cadman

jnurn, Yes you can salvage those hooks. Take a pair of forceps or long nose pliers, and grab the hook by the bend. Then take the jig and slowly dip it in the hot lead. The lead on the jig will melt right off. Do not dip the whole jig in otherwise you will have lead over the hook , hook eye, barb and all. Just dip it in low enough so the lead on the jig is in the hot lead in the pot. A bottom pour pot will not necessarily guarantee you better pours. Heat, hot molds, warm hooks and soft lead is a good place to start. Then make sure you definitely flux your lead. Finally I believe you have a Palmer Hot Pot I or Hot Pot II. They are workhorses, although a little heavy with the lead inside

You guys are so funny Patrick, when is enough.. enough? When you no longer have the desire to do this. Realistically you never stop learning especially when you want to experiment and make yourself better than everyone else and you push your limits. That's what separates all of us from each other. Some have the drive to want to be best and others are happy where they are at. Nothing wrong with that, we all can't be brain surgeons. When I started this hobby I had 2 molds, a melting pot and that's it. Fast forward 8 years, I now have over 100 molds, 3 Lee pots, 3 Palmer pots and thousands of hooks. BTW I pour lead jigs. Even though I don't pour plastics my hobby is just as addicting as yours. The reason it's addicting is because you want to try and make different things. The better you get at it the more you want to try different things and the more you buy, and buy, and buy, and buy. Look at it this way, yes it's an addiction but it's a good addiction.

Dean, It's funny you mentioned here today gone tomorrow. I'm sure this holds true in other forums as well, but you wouldn't believe how many Pm's I get of guys wanting to make and paint jigs like I do, most of them don't realize how much time, patience, trial and error goes into doing this. Granted I don't make crank baits, but like anything else there is a big learning curve to everything you do and even once we learn it, we still have bad days. Guys want to be the best after a couple of weeks. You know as well as I do that you have to put in the time to be really good at it and you have to practice. I've seen a lot of guys come and go and many had dreams of all this money being made. Well you know the rest. First and foremost like with many of the guys here this is a hobby and a passion for me, not about getting rich.

Definitely use white especially on your fluorescent colors like MuskyGary mentioned including hot pink, lime green and even some of your candy colors.

Like Vodkaman posted here I have very few if any guys who have not thanked me for helping them out. Mostly through Pm's. I have answered the same questions over and over thousands of times. It may sound a little weird, but I like helping people out. I will never turn down a question if asked of me and I can answer it. However, like many of you if I don't get a Thank You, I will not go out of the way to help anyone either. You guys are correct, a little courtesy goes a long way.

I believe BBK is correct. I also was interested in this mold. Please let us know what you find out.

shawn, I will agree with BBK, you used the wrong thinner to thin the vinyl paint. I believe (but don't quote me) that you have to use lacquer thinner and not paint thinner to thin it. Also do yourself a favor and go with powder paint. A lot easier, there is no smell and the results are beautiful. Once you get the hang of it you can get multi color jigs like my avatar, which you can not do with vinyl paint. PM Me if you want more info on powder paint. Finally, my avatar is a Ultra-minnow spinnerbait, if you are going to use powder paint, you will not get the scale definition you want on the bait. The scale definition is not deep enough to allow that to happen when it is poured. You may get it from air brushing, but I've found that each mold is slightly different, and some have heavier scale definitions while others have less. I really wouldn't worry about the scale definition, you still can make beautiful spinnerbaits.

orion, In order to get multiple colors on a painted jig you have to put on thin coats and I mean thin. If you look at my avatar that has (6) different colors of powder paint on there. The jig is baked with it hanging by the hook head down as a mater of fact all my jigs and spinnerbaits are baked that way. You do not need to bake after each color, except when colors change from cross-linking. You have to learn heat-up time of jig versus how long to keep the hot jig in the powder. This will take some practice even when you use a fluid bed.

No problem at all, ask away and if I can help you I will. Good Luck.

walleyeslammer, Welcome to TU e-mail sent.

Well I just have to Thank You for doing the testing and posting your results. This will help a lot of guys who maybe don't want to buy the spray release and use an alternative. Definitely some good info.

I have thought about that many times. The only question I have is what would that do to the jigs or weights if you were to paint them? Have you tried to paint the jigs to see what happens . I'm curious. I know WD40 evaporates and I know you can put the jigs in a degreaser, however that would be another step in the process. If you have some time and you use powder paint, paint some up with out cleaning them, just wiping them off and let us know your results. I'm sure we're all interested. I know I am. Thanks

All I can say is that it is definitely worth trying some sample pieces. I am painting this weekend I'll see if I get some time to screw around with this. Pete, it comes down to this we will never know success if we don't have failure. People come up with cures all the time, and it's not because they gave up. If this works it will save a lot of wasted time wrapping with tin foil or tape. I will post my results Sunday or Monday.

I will agree with you and I don't have a lot of hope and optimism. I will do my testing and see what happens. I do not want to form an opinion before I try it myself. The reason being is that someone may have a brainstorm and it may work really well and we may all miss the boat. I'll quote a friend "A closed mind will never know what could or would be". With that said I will post my unbiased results at a later date. Also when I post results I try to look at the whole picture with everyone involved, this way everyone could benefit from it if it works........................These are not my favorite jigs to paint at all, I'm glad I don't do thousands. It would be too much like work.

I totally agree with you Fatman. My first concern would be some water getting in the powder paint. Once that happens, well, it's junk . People have issues with humidity in powder , and now you want to use water as a coolant before you paint. I don't know. I think I'm going to do some testing. I have hundreds of pounds of powder, so I can afford to throw some away, but when you get a guy that pays $6 for 2 ounces and water gets in the powder well, I guess I would be pretty upset if I had to throw 1/2 or 3/4 of a jar of powder away. I'll let you guys know when I get a chance to do this.

Sorry for the late reply, but Do-It sells the same stuff along with Barlow's. Check this place out, phenomenal price http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=763758. God dang nab-it now I find this and I paid close to $10.

JSC, I will have to try that. It would be easier to drag a pull rod through soap than always spray it with a release agent. What does the soap do to the egg sinkers when you paint them. Do you know and can you elaborate?

This is just my personal opinion as I did some testing on powder painted hard lead jigs and powder painted dead soft jigs. On the harder lead jigs, the paint didn't ship off as fast, because the lead underneath the paint didn't give in. With soft lead if you drop it, it will definitely deform quite a bit. I don't have any documents to prove this only a hardness tester at work. I am not scientist or a metallugical specialist, so all my finding may be thrown out the window. For me the harder the lead the better, as long as I get good pours with no re-pours. JMO

Hawn, I found this out similar to Smalljaw's experience. I had a hell of a time pouring my ultra-Minnow Spinnerbait mold with my LeeI IV pot. It was a nightmare. So then I went to soft lead for that mold, and my Palmer Hot Pot. Well it worked really great except the damn thing was so heavy. Also when I used the Palmer Pot, and I was pouring the last cavities closest to my hand, I was always scared that I would over pour too much and burn my hands. Even with leather gloves , those gloves get really hot from lead fast. Anyway, I was skimming the crap off of my Lee pot one day when I was fluxing, and I happened to be using my small 1-1/2 oz ladle. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Instead of using the heavy Palmer Pot why not try using this to see if it works. Well it did and the rest is history. Why wasn't I born with all this knowledge in my head. Life would be so much easier.

Check out http://www.fishingskirts.com/ Charles has every skirt color you can dream of and the cost is very affordable.

Rob If you are getting nipples at the end of your jig after you bake them, you have way too much paint on your jig. The fluid bed is a good solution for single paint applications. If you start doing multi-color than you will have to learn how to put on less paint. To put on less paint don't overheat the jig and don't keep it in the powder paint too long. If you want to make a fluid bed, pm me your e-mail and I can send you instruction. If you want to buy one, support a TU member. His name is Benjamin and here is his link. http://www.tjstackle.com/ Benjamin has everything ready to work right out of the box. Really nice guy to do business with. As far as keeping hook eyes clean, I push a drill bit through a hot jig and it cleans the eyes perfectly. BTW they make drill bits down to .015. There is a drill bit for every jig hook eye out there. I know because I have them. They may be called jeweler's drill bits but they are readily available.

Yes, you have to bake the jigs in a toaster because it hardens the powder paint. I put in all of my weedguards in after the jigs are baked. I use Loc-Tite Gel Super Glue to glue them in. There are many other ways but I found this to work the best for me. I'm sure you'll get more responses and ideas here.

tileman e-mail sent

Cover the entire swivel including the top of the barrel with aluminum foil. This is a slow process, but the swivels actually swivel without any paint build-up on them once the jigs are complete. Make sure you take the aluminum foil off the swivel before you bake the jig, otherwise you will have hell to pay to get it off later. Maybe others have a better idea, so let's hear'm guys.

sent e-mail