reference the Bassmaster Magazine article recently or contact Basstrix Bait company. I cannot remember at time when a pack of 4 injection baits sold for over $100. Basstrix did that for months on end recently. There are pluses and minuses of both techniques for sure. I do both on a daily basis adn can list them if interested. I would like to see a batch (not one bait but 50 baits) of the 3 color and 4 color hand injection baits. Not saying they are not good but reliability/reproducibility is not there. With hand pouring it is. Personally, I like to be able to do both with skill and like to mix the 2 together at times. In my opinion, hand pouring is a skill that many cannot do well or are not willing to try. Injection can be performed by anyone right out of the gate. That fact is why a hand injection bait, just as a machine injection bait, will not capture the price a quality hand poured bait will. I'd rather make 5 baits that I can sell for $1 each than have to make 20 baits that I have to sell for .25 for that same $5. When you look at it from that perspective, hand pouring is more time effective and profitable. Jim

MONEY!!!!!!!!!!! Jim

Can you compare the medium to that of M-F medium or LC medium? I definitely don't want anything softer for flipping baits and swims. Jim

Link.... Lureworks Plastisol Jim

The difference is the quality of the resins in each type. More expensive resins cause the end product to be more expensive but easier to use on more applications. Glad to hear your success!!!!!!! Was it Pourasol you used? Jim

Mine was goo and I heated it to 345 per infared thermometer. Not sure but the customer service and response with the issue was AAAAA+++++. Jim Meant my baits were goo..... Jim

Same here sorry to jack this... That is why I moved south though Nil!!! No winters!!!! Jim

Storm here was unbelievable! Worst I have seen other than tornado!!! We live in the woods with pine trees all around the house. Several trees within inches of the house and we saw one 30 yards or less get blasted by some lightening. WOW... Mother nature is BAD!!!!!!! Anyway, shop is intact but still no power! Kind nice to have the lights off and nothing running!!! Jim

By no means did I mean to imply they wouldn't work. I meant I'll never see the real fish to know if these are close or it matters. Very good point though Nil. Last time I saw a bubblegum fish go by was in college!!!!! Jim

Thanks Gary!!! I have some of yours and they are NICE. Forgot they were in the boat!!!! I think any close color will work and i for one would rather have the color my own vs having to match every other companies. Doubt they matched someone's when they did their original at Rago. Unfortunately, I live in South GA. We have no hitch in our lakes. light or dark. Jim

10-4. I know that Zoom has/had a grasshopper color at one point. Jim

Also remember this, there are significant tax advantages to having your own business. You can deduct many expenses. Many only look at the expense side and forget this side of things. This can be part of the overall plan if you are looking at going into business as it will reduce your tax burden which helps the bottom line. Jim

Hey Nil.... Is this a color you came up with or a match to another color? Just curious as it sounds good. No smallies down here but the big girls like smallie colors sometimes too!! Jim

Many others have too Adam. The picture posted her will incur a letter for sure. Hopefully that is all. Strike King and others have the right to protect what they brought to market. This comes back to the point of the $$$. Be sure you are injecting/pouring a bait that is not infringing on another bait. Easiest route will be that you stop pouring the bait that is infringing but now you have the time invested, marketing, mold cost etc and cannot recoup those costs. Worst case is that the company decides to make an example out of you and takes you to court. Hello banckruptcy, unless you have a few hundred thousand stacked up for your losing defense. Also adds another point/cost. These "big" companies spend untold monies on marketing. You will have costs in that area for sure. In fact, marketing is probably the area I see that most fall flat with. They have good stuff and nobody knows. Gotta spend to make. Flip side is true as well. A good marketing plan can make a mediocre (sp) bait/product a BIG winner. Happens all the time. Can you say Rocket Fishing pole???? LOL!!! Jim

Real answer is ZERO. You can't POUR any baits with a single injector mold and an injector... JK.... Keep doing the numbers and also remeber the 10% tax you will pay as well. When you finish, add on another 5% for expenses as everyone goes way to conservative on their numbers and doesn't figure the rising costs of supplies, power etc for that year they are calculating. Also remember, you can do way more finesse worms but you also have to put more in a bag and you have to charge less for those than a frog. Bottom line will be less profit for that type of bait. I like the pic of the Rage Craw for whomever posted it. Hope you don't get caught selling those as Strike King will immediately send you a cease and desist or take you to court. Simple case of patent infringement on their bait. Jim

I was just thinking you might have gotten some contaminated plastic or "bad" from M-F, thats all. Yeah, I would say that M-F doesn't hard pack at all, soft pack sound right. BBs work good in the colorant bottle too. Jim

I have used M-F for many years and never seen any hard pack with their plastic. After 6 months of sitting, there is a very thin layer of packing that is easily mixed with gentle shaking. If you had hard packing with M-F, I would have been on the phone with Jeff/Robert right away. Hard pack is a result of the resins falling to the bottom of the container. The larger pvc resins are cheaper, the tinier, small sized resins are more expensive. Larger pvc resins will fall faster and pack quicker where the extremely small resins will stay in suspension for a very long time and are easily re-suspended. Very similar to what we see with glitter in our cups. M-F uses very fine resins to avoid the hard packing. You can tell what others are using based on how quick the hard pack occurs. For me, I would not add anything into the plastic for stirring unless it is a stirrer. You could get some metal shaving from the bolts or the bolts/nuts could have checmical coating on them that reacts with your plastisol. I can see a metal shaving doing some damage to the inside of an injector real easy. Just my 2 cents though... Jim PS I thought the nuts/bolts addition was for colorant bottles myself.

Had same issue and it is tough to stir well in the 1 gallon jug. I was told I needed to actually get the layer of packing mixed so just shaking the jug a while would not suffice. Went to different plastisol. My baits were very sticky and the cups/molds were extremely tough to clean out. Jim

LOL!!! I almost used gold but then put it back down as I decided I needed to go more brownish than goldish. It was my first instinct though!!! I bet the fish would still eat with gold and it might be a good change..... Hmmmm... Jim

Injectasol, Pourasol or the Ultrasol?????????????????? DId you cook in mic or pot? Jim

No, I meant copper smoke pearl. I don't have any copper lumina. They might not sell it (YET). I was on the testing end of colors Jeff was toying with at M-F. There are plenty of others like blue smoke pearl, purple smoke pearl, silver smoke pearl, green SP, etc. He must not have added the copper on??? The GREAT things about these is that they are liquid so they allow your bait to remain completely transluscent. The powders toughen your bait up (which to me means a decrease in action) and makes the plastic more opaque. Maybe send Jeff a note and he can add it on to the options..... Sorry Jeff... Jim

If you are hand pouring, you can avoid all that opening closing, pouring, curring etc. Just pour in the color you want as the tip/tail and then pour your body color. It takes some practice but quickly you can pour a batch of uniform baits in less time than you can do all the pouring and cutting. The slide bar molds are the best if you want to do the tails and you are hand injecting. Quick and easy. Jim

OK, I couldn't stand it!!! I know I have a boat load of baits to be making for those waiting but here is my first and only try at Light Hitch. The blue doesn't show in this picture good but it is right on. Had my "bad" camera with today so the pictue really doesn't show the colors that good.. Sent first batch to a buddy in AZ for testing and color approval and he gave it his stamp of approval big time. Caught a 7.6 on his first trip out with them. He told me the color is very comparable to the major companies out there.... And now.... the recipe I used... Top: 4oz 1 drop amber brown (LC), 2 drops smoke pearl copper (M-F) Middle: 4oz 6 drops non-bleed blue (M-F) Bottom: 4oz 2 drops iradescent pearl (M-F), 1 drop pearlescent (M-F) dash of meduim silver holo flake Hope this helps!!! Jim