cadman

The only reason I really use D2T are for the simple reasons of eye adhesion and color depth. I have also tried powder 200% gloss. The reason for the trial was to see if I can put eyes on my jig after baking, and then put on a powder clearcoat to seal in the eyes. Well I've tried this several times, and every time it failed. Once I put the eyes on and then powder clear coat, you have to heat the jig thoroughly to melt the clear. Well when you do that, by the time the clear melts clear, the eyes are melted. I've tried this on 2D and 3D eyes. The 3D eyes failed miserably, the 2D eyes did better, but they started to sink into the head with the powder overshadowing the eye. So I went back to clearcoating with D2T. Only drawback is the wait time for epoxy to dry, but the finish is second to none.

Painter It is definitely for more durability and also to keep the eyes from falling off if you use eyes on some of your jigs. Also a clearcoat when used does add depth to the color of your jig. If you look at a coated and non-coated jig side by side, the coated one wins hands down as far as appeal, and also it does sell better. With that said, I personally don't think the fish care. Finally when you put a flat painted jig in the water, the jig looks glossy in the water, so I don't bother using flat paints unless requested by my customer. Everything is relative. If you have confidence in throwing flat painted jigs, and feel that is what puts fish in the boat so be it. I did a trial like this with a friend of mine in a boat. There seemed to be no difference in the catch rate. All of the lakes around here are gin clear and we only did this test on a couple of lakes a couple of times, so our tests really aren't years of study and not deemed to be accurate.

Yes they are stamped, and I'm going to bet that you won't find out who is doing for them. Having them stamped yourself is not practical. It is cheaper to have them laser cut or water jet cut.

What does bulk mean. 100 or 1000. If you are looking into 100 you will have to pay the price from the local component companies on line. If you are looking for a custom run, like pic below, then you will have to buy in quantity and your price per each will drop drastically. However if you go big quantities, you can design your own and make it out of any other material like aluminum, which has insane vibration or stainless steel. ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf ZB-M BLANK.pdf

The question you have to ask yourself is how much time do you want to spend doing 1000 jigs. To me the cost of time is not worth repainting especially since they were already painted once. But time may not be relative for you. If I had to do this the correct way, this is the way I would do it. This is based on the fact that all the heads are lead and no plastic rattles or anything else is on it. #1 Pull out all the weedguards cleanly out of every jig. Then throw these out. #2 Take the whole lot of jigs and put them in a big bowl and fill with paint stripper. This is a messy process and time consuming. #3 Wait about 2-3 hours to see if the stripper removed the paint from the jig. If not leave in longer. If still not clean, spill out old paint stripper and add new all over again. #4 Once paint is off the jigs, you will have to wash off each jig, and brush every jig, to get excess remover off and make sure you get the remover out of the weedguard hole. #5 Once the jigs are clean to your liking, let thoroughly dry for a week. #6 Once your jigs are dry, I would now start powder painting them to the colors you want, and then bake them all. #7 Once baked, I would glue in or epoxy in the weedguard. #8 Wait to dry several days and skirt your jigs. Now just from a normal time perspective, to do this correctly I would estimate about 40 hours of labor, just a rough guess. The biggest key here is in the prep work. If you don't clean the jigs properly and you don't get the remover off, you will have a crappy paint job and will have to redo them. This is just the way I would do this project. However I wouldn't strip and repaint 1000 jigs, as it is not cost effective to do this. It would be faster to have new ones poured, and then just paint clean jigs from scratch. Just my opinion. Finally I would not air brush jigs as you would have to clear coat the paint to keep it from washing off unless you use lacquer paint, and even with lacquer paint you will still have to make sure the jigs are clean.

Very nice looking baits.

Yes too tight of a weedguard is troublesome, and you have no choice but to pull strands off. The other problem from other weedguard manufacturers is the base is fused and too big in dia. Another P.I.T.A. However since many times I only put in 15 strands, my idea above works, not saying it is the best solution at the time.

Hey Matt, Ha, now you want to know my super duper secret on how to hold up weedguards. LOL. Actually what that is, is when I use non full weedguards, which I do 90% of the time, the weedguards are loose in the weedguard hole. Sooooooooooooooo in order to keep them from drying in crooked and flopping around, I use tape to hold them in place in both directions, until the glue sets. Then I take the tape off. There you go.

Never had a problem with D2T, Now Etex is a whole different story. Do not put Etex on a jig and stand it up. The etex is way too thin and will run into the weedguard strands and make them unusable. Below is a pic on how I do my weedguards and two examples of how you can stand-up your jigs to clearcoat them with D2T.

Give Shorty's a year and they will have them. Seen many things go this route.

I use small clamps to hold the jig. This is a two step process for me. I epoxy the weedguards in first, let dry about 4 hours, and then I clearcoat the body. Let cure 24 hours complete. I then put on my skirt and wire tie. Everyone has their own little trick of the trade to make it work for them.

I forgot to add that if you are not making many you can make your own, if you are doing several 100 at a time, it is not practical or cost effective. Buy them and move on.

Currently no, but you can cut, bend and make your own. It is not that difficult to do, I make my own.

I would say air brush the blade as well and then put the spider on. The like kasilofchrisn said probably a hot stamp that fits the profile of the blade. I have made similar blades with clear decals and a printer and it works really well, however very time consuming. Below is what I did with this method.

I had smalljaw make some hair jigs for me as well. He does really good work. He is in PA as well.

I remember those as well, and I also remember that they helped some, but many of the blades still got weeds wrapped around in the front of the bead and on the shaft. i don't use many buzzbaits these days though.

Josh, BTW the #1623CR hook is still available at Do-It molds and they come in 1/0 and 3/0. Below is a picture of the two hooks. The top one is a #1623 and the bottom one is a #1623CR. As mentioned above you will be very disappointed if you do not buy the #1623CR. Also it looks like the 1623CR are slightly thicker in diameter than the regular #1623

On the Trokar swim jig, it is a good swim jig, it reminds me of a new version of the snootie jig. Kind of Like a before and after of about 25 years, and almost everyone knows the Snootie jig is one of my favorites. The eyes like small jaw mentioned are correct. This I would believe would be for WTP eye sizes, as he and I and many others here like their eyes. On the second part of your question. I have the Do-Its (#3296) SUS-5-A. This mold and I believe two other similar styles all take the 1623 hooks. These hooks are bronze aberdeen hooks made by Eagle Claw back in the day for Do-It. Now I can tell you this and that is Do Not Buy the plain #1623 hooks, get the #1623 CR hooks for this mold. The CR stands for a crimped hook which is only made by Eagle Claw. The reason I say to buy the CR (If they are still available) is that the crimp keeps the hook from turning in the jig head once it is poured. When I first bought this mold 12 years ago I found out the hard way. This is especially important since this is a flat eye hook. As far as being too thin, yes it is thin. I used to use this mold for walleyes and have never lost a fish on the hook bending out. I can't say how this would work for bass. I will tell you that with all the hype of "Stand-Up Jigs" now, the old school jigs actually do fall and stand-up better than all the current jigs. reason being is that this jig has a wide base and it is also bottom heavy with a light wire hook. I also believe that the #1623 CR hook is only available in 2 or 3 sizes, and I also believe you can only get these hooks from Do-It Finally this would make an excellent bass jig as you mentioned. The only problem I see is there are no heavier hooks with the crimp in the hook, and the hooks will turn trust me. I will post a pic of the hook once I find it. If you need more help on this PM me.

If you bought it new and you have not modified it or have not put in a bigger diameter hook in a smaller cavity, than there is a problem with the mold. You can go up or down one hook size on all Do-It molds. Since the lead is seeping in, you can fill the neck wherever the hook shank lies with JB Weld, and then re-file the slot. You would have to do this on both mold halves. A simpler fix might be to use high temp RTV silicone, do the same as above, except you won't have to file a slot. and this would accomplish the same thing. Once cured, you can stick the hook in, and this will prevent the lead from seeping into the hook eye cavity. Make sure you clean out the cavity by the hook eye. Hope this makes sense. Others may have some more quick fixes. One last thing to check and that is make sure you do not have any small smashed pieces of lead on your mold halves. If you have a gap in the mold halves, this will also occur. So take a small scraper and run it over your mold halves to scrape them. Many times you will not see this, but the scraper will clean it and this may solve your problem. You Have a PM.

So you bought it new?

rwfleming, Welcome to Tackle Underground. I understand your question completely. Couple of questions I need to ask: #1 Is that a new mold or has someone else used it? #2 Has the hook eye been modified for any other hooks?

I do something similar to what Musky Glenn does. However if you want to cover up the spot that you were holding. Stick your blade on a piece of tapered dowel in one of the middle holes. Heat the end where the paint is missing, dust on powder until it blends in, let it cool flip over and do other side . Now you have a completely painted blade with no blemishes or missing paint.

Richard, where did you find an 1/8 oz Arky Jig mold? By the way welcome to Tackle Underground.

Mark did you try black permanent marker on the outside of the eye? It might be dull, but if you clear coat it, it will gloss over.

I have had the same experience as smalljaw, in regards to WTP eyes being left on over a year without clear-coating. The eyes never come off after that long of a time.