cadman

Painter, That is a great idea. I was just looking into buying more wireforms, but your idea is simple and above all a money saving tip. So for about $5 in new wireforms, I can make 200 "Painter" style wireforms. Thank you very much for sharing.

Correct, You have an e-mail from me.

I am looking for a several of tabs(6) of fishingskirts.com #505 Midnight Magic skirt color (aka black with blue glimmer). If anyone has some please PM me. Thanks in advance

jsanders159, BTW welcome to Tackle Underground, your one stop source for all tackle making information.

Painter1: First and foremost, are you using "Drop Out" , if not get some. Many of your pouring problems if any will disappear. If you have never used it you will Thank me later. Second, if you have a Lee bottom pour pot, crank it up to #9, and when it is done heating, stick the mold sprue hole up and onto the pour spot nozzle. This will force the mold to fill. Sort of like injecting lead into a mold. This has helped save the day for me many times. Let me know how it goes for you.

I can see this is/could be a potential problem. I think I will put a disclaimer on the 1/16 oz jigs, like you stated " Bait keeper on the 1/16 oz jigs may fall out due to mold design. All jigs leaving our facility have been checked before shipping however constant use may loosen the bait keeper up, causing it to fall out." I hate putting in disclaimers, because people think that you don't know what you're doing, but if I don't let them know or explain it to them, I'll be getting a butt load of complaints and or return for credit. I would rather tell the customer up front and not sell any, than to sell them and get complaints. When I looked at the 1/16 oz head in this mold, I had a feeling it was going to be a problem with the bait keeper in the mold. The mold hardly holds the hook in place let alone a hook and a bait keeper. Ugh!

Just to bring you guys up on my final decision on all of this here, this is what I have decided on. If I were to pour these for myself, I would use the #5313 hooks as recommended by Do-It. Reason being is this. The 5313 hook is a 1x strong hook and it is very light in weight to its size ratio, even if I put a 1/0 on the 1/16 oz head. I did this project solely for one customer. He wanted this head style because it has a keeper, however he wanted a 32746 hook. I will tell you this, that with a 32746 hook, the jig falls differently in the water. It has more of a dead drop to it. The 5313 has more of a slower dancing fall. Naturally you add the trailer to it and it is a whole different story. Now I fit the 570 in there, and although it is lightweight, I am not a fan of bronze hooks, let alone aberdeen hooks for bass fishing. Paranoia I guess. The 570BP would be my choice if I would go that route. All said and done my customer wanted something other than what I would use, but that's why they order custom. Who am I to tell them what they want. Finally one thing I did not like about this mold is using a keeper in the 1/16 oz head. What a P.I.T.A. Is everyone else having problems with the keeper coming loose in the head after pouring? Other than painting the jig to hold the keeper in better, what are some other solutions? Glue, Epoxy? Thanks to all for all the help and input.....................Ted

Walley I am a bit confused on what you are trying to do, so I am going to try to write this the way I understand it and them please correct me if I'm wrong. You stated above, that you want to do a black jig with gold on the bottom. Where does the glow come in? If I were to do a black/gold jig, I would not use a fluid bed. Multi-color jigs always come out better for me doing them by hand. #1....Do the bottom of the jig gold color, and let the gold come up the sides a bit. #2.....Then turn the jig over and put on the black. You always want to put your bottom colors on first. Reason being is that it looks more natural, when the top colors fall naturally over a bottom color. When it gets baked the colors blend in and you don't get any transition lines only fade. That's the way I would do it. Now there are many ways to do this so you will have to find what works for you. In regards to glow powder paints. I have used them for many walleye jigs, and the actual glow paint, which looks like beige color, but glows like light green is a P.I.T.A. to work with. The powder I have is a very heavy pigment, and when you heat up a jig, there always seems to be too much powder that wants to stick onto the jig. If I were to use a fluid bed for glow, I would heat the jig only hot enough, so the glow would stick to the jig but not gloss over. Your jig should look covered, but dull and grainy. This way , you know you won't have too much powder on the jig. Then heat the jig to gloss over. if you don't have good coverage, wait until the jig cools a bit and run through the powder again. Do this until you get good coverage. Glow paint is notorious for not giving good coverage, and you have to put on a lot of paint to actually get the glow to, well glow. This is my experience with glow. I am not saying I'm right, but you can get some tips and try to see what works out for you. Glitters, like smalljaw mentioned, especially the larger flakes are horrible in a fluid bed. Any and all glitters other than Herbie's Magic Dust which is really fine should be sprinkled on by hand to get even coverage in my opinion. I hope I have helped some, If I didn't answer your question please rephrase it so I can answer it better.

Thank for the info guys?

I am looking for an alternate hook for this mold other than the Owner #5313. I am looking for a #1 hook in the 1/16, 3/32, and 1/8 oz cavity with a direct replacement hook with no mold modificationss. Any help would be appreciated.

Pete, It would have to be done by a machine that can bend small radii, and with. 040 or .050 there is a limit as well. Depending on your quantity, call up O'Hare Spring in Elk Grove Village, IL they may be able to help you. I think their minimum is a run of 5K

Mark, I've had very good luck with etching primer, since I used it on powder paint. Once the etching primer grabs hold of the lead it holds really well. This was my experience with some trial and error I did. ** Spray on etching primer on a clean jig, very good adhesion and excellent coverage. ** Spray on etching primer on a clean jig and then bake the jigs, excellent to phenomenal adhesion. I went to strip it off with paint stripper, and it took 3 or 4 tries with 15 minute soaks each to remove the primer. I know you are not going to use powder paint, but once powder paint is applied over etching primer and baked, it really wears extremely well. Let me know how your painting holds up over the etching primer

Try self etching primer. Spray it on a clean poured jig. Make sure you cover or tape all the parts you do not want primed. The stuff in the store is a gray color and comes in a spray can. I tried to find it in white, but have not found any as of yet. I heard that some auto paint stores might have the etching primer in white. Let us know how it goes.

Send me a PM with your e-mail and I will send you a tutorial on how to tie silicone skirts with wire.

Nothing new this time of year. I always buy a big supply in December, to hold me through until June. Seems like February through May, they are always out of the std colors and their biggest sellers. Like smalljaw mentioned they will build up their stock eventually.

CDawson, Smalljaw is correct, that hook is way to thick to fit in that mold without any modification. As a matter of fact, there are only a couple of hooks in the 30 degree category that will fit in the Poison Tail mold. However if you feel adventurous, and have a steady hand, you can modify the mold to possibly fit what you want. BTW welcome to TU

Kris, Yes I had plenty made. Pm me what you are looking for..

Smalljaw glad to hear. I was never so lucky with Barlows, and all my business goes to LPO. On another note , when stuff is back ordered, LPO usually ships the item when it comes in free of charge. I will not place an order twice from a company that doesn't have it in stock and pay shipping twice. LPO also has gone out of there way to special order things for me and when they don't have it, they tell me up front that it's not in stock and ship to me when it comes in.

Yes you can, I do it all the time. Just make sure when you apply the other colors you do not burn the first one. Low heat and pay attention to what you are doing. Once all your colors are done, gloss over, and bake your jig in the oven to harden it. You will be good to go. Take a look at my avatar there are 6 colors on that jig all powder paint. Also baking your base coat will help stop paint bleed and all of your other colors will be true. Experiment is the key here, but it definitely works.

I've only tried them on jigs, and failed miserably. Maybe not the correct day or the correct light, but an all flash jig, did not produce for me. I made several jigs in all flash, to add to my arsenal, since an all white jigs doesn't work that well for me either. With that said, I don't use jigs with an all flash skirt. Like smalljaw mentioned, you can add some flash as an accent. But I'll stick to my regular standard jigs. I don't fish many spinnerbaits, so I can't comment on how they would work in an all flash skirt .

The reason, you can't find any is that once you pour lead-free, usually bismuth, the lead free is so hard, that it will crack once you try to bend it. Pm me, and I can give you more info on this. I do have the split shot mold.

Bob, On some spinnerbait molds, like the ultra minnow, hot hooks and a hot mold are key. also on the ultra minnow mold, I found that it had to be vented and soft lead works better, because it flows better With that said I've said it a million times , drop out just plainly works for letting lead fill cavities evenly . In the case of the buzzbait mold above, the hook eye on most hooks is too big for the profile of the body. What this means is that if you don't have the hook eye in the center of the body, and it slips down in the mold, you will get the hook eye to protrude from either side., making a bad pour. Now if you go to a bigger hook, that makes it worse because the hook eye are larger as the hook gets larger. What should have happened with that mold was to make a bigger body around the top, this way the lead will cover the hook eye more.

If you are looking for bulk 1000 count. Shorty's has them as well for an excellent price.

I use a multi heat digital heat gun. This way you can do multiple colors without burning the paint, or you can try it on high to start and then go to low for additional colors.

That is the biggest problem with this mold. If the wire form and the hook shank aren't co-linear in both directions, than you will always have bad pours. Also if you crack the mold a bit, you will get flash and in this case the extra flash will get you more lead coverage, The only downside to flash, is that you will have to file it off, but you will get better pours.