cadman

it is Starflash skirt material. The Starflash material is excellent for spinnnerbaits as it is stiffer and puffs out more when it is pulled through the water. I can tell by the skirts, as I have the same ones. You have a PM

Danny, As far as fluid beds go, if you use them, then yes you will get paint on both sides, because you will have to dip them. You can make any size fluid bed, that is up to you. Depends on how long the blade is, but a fluid bed at full boil, should be 1" give or take boiling from the top down. A 55 gal air pump will usually push enough powder to make it suspend having a two port outlet going into a tee and then into a valve. In the fluid beds I built, it takes about 6 oz of powder paint. Mutli-color is very do-able( is that a word) as well on blades . The picture below shows matching blades on a spinnerbait. The blades are #5 and #4 willows and are only painted on the convex side. The concave side is silver nickle. This can be done with any number of colors, however you have to lay out what you want where. There's a lot of good advice here. Depends on what you want your blades to look like. If you want to make blades similar to the pic below, PM me and we can go over the process

I sent you the instructions via e-mail. Let me know if you received it.

For all you guys that use white powder paint, I have talked to a chemist, and this has been ongoing for me for 5+ years. Every white I have tried has its issues. I have not yet found a white that will flow smoothly and boil nicely in a fluid bed. White from my experience of trying 30 plus brands is hard to work with some work better than others. Depending on the seasons as well, it seems to absorb moisture faster, it is heavier then some of the powders I've tried, and unfortunately in a fluid bed, sometimes it will boil nicely and other times I get volcanoes. With that said, I really don't have a perfect solution. I have had my white powder paint custom blended to what I like. It works for me, can't say it will work for you. I have tried cutting it with pearl powder paint and then super clear. Pearl didn't do anything, and super clear thinned it some, but I seemed to have lost some opaque pigment color. So now I go back to using it straight from the manufacturer, and deal with it on a day by day basis. For me white is one of my daily challenges.

rlarson64, Click on my screen name (Cadman). Once you click on it another window pops up. In the new window, on the right side, you will see a tab that says send me a message. Click on the tab and then type in your message. Once you finish click on send message.

I see I am in the minority here. I use a heat gun. However I have a digital one. I set mine on Low 850 degrees (your high may be my low temp) don't know. Reason being is that in reality you can melt the lead with a heat gun if you keep the jig there too long. I also do a lot of multi-color, and if you use high heat you will burn the paint. There really is no right or wrong answer, depends on what works for you. Also on low heat start out with a count of 15 seconds on a 1/4 oz jig. If the powder paint doesn't gloss over, than add another 5 seconds. Do this until you get the gloss over and start there. What you don't want to do is make the jig so hot, that it will grab too much paint, and if this happens, you will get tear drop looking jigs from too much paint on the jig. The only way to learn this is trial and error. You have to practice this to get it right. Also some paints like green pumpkin need a hotter jig head and longer heat time. Finally some guys don't like the jig to gloss over and instead have a powdery look. I personally like my jig to gloss over. This way I can see if the jig has full coverage.

Ray, I click on the link and it opens fine for me. Takes maybe 10 seconds to load all the pages , but other than that no problem. PM me what you are looking as far as blade sizes (dimensions) go and I'll see what I can do for you.

No, here you go. https://fishingskirts.com/

Sorry about the typo. You are correct. Here is the link. http://www.shopwtp-inc.com/index.php?osCsid=83ccf2222ab1306fcf1a2a83cce92863

Joe, If you just need a small amount of black powder paint. PM me I can send you some.

I have had the same problem as smalljaw. The eyes move when you apply epoxy. I don't have time to keep aligning and re-aligning eyes on a jig, and it makes no sense to me to glue on an eye so then I can apply epoxy. Way too much wasted time. JMO.

WTP stands for Witch Tape Products.

Andy, I have always bought from WTP and I always loved their eyes, because they stick to my jigs. I did buy from another source, and their eyes were horrible they didn't stick at all. If you find a good supplier with good prices, please post your likes and dislikes.

Dan, You may think your jigs are not going to be up to your expectations, but all of this takes a lot of practice, so don't beat yourself up over your first jigs. We have all been there and the more you do the better you get at it. Also one other thing to note. The fish really don't care if your jigs are perfect. I have caught a lot of fish with jigs missing eyes, half a skirt torn off and the fish didn't care. So be proud of what you accomplish and learn from everyone else here.

Dan, Try these colors from fishingskirts.com. It could be watermelon and orange or watermelon and copper. Check out these numbers #247 Watermelon and copper #437 Watermelon Green and Orange See if that works for you.

Q1 This question has a lot of answers on who you speak with. People use what they are comfortable with and what works for them. I use a heat gun. Out of all the options you mentioned, the one I would not use is a candle or a lighter. Reason being, is both of these emit soot when you heat a jig, and the candle also emits oil, which could possibly put a film on a jig head. Q2 If you want to clean them, and they are raw jigs, you can put them in vinegar. The acid in the vinegar will etch the lead. Then just rinse with water and dry thoroughly. If they are painted put them in paint remover.

Welcome to TU. Well I got to say that, that is a heck of a first post problem.The best thing to do first is to post some pics. I don't even know where to start with a solution for you. As far as powder paint being old, I have powder paint over 10 years and don't have a problem. You must keep your powder paint in a cool dark area. What this means is don't leave it in the sun or in a hot car and then decide to use it. If you have done that, then the powder paint started to react with itself. Now as far as some of the jig taking powder paint and the other half didn't. Do you have even heat distribution.? What are you heating your jigs with? Are you using clean jigs? No oil or contaminants on the jig? If your green pumpkin and watermelon look the same , something isn't right. Did you by chance mix them? Black powder baking off is an adhesion problem, jigs are not clean, oven too high and burning off paint? With all this said, I am not accusing you of doing anything wrong with my statements. I'm just making suggestions on things to try, so don't take what I posted as me questioning your intelligence. I would need to see some pictures to make any kind of accurate statement. Maybe you do have bad paint, however problem with 3 colors is kind of strange. Maybe others will have some input

Ah you gave away my lifelong secret. LOL Not really, however that is what I've been doing for one of my customers and it works just fine

Another idea to keep the hooks warm, is to put them in a old black teflon skillet. Then put a 100 watt light bulb with one of the deflectors above all the hooks. You can adjust the height of the deflector up or down to how hot you want the hooks to be.

I don't have a brand, but a pump for a 55 gal aquarium, should work really well. Try to get one with dual external ports which you can tee into one. You can always close some air off with a valve if there is too much coming out.

I'm looking into getting my wire from McMaster Carr. They have all that you ever need. You want to get the stn. stl. spring wire.

Hey Steve, How does this hold up to many successive pours? Does the play dough putty ever break down and get runny or melts?

Chill, There are soooo many variables. I'll just give you one that I encountered, and believe me I have many problems as well as everyone else does. So you are not alone on this. There's days when nothing works right. Anyway, I used to have perfect pours with my smaller poison tail mold. This is when I used the correct 91768 hook designed for that mold. Well as time went on guys wanted different hooks in the mold (ie. round bend hooks #32886) because they did not like the EWG style hook. So the answer was to use the Mustad #32886 hook. Bingo, everyone likes that as an alternative. So I started to use those. However the #32886 hook is thicker than the 91768. Also the hook eye is bigger as well as thicker. What I've found was that the 32886 hook eye didn't quite fit the stock mold. Well after using it some and closing the mold I got it to work and it pours flawlessly. However when I go back to the 91768, the hook eye has a tendency to fill some. What happened was when I used the bigger hook, it opened up more space where the hook eye sits in the cavity, which in turn makes it also bigger when you put in the thinner hook. Unfortunately you cannot reverse this. The only solution is to buy another of the same mold, which I did and use it exclusively for the #91768 hook only. Also if you pour a lot of jigs, the mold will wear, especially the smaller cavities because they have less material for the hook eye to hold. So this is what I would look for. Put the correct hook in the cavity. Take a look at how much play is, where the hook shank below the eye lies in the cavity. Can you move the hook eye a lot in the hook eye cavity? If it moves a lot, meaning you can push the hook eye forward as far as it will go into the cavity, and then push it the same distance back, then you have too much slop in the hook eye. (The problem I have). What is happening is that the hook will move to its furthest point up, and when the lead fills, it fills into the area of the hook eye as well. This is hard to explain. I will see if I have a pic I can show you sometime today. What does help many times is to put your hook in the mold, and then pull it as low as you can down, so the hook eye is snug up against the hook eye cavity, then tape the hook in place and pour your lead. This is a P.I.T.A. but it does work, it keeps the lead from seeping into the hook eye. If you don't have a lot of jigs to pour this might work. Other things to look at: Make sure you don't have any lead slivers stuck on your mold halves. This will lead to a lot of flash and lead in the hook eye. Take a small thin scraper, and lightly go over both mold halves, you may have some lead stuck to one side. There are other things to look at but try there and I will post some pics later. I'm sure other will give you ideas to help you solve your dilemma.

Based on the pictures, it doesn't look like a Do-It mold, but I can't see the section profile. It does have a ball collar. BTW welcome to TU. Since you have the bait in your hand, go to Do-It's website and take a look at their buzz bait profiles. You might see it there.

bass100, Thanks for the great tutorial. Since I don't have a lot of room on my hook/lead combo, I think threading the wire the way you do will be the ticket. Also I do a lot of wacky worm fishing around wooden docks, and I can easily go through about a dozen of these a day, when the hook gets snagged in the posts. So adding the weeedguard will definitely cut down on all the losses. You also have a Pm from me.