sagacious

Good advice, this does indeed work. However, never ever use a propane/butane torch to initaially warm up the mold cavity! Never heat up hooks in a cold mold! The products of combustion include water vapor, and if the mold isn't hot, that water vapor will condense in the mold. When you pour in molten lead, the water will cause a steam/lead explosion, or you may hear spitting and popping. Not good. There is no risk of steam explosion if the mold is thoroughly hot. Be sure to use standard pouring techniques and heat-up the mold by repeated pours without hooks or wire forms. When the mold is hot, you're safe to proceed. Hope this helps, good luck and be safe!

I'm sure you'll get several opinions. The first link is a point-to-cup crimping tool. It is designed to be used only with round sleeves. The crimped connection made using this tool is OK for smaller fish, but the point-to-cup tool is not designed to make leaders for large or strong fish. The point-to-cup compression just squashes the round sleeve without actually swaging the sleeve around the leader material. This tool is generally used with brass or copper sleeves. The second one is a cup-to-cup swaging tool for crimping oval sleeves and double sleeves, but not round sleeves. It is designed to be used with copper, brass, and aluminum sleeves. The size of the correct sleeve is usually stamped or printed next to the appropriate cup, but you can safely use several different sizes of sleeves in each cup. Just match it up and crimp. This is probably the tool you want. Get a selection of both oval aluminum and double copper sleeves for it, in the sizes the tool indicates. The tool pictured in your link has jaws with 4 cups in the most commonly-used sizes, which is better than 3 cups. The crimped connection formed by the cup-to-cup swager is very secure, since it actually swages the soft metal sleeve around the leader material. If you learn how to use this tool correctly, you shouldn't have to worry about the strength of your crimped connections. Yes, you can certainly use a swaging tool for crimping wire and mono or fluoro leaders. However, you must use the correct sleeve for the task. Packaged sleeves usually list the diameter range of mono or wire that they're designed to work with. Aluminum sleeves are designed for mono or fluoro, but not wire or cable. Copper or brass double sleeves are OK to use on mono, fluoro, wire, or cable. Note that if you use an aluminum sleeve on stainless wire, galvanic corrosion will eat through the aluminum sleeve. In salt water, it'll burn-up that aluminum sleeve real fast. If you look around a bit, you can probably find a kit that comes with a swager and a box of correctly-sized sleeves for the same price as the one in your link. Handle color, chrome plating, etc, doesn't matter, only the number and size of the cups in the jaws. Cabela's -- Sea Striker Rigging Kit with Crimper This link will answer more questions, and teach you how to use the swager correctly: Tips & Techniques#>#Basic crimping techniques Hope this helps, good luck!

Save yourself a lot of work. Go to the hardware store, and get a paintbrush with brown or black bristles. You can get synthetic, or natural (hog bristles). Either will last much longer than deer hair or bucktail, and be better suited to your needs anyway. Hope this helps, good luck.

Can't help with the varnish/poly question. Maybe someone can weigh-in with some personal experience in using varnish as an undercoat. However, some of these things you just have to try-and-see. I would caution against using Gorilla glue or any of the similar "ultimate" glues. They foam up while they cure, and the degree of foaming varies with humidity and moisture content of the glued surfaces. So, you'll likely have to clean rock-hard glue foam from your eyelets, and it's extremely difficult to completely remove from the eyelet. You can try it, but consider this a word to the wise. The eyelet holes should be just large enough so you can poke some epoxy into the hole, and then press (and twist) in an epoxy-coated twisted wire eyelet. Too small and you'll have difficulty being sure you've got complete epoxy coverage, too large and you make more work for yourself. Learn to work with epoxy. Repeat after me: "Epoxy is my friend." By not using epoxy for certain tasks, you're making your work more difficult, and you risk compromising both the strength and quality of your lures. Hope this helps, good luck!

Some personal favorites: "This year will go down in history! For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" Adolf Hitler, 1935 "Ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state." Heinrich Himmler, 1935 "I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." Senator Howard Metzenbaum, 1994

No, stay on your soapbox. No shame in that. We need a few people with the courage to stand up.

Fluxing the lead before beginning a pouring session is never a bad idea. Do this outside. Add a small (corn krnel sized) piece of paraffin or beeswax to the molten lead. Be ready to stir it in as soon as it melts, and be aware that it will smoke and may flame up. Keep stirring until you have a bunch of powdery black gunk on top of the lead, and then skim that off. Then you're ready to pour. As MDC noted above, smoking the mold is also a good idea. Sometimes a mold needs to be 'broken in' and is stubborn at first, but will pour fine later. Sometimes a certain mold just needs to be treated and handled a little differently, and it takes a couple pouring sessions to figure it out. I suspect that the source of your specific problem is cold hooks. Try heating the hooks, and use good pouring technique, and see if that fixes the problem. Good luck!

This is far from the best case scenario. What about my mom and my sis? My wife? They wouldn't last 3 seconds against a violent felon. Big, strong criminals don't need guns. They can kill you easily with their hands, or a knife, or any number of blunt objects. My wife cannot defend herself against a larger male attacker, even if she had a knife. Almost no women can, to say nothing of the elderly or infirmed, the handicapped, or anyone else who doesn't have the strength to bash an attacker into submission. The case against the Second Amendment is, to an extent, sexist. Women have, perhaps, the most to lose, and cannot defend themselves against larger, stronger attackers. Nothing, except a firearm evens the score. Only with a firearm can a women competently defend herself, and her family and children. A world without firearms puts women, and a substantial fraction of society, at grave risk. Soapbox, where'd I put that soapbox? Take care, and good fishing!

How about a quick refresher on the Bill of Rights? Allow me to paraphrase, so we don't have to go through the legal terminology. Article 1: YOU have the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to assemble. Article 2: YOU have the right to keep and bear firearms. Article 3: YOU have the right to payment for services required by military personnel. Article 4: YOU have the right to security in your house, your papers, and to be secure against unreasonable searches; and the State needs a clearly-outlined warrant to search your stuff. Article 5: YOU have the right to have criminal charges brought before a Grand Jury, you cannot be charged twice for the same crime, you have the right to remain silent, and the right to due process. Article 6: YOU have the right to a speedy trial, to gather witnesses, to see the charges against you, and the State will provide you a lawyer if you cannot afford one. Article 7: YOU have the right to a jury trial, and to not be re-tried for the same charges. Article 8: YOU have the right to reasonable bail, and to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment. Article 9: Nobody can use any part of the Constitution to deny YOU your rights. Article 10: Unless it's the responsibility of the Federal Government, or the State Government, YOU have the right to do it. Indeed, the Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court seems like it can only go one way. As if the 2nd Amendment wasn't enough, Amendments 4, 9, and 10 all back-up the 2nd Amendment. Every article in the Bill of Rights conveys personal rights not State's rights. Other parts of the Constitution assign State's rights.............. but not the Bill of Rights. Those are the rights of the people, including of course, the Second Amendment. To see otherwise, you'd have to chop-up the Bill of Rights and say, "Amendments 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, and 10 are people's rights, buuuuuuttttt #2 is a State's right." I don't think the Supreme Court will do that. I certainly hope not, anyway. We shall all wait with bated breath for the outcome.

Yes, unfortunately some new molds do need to be tweaked a bit to work right. Your problem could be due to inadequate venting, but my humble guess is that probably, it's not. To a degree, the collar is vented at the bottom, where the hook channel is. Usually there's a couple thousandth's gap that allows air to escape. Even if the hook channel is a tight fit with a hook in it, usually there's enough tolerance to let trapped air out. Venting should be done directly from the area that doesn't fill out, to the edge of the mold. Be sure the vent groove actually connects with the cavity. The vent groove only need to be about 1/64" deep, or so. However, venting usually solves the problem immediatly. If it didn't, look elsewhere for the problem. Plus, if you're having problems with more than one cavity, the cause is unlikely to be inadequate venting, and likely due to more fundamental pouring problems. The collar is a very thin area of the spinnerbait mold cavity, and lead will only flow into it if the mold is hot enough. As well, that narrow area has the hook acting as a fairly substantial heat sink. A heat sink in a narrow area of the cavity is extremely prone to causing incomplete pours. This is very common. The solution is to: #1 Make sure your mold is hot enough before pouring with hooks. If not hot enough, the mold will 'steal' heat from the lead, and prevent lead from flowing into the narrow area of the collar. #2 Make sure your lead is adequately hot. Whatever temp you're pouring at now, crank up the heat a bit. #3 Warm up your hooks! If the hooks aren't warm (but not burning hot) enough, they'll rob heat from the molten lead, and cause it to solidify before entering the collar. Place the hooks somewhere near your furnace where they can warm up a bit. If you pour in cold weather, this is especially important-- but it's good practice in any weather, especially with a stubborn mold. If you're using wheel weight lead, you can also try pouring with soft lead and see if that helps. However, you should generally be able to use ww lead, as long as you're doing everything else right. Hope this helps, good luck!

Consider that the techniques, materials/tools, experience level, and goals that The Rookie uses may not give the best results for you. With that in mind, and even considering the low temperature, there can be no substitute for getting out in your garage and putting in some hours. Master the pattern you want on pieces of scrap wood before you paint your lure. If you'd truly like to learn the intricacies of of stencilling, you'll have to figure much of it out yourself. This is not meant as criticism at all, it's just the way the art of the luremaker progresses. Sometimes you just have to jump in and get wet, and I suspect that this may be one of those times. Almost every time I get a question about exactly how I do a specific technique, I'll relate what it took to get my results. Invaraibly, I get this response, "Hey thanks, but I decided to try it a little different......." Almost always, the questioner does it their own way. The answer is in your hands: "use a stencil". Now it's up to you to do it your own way, and I'm sure we all are anxious to see the results. Good luck, and good fishing!

Pete, I've gone through the same sort of design modifications a few times with lures intended for trolling. The solution for me was make a few 'casting-specific' models. Move your COG rearward to 44-45mm, and even thought he lure is 80mm long, don't install the front hook hanger. Keep the same ballast weight. If having the option for two trebles is to much to forego, then don't install the front treble hook on your casting-specific models. Those modifications will immediately eliminate the hook tangling, and reposition the COG to be more "casting friendly", while allowing you to still troll with those lures. Painting them with a distinctive pattern or stencilling "CS" on the lure's back makes them easy to identify at a glance, for when you need a casting-specific lure. Hope this helps, good luck! Let us know how it goes.

I'm not a glide bait expert, but I've been using dual weights, and the glide seems like it might be a little longer than when using a single weight-- as Kelly suggested above. Hard to tell without an exact side-by-side test, though. I've also been installing one of those tiny, super-strong disc-shaped neodymium magnets about 1/2" behind the belly hook hangers. The magnet causes the hooks to stick flush to the bait's belly, and thus the bait has significantly less drag. The result is a bait that really zips and glides like it's on ball bearings. Very fluid and realistic movement. You can find the tiny Nd magnets online. Browse Magnets by Shape - Disc Hope this helps, good luck!

How about your favorite perch pattern done with translucent paint? Maybe a thin opaque belly to cover the ballast holes, etc....... translucent yellow chartreuse along the lower sides fading to translucent green chartreuse along the upper sides...... a black back that is faded to opaqueness along only the very top..... then a very light scale line done in a semi-transparent gold along the back and top of the sides. That allows the grain and birdseyes to show through while still showing-off the perch pattern, and gives the bait it's dual-character-- 'birdseye perch'. Good luck, I'm sure whatever you do, it'll look good.

I saw your jig pic in the candy color thread. Very nice work. If you can, get some 3/4" sharp-theaded rod. The threaded rod you're using looks pretty large, and has fairly wide flats on the threads. The sharper the threads (the smaller the flats), the 'cleaner' the scale pattern. I have some that's 3/4"-16, and it makes nice scale patterns that stand out, even on larger baits. Maximizes the pattern detail for the same effort. Rod threaded at 3/4"-10, with machine thread and large flats, doesn't give the same pattern detail. There are a couple other patterns I use on larger foiled jigs. Running the threaded rod over the foil at a shallow angle looks like squares set on their side (checkerboard), like so: XXXXX. Try running the rod over the foil at a greater angle, and you'll get a sharper scale pattern that looks more like ><><><><><>. Here's a few of my jigs with that scale pattern: http://www.tackleunderground.com/photos/index.php?n=1595 http://www.tackleunderground.com/photos/index.php?n=1596 Also, many baitfish have a scale or muscle pattern that's easily re-created by running the rod over the foil with just a single pass, and at an angle toward the baitfish's head, like so: . This pattern stands out, and looks great with just a black/sparkle back, and a white throat. Very simple, but it offers excellent contrast, flash, and realism. I did up some 6oz 'anchovy-pattern' jigs like this, and they looked great, and got bit very well. When rolling the scales, I put a 1/2" thick sheet of hard rubber under the foil tape, and press down on the threaded rod with a short length of wood. That saves my hands, allows me to press down very firmly during the rolling, and the hard rubber sheet allows the foil to be embossed deeply and evenly. Also, do a search here for "taxidermy scale roller" and you'll turn up more stuff. Hope this helps, good luck!

Very nice, congrats on your success! I'm sure your next molds will work out great as well. Be safe, and good luck!

Very good. A word to the wise: If I understand your description correctly, I would urge you to use 1/2" aluminum for the mold halves. My experience is that molds of this design (long, narrow cavities with no gate) need to be fairly hot to pour well. If not hot enough, the castings are usually incomplete and full of obvious voids. Causes much chagrin and vexation. The thicker and heavier the mold halves, the longer it'll take to pre-heat the mold. There's more than one way to skin this cat, but 1/2" thick mold halves will almost assuredly work better than 1". If cold, the mold cavities likely won't fill at all, which means you often cannot initially heat-up the mold through repeated pourings. So, be sure to heat the mold adequately prior to pouring. As well, keep your molten lead fairly hot. Once it's hot enough, your mold should pour great. In your case, you won't need to re-smoke the mold very often-- if at all. It's one of the ways you 'break-in' a new mold, and then re-apply if castings are sticking, when fill-out problems arise, etc. Based on the simple geometry of your mold design, and before the initial pour, de-grease the mold cavities with a solvent, smoke the cavities, and you'll probably be set from then on. Not very long, usually just a few seconds, or a bit longer. You'll see the sprue (the 'flashing', as you called it) cool and solidify rapidly, and when it's solid, you can open the mold and remove your lead sticks. With your mold, when you see the lead on the outside solidify, the lead inside will be solid too. Let us know how it goes. Good luck, and be safe.

Hold the candle about 1" under the mold. The soot will collect on the surface of the cavity. A flame that produces soot, obviously, is better than a smokeless flame. This method is basically the only way to do it-- but it's quick, and couldn't be simpler. Always wear eye protection when near molten lead. If I understand you correctly, you want to make a mold that is essentially a 1/2" x 6" hole, and drops a 6" long stick of lead to be cut into several ballast weights. Yes, that will work fine-- and will work best if the mold is 2-piece. I pour heavy pencil sinkers using this same basic technique. Hope this helps, good luck!

OK, gotcha now. If I were to use your thru-wiring technique, I think I'd line up the wires and cut them approx flush before twisting. Then grab both wire ends with needle-nose pliers or small locking pliers and twist. The twisting will, of course, draw the wires down below flush. I applaud your innovation. Hope this helps, good luck!

Very nice! Never a worry when your baits are built tough. Do yourself a huge favor and get a pair of cable cutters like these: http://www.pricepoint.com/detail/119...le-Cutters.htm Cable cutters will cut wire much easier than any other standard wire cutters or dykes. Cuts hard wire, soft wire no problem. A lot easier on your hands, and the tag end that gets snipped off doesn't go shooting off like a bullet-- it just drops into your hand. Cuts thick wire very easily. 1/8" stainless welding rod? Clip, done! I've been using a small pair of Shimano cable cutters for the past few years, and they make easy work of hard chores. Plus, the wire ends get cut square, with no sharp ends. Get a pair, and then tell me if if they don't make all of your wire-cutting chores about 1000 times easier. Good luck, and good fishing!

I'd say you need to put a little more elbow grease into it. Lead that's 1.5-2.5" thick should respond very favorably to the saw, the hatchet, or the bandsaw. I've cut lead ingots that were up to 4" thick, using those techniques. If you'll explain why those same methods didn't work for you, I think we can get you on the path to success. This very topic has come up recently. Search a couple pages down for the thread on the 75lb block of lead, and you'll find several more suggestions. Good luck!

That works well, but you'll probably want to get several more so you can pour a bunch of ingots at one time. Also, don't pour that ss measuring cup more than 90% full, or you may have difficulty removing the ingot. As someone else noted, a thrift-store muffin pan works very well for ingots, but be sure it's steel, and not aluminum. Good luck, hope this helps.

Always spray a little WD-40 (or other light oil) on the sawblade when cutting lead. Makes life much easier and safer. OK, to cut the block, use a saw to cut a 1" deep notch in the block. Then use the hammer & hatchet method to split the block. If, as you say, the lead is "hard lead", the block will crack along the saw cut. Pigs of really hard lead, like linotype, are easily split this way. Good luck, and be safe.

Some excellent information in this thread about lead alloys, and troubleshooting your lead-pouring problems. Required reading for anyone who's getting into pouring lead. http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11958