cadman

haxx, Ever since LPO took over Stamina, they are top notch. I have been placing orders with them as well, and no problems at all as well. Plus some of their Gami and Owner hook prices can't be beat.

A #2 will fit in the 1/4 oz cavity. As far as a hook goes The 635 is too thick of a hook to fit in that mold unless you modify the mold. The hook I recommend is Mustad 32746BLN hook. It is an Ultra-Point with a black nickel finish. Eagle Claw might have a similar hook in there black platinum series, and they are usually less costly. I don't know the number off hand on the EC's

haxx, You will have to pour out all the lead and take a look at the plunger. Maybe with your cleaning, you opened up the hole and like mentioned it doesn't seat as well as it did. I rarely ever clean my pots and they stay in the garage all year long. I do not recommend people cleaning pots because many times you want to over clean it and like you said made it worse. I will tell you the Lee will fix your problem for a minimal charge about 6-10 dollars. Tell them what the problem is and they will give you a new bowl and plunger set all fixed and ready to pour. I had my old pot reworked and it works beautifully now.

Yes, Do-It molds usually can accept a one size over or one size under hook in most of their cavities. Since the 1/8 and the 1/4 are probably cavities sitting next to each other in the mold you should not have any problems. What mold are you looking at and what hook do you want to put in the 1/4 oz cavity. I f I have the mold I can check it for you.

I haven't commented up to this point , but this site is really very annoying. With all the posts about all the problems below, I have all of them as well. I know know one wants to hear this from me but I would rather pay some money up front from the membership per year to take care of this problem. I go on two machines one at work which uses firefox and at home which has I.E, and I have to wait 20 -30 seconds for TU to load. Another 20-30 for a thread to load, another 20 -30 to go from thread to thread and then if I have a PM, then another 20-30 for the PM tab to load, and then another 20-30 for the actual PM and on and on and on. I honestly try not to go on this site because this is getting really old. There has got to be a solution to all of this. If there is let the membership know and we all can make some decisions. This can't go on like this, becuase no-one will visit this site and wait. Just venting and tired of this and nothing seems to be working. Again guys this is just my opinion, I'm not saying we have to pay to upgrade the site problems, however this is just ridiculous. Funny: It took 20 seconds for the save of this post and another 20 seconds after I edited it. Don't maybe it's just only my computers.

Smalljaw is correct. It was discontinued in the mid 1990's. There is nothing that looks similar to it currently. That's about all the info I know.

Gangel, Not to be disrespectful. But I just had a guy on another forum ask me for a price on a round head jig painted with a hitchhiker. I gave him a price I charge. He told me he coul get it cheaper somewhere else and if I dropped my price, he would give the order to me. I told him "sorry I wasn't interested". So he was shopping for prices. I'm a custom builder if you are looking for cheap prices don't go to a custom builder. I don't want to sound arrogant, but he was looking for 20 piecec. Honestly I wouldn't waste my time after the conversation he and I had. All said and done I would lose money on the order. So why would I even entertain ther idea? I give everyone the benifit of the doubt, however after doing this for 8 years, I can tell right away who the problem customers are going to be. JMO

Bryan a 5/32 dia. (.156") will not fit in a 1/8" diameter (.125) mold. The 5/32" pin is too big and the mold won't close. If you are having problems with the weedguard. This is what you can do. First of all take off about 6 strands off of your FG-30 weedguard. Then take the weedguard and dry fit it in the weedguard hole. Doing this will loosen up the weedguard and it should slide in easier. Also I found it is easier to stick in the cut end of the fibers in the hole first versus the the fused end. Reason being, the fused end is flared out a bit. If you find that the weedguard is too soft go up to the next stiffness, and do the same thing by dry fitting your weedguard. This should help. JMO.

On the top one. Do you crimp one end, then fill with lead and then solder on a cap?

Wow, looks good from here. I assume the top lure is for saltwater fishing. I like that all white ultra-minnow jig. Never thought of doing white on white with yellow chartreuse eyes. Top Notch work there. Job well done.

Ben, A friend of mine has a mold that I think will work for your application, it's not as pointy as yours but will probably work. It was a custom one he bought at a gararge sale. I will PM you some pics tonight along with sizes, if you PM me your e-mail. What weights are you looking for, as I can have him pour you one and I 'll send it out to you so you can see it in your hands.

Yes, I have used a high gloss clear along with a satin clear to soften or dull a shiny powdered jig. They both work really well on a plain jig. If you put 2d or 3d eyes on and then clearcoat with a powder and then bake, the 3d eyes will melt. The 2d eyes fair better, but they too have a tendency to curl or sink into the paint. So in another words you cannot powder clear coat a jig with 2d/3d eyes, because the clearcoat must be baked on for a durable finish. If anyone has a better way to do this with 2d and 3d eyes and a powder clearcoat please let me know.

I totally agree with you. You can not powder paint jigs with the weedguards in place and get a good quality finish that you can be proud of. Now airbrushing is a different story. Also on powder paint if you are going to reduce the baking temp. you need to keep it longer in the oven to make up for the fact that most powder paints need high temp, so that the powder paint molecules can cross-link for adhesion and then hardness. Our company powder paints many things, so either high temp for the correct time and the correct heat or lower temp for longer periods of time. You really should follow manufacturers paint guidelines for best powder paint adhesion and hardness. Also if you go the powder paint do what everybody in 2013 does and use powder paint pins for weedguard holes like Yoda mentioned. No need to drill out weedguard holes any more from paint seeping into hole. I know a guy that has a business and spincasts 1000's of jigs and paints them and he glues them in as well.

Curtis, If it were me, I would pull out the old weedguards, powder paint the jig to the color that you want, then bake it to a hard finish and glue-in new weedguards. I have tried tubing sleeves over the weedguard, aluminum foil, and to me they don't work well. You will get a much more durable finish if you do it without the weedguard, because then you can bake the jig at the correct temp and not hav to worry about deforming the weedguard strands. JMO

I figured if you were pouring bismuth that you knew what you were doing, However sometimes small flaws by the manufacturer, like burrs or other annoyiong things make pouring more complicated for us. So the info was just something to try. Sometimes it solves the problem and sometimes it doesn't. I have found that all molds aren't made the same. I have two identical molds and one pours way better than the other. So I polished one and it helped some. As far as cad work, goes I am a sheetmetal engineer, and throughout my career, I have used Cadkey, Auto Cad, Metalsoft, Solid Ege and finally and currently Solidworks. Hence the name Cadman from the years of working with so many cad packages. I know guys who use Inventor, however I have not.

I started something like this about 6 years ago. I have the hook with manufacturer, size of hook, wire diameter, length of hook, barb, hook eye and everything calculated. Only to find that I could not devote the time to finishing this. You have to multiply all the different styles of hooks along with all the manufacturers multipled by which hook will fit which mold without mods. Yes this would be an invaluable chart for everyone's use. The thing that stops me is this. Time frame, you would have to have all of the hooks from all of the manufacturers with all the sizes, along with all of the molds to see which ones would fit easily. Now you could compile a list like this with eveyone's input, however I would be hesitant to do this because if it is not accurate, than all the work is for naught. So one person would have to measure all the hooks and check fit to see if everything fits as it is supposed to. If one person could not control all of the input data, the information would be all over the place. Just my thought on this. So what I do is buy sample hooks keep them in my sample box and if I ever need to know if a certain hook fits a mold I get the hook and place it in the mold. Also I like the Barlow's catalog like Smalljaw mentioned. That catalog is an invaluable tool for most guys to get a rough idea of what is comparable to each other. Maybe someday when I retire I will take on this massive project.

Killerbug, I have never poured the Erie jig in bismuth. However I have both of the Erie jig molds. I will pour some this weekend and give you some feedback. I believe the mold I have with the sharp barb has a blue handle on it which is the older one. I will tell you one thing for sure is that I have a lot of older Do-It molds, back in the day when the handles were color coded. They poured 100% times better than most of the new ones, whether lead or bismuth. Like Hawn said their old mold cavities were made with a much smoother surface in the cavity. Some of the new molds have course surface which does not want to release lead easily and it's worse on bismuth. Now if you want to make the pouring experience with bismuth less frustrating, you can take a Dremel with a polishing swab, and polish out the surface and all other nooks and crannies in the cavity. You can use rubbing compound, or jewelers rouge, or some other rough polishing compound. This does work as I have tried it, however it is very time consuming. In the case of the Erie jig at least there is room to work in. Some of the smaller jigs you are out of luck. Also one other thing to check is the edges of the cavities on both mold halves. I have a brush jig mold that I could not release from a lead pour without taking pliers out and prying it out. This was a new mold. What I found was that where the two mold halves meet on a particular cavity, there was a small burr on all of the cavities. This is caused by the company polishing down the two mold halves to get them flat. Once I polished the edges of all the cavities, the jig fell out. One other thing that happens occasionally, is that when the two mold halves are made, the trailing ends toward the flat mold half should draft (taper) out. If it drafts slightly in, the jig will not release and there is really no fix for this other than filing the cavity. This is hard to explain, but take a look at the PDF file I attached. It pretty much explains what I’m talking about. I’m not saying this is your problem, however over the years workmanship has gotten sloppier and tolerances have gotten looser. Also these are some of the things you can check to see if this is causing part of the problem. Finally mold release does help some in bismuth pouring as well. I’ll post results of my Erie jig pours this weekend along with the correct bismuth alloy I have as I don't remember which ones I have in which pot currently. mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf mold blank .pdf

fatkid, I didn't read your thread thoroughly. Anything starting at 2 oz and up, I would use a powder air brush to paint the colors on or send it to someone who can do that for you.. Bake in oven and your good to go. No muss no fuss.

It all depends on how fancy you want to get. You can use the tap method like I do or you can use an airbrush powder paint sytem like smalljaw does. He is the one that has the powder air brush process down to a science. No matter which way you go, you will need to take some time and practice. Rome wasn't built in a day and I don't care how good you are , you will need to practice to get the sytem down. Also whether you tap on the powder or you use an airbrush powder sytem, once you bake your jig you do not have to clear coat it. The paint will be hard enought for most applications. Only clearcoat if you put on stick on eyes, or if you want a little more durability. If you bake them properly the powder paint will last a long time.

I figured it was a 30 degree heavy hook. Thanks for clarifying. Yes Gami never released a 30 degree. However when you know people well good things sometimes happen.

It looks like a 30 degree Gami Hook, but it could be a 60 degree. If its a 60 then maybe a #291. If it's a 30 degree than it is probably custom made for Strike King. I'm going to bet that these were custom made. Do you have a jig in your posession? If you do measure the wire diameter and see if it's a 60 or a 30 .I do have some custom run 30 degree Gami's along with some 60 degree if you are looking for some.

I currently don't see a black version of the 32756, however a Mustad 32746NP-BP hook is close, this is a black nickle hook. They have the same wire diameters so that should not be an issue regarding fitting in the mold. Maybe someone else has more info on it. Also since you mentioned EC 570. EC now has retooled many of their hooks and they are available in Black Platinum. The one you might consider is EC 570BP or EC L570BP. The "L" stands for laser point.

Pretty cool idea. Thanks for posting the how to tutorial.

Sorry, I didn't read your post correctly. Best price for Owner deep throat #5304 is Lure Parts on Line. If you see it cheaper please let me know.