pirkfan

Because you're making your own, if the hook needs replacing, just cut the eye loop and rebuild the spinner with a new hook and new piece of wire. Or, cut the hook eye, put on a split ring at that time with the new hook. I'm not a fan of split rings unless they're absolutely necessary.

I put a red dot right at the tail of some of my jigging spoons, I think it directs the fish's attention towards the business end of the lure, maybe represents a wound, blood spot, caudal vein. I also tie in a couple of red hackle tips if I'm using a bucktail hook on the lure

I paint most of them with nail heads, but I bought a cheap hollow punch set, 1/8 up to 7/16 inch, sharpened the punches with a diamond hook sharpener, and use them to cut eyes out of witchcraft tape. I then paint the pupil with a nail and black testor's paint. I particularly like glow in the dark done this way, the painted pupil gives the eye a little more depth than regular stick on 2D eyes. I think you could use the punches with just about anything waterproof, attach with a little super glue. Nice thing about the punches, always have the right size eye.

Naah, don't let it scare you off, JSC, the Northern Territories is a must see, even if the heat and humidity (not to mention the indigenous wildlife) are formidable. And Barramundi are one fantastic sport fish.

I do like unithread, just seems to handle well, not break easily, all around good performer

Lead really doesn't much care for being drilled, tends to grab the bit, and with something as small as a jig head there isn't much of a handle

Just got my mold today, it's a piece or art work, and took a little less than 3 weeks from order to arrival. Well worth the wait, and I'll definitely be ordering more

Lead free solder works great in Do-It molds, and in fact they mention that it does in some of their technical information. "Tin: Adds ductility and strengthens lead. Tin melts at a low temperature, 449 degrees F., and generally improves a lead alloy. With some experimentation, pure tin can be used to make lures and sinkers. Tin is an expensive metal, but has no known environmental or health risks. A tin object will weigh only 2/3 that of the same object made of lead. Example: a 3/8 oz. lead jig will only weigh 1/4 oz. if made from pure tin. Tin could be an attractive lead substitute if it was not so expensive and difficult to obtain."

I use them quite a bit. I don't like the plastic clips they use to hold the molds closed, so I bought a bunch of boston bulldog clamps (paper clamps) which work pretty well. The injectors aren't great, but once you figure out their foibles, they do work, I figure they're sort of expendables, and they only cost about 10 bucks a piece. The built in injectors for the 6 inch curl tail grubs are worse, I've turned new plungers on the lathe to replace them. The biggest problem with the separate injectors, other than they're just kind of flimsy, is when you pour the plastic into them, the metal tip immediately solidifies the plastic that enters it. You have to pick out this plug while putting a little pressure on the plunger. Once the plug is out, liquid plastic will come out the nozzle, and you've got to inject a bunch of molds quickly to make the process worthwhile. If you don't realize the tip is plugged and just put more pressure on the plunger trying to force plastic into the mold, that's when bad things happen, like the plunger bending and allowing liquid plastic to go by. If you pay attention to these details, and get 4 or 5 molds ready to inject, you can be fairly productive. However, I must say, I only use them for personal use, there's no way I'd try to inject enough to make it a business. The darn things also develop stress cracks over time, and I'm always expecting one to just disintegrate while I'm injecting it, but that's not happened so far. Some of them have multiple ports to inject, it's not the easiest thing to do, and still get all the parts to adhere. I've also found some molds which don't have good mating surfaces and produce a lot of flash. You just never know what a particular mold is going to be like. I've also used plastic syringes to inject the molds, they have a somewhat limited life, because they have poor heat resistance, but ones without a luer lock tip will work.

I have no experience with electrostatic powder systems, however they all look to be on too large a scale for lure painting. Fluidized beds are really the way to go for lures, very little waste, and when they're working properly, don't usually clog hook eyes, unless you're "double dipping". You can spray secondary "countershading" colors with an inexpensive Badger abrasive gun, they adhere very well if the primary "dipped" color is still melted. A hot air gun completes the system, quickly heating jigs and curing the powder once dipped. All this for approximately the same price as the Sears electrostatic gun. I don't know whether it's really necessary to cure powder coated jigheads in an oven once they've been hit with a hot air gun, may not be quite as tough, but still pretty darn good, and they're probably going to end up sticking in a stump or wrapped around a limb before they show any significant paint breakdown (at least the way I fish). With an electrostatic system, there's no getting around it, you'll have to have a curing oven.

Ocean for salmon and bottomfish (various rockfish, lingcod, halibut and other bottom dwellers), sturgeon, steelhead, kokanee, trout, large and smallmouth bass, crappie and other warm water species. Where..... Pacific ocean along the Oregon coast, and various rivers (especially the Willamette and tributaries) and lakes all over Oregon, halibut out of Homer, AK as well

I used pans and hot plates for several years, just got a microwave and some pyrex, what a difference. Pans and hotplate, stirring, waiting, hoping things aren't too hot, more waiting...still got some scorching sooner or later. Microwaves can scorch plastic too, but it's waaaay faster:). Pyrex is so easy to pour from compared to the cheapo pans I previously used.

I use lead free tin solder (some of which I purchased on eBay for around $7 a lb), and it pours very well, either the tin alloyed with silver (97/3) or alloyed with copper (95/5). The thing I like about it is that it fills detailed molds like the Do-It ultra minnow and shad lure molds very well. I think this is because as it changes from a liquid to a solid it expands slightly ( you notice the handles of the mold trying to open slightly). I've powder painted it, so I don't know why LedHed has problems with that. Either alloy is basically pewter, I'd guess that if you could locate old pewter scrap metal, it would work very well too. The stuff stays shiny and looks pretty good with just a dusting of counter shading on the back ( I do use powder paint for that, my avatar is a "pewter" Do-It shad lure with a powder coated black back)

I use Netcraft's fluid bed with them.....no problems so far, most of them tell you if they are usable in a fluid bed. I do use Pro Tec for the more esoteric colors but for black, white, and clear gloss at 8 or 9 bucks a pound, hard to beat

for basic coating colors, ebay sellers sell 1 and 2 lb packages of powder for a lot less than any tackle dealer, try for the epoxy formulations (more resistant to worm plastics)

Craft stores sell stencil cutters, basically like a wood burner but with a fine pointed tip, put your master under a piece of window glass, lay the plastic stencil material over the image and trace the outline with the stencil cutter.

This sounds a whole lot like the food dryer I built using plans from our local county extension agent. It used aluminum screens built by a local screen repair shop. They kept sets on hand just to fit the dryer.

Braveviper, just uploaded an image to the gallery of 3 jigs spraypainted with powder coating. Haven't figured out how to attach that image here!!

I like to use various sized nails inserted into the end of a piece of dowel or a pin vise. If the nail head isn't perfectly round, chuck it in a drill and hold against a grinding stone for a second while spinning up to speed. The trick, as described above with dowels is to not actually press the nail head against the lure, but to touch a hanging drop to the lure and press down without actually touching the lure. This flattens the drop out around the head of the nail and surface tension rounds up the drop. (don't immerse the whole nail head in the paint, just touch the lower surface of the head to the paint when loading up) With practice it's very quick, and the nails clean up quickly with a paper towel. For the black pupil, I like to use the head of a sewing pin in the same way

Ledhed...I took a look at the Component Systems eye painter, I think it's for liquid paint, not powder and looks expensive vs nail drop technique = really cheap. I can line 'em up and do a lot of eyes in a hurry for a lot less than stick on eyes, maybe not as purty, but I doubt the fish really inspect them all that closely. I just noticed the similar threads topics at the bottom of this page and one described using a straw to apply powder paint for eyes...I'm going to look into that one...maybe small metal tubes? (THIS SITE ROCKS) Braveviper, I'll take a look at what it takes to post a picture on here and give it a try after the holidays.

Hi Rich, Visited Australia a few years ago, great folks down under, and pretty darn good fishing too. Hope you have a lot of fun with this site....just say no to bait!! Derk

No, I use testor's model paint, use a hanging drop on an appropriately sized nail head, never figured out how to do it with powder paint. For a 3 d look, just put a drop of clear epoxy over the painted eye the same way. Recessed eyes make this very easy. With them, you can do both eyes at the same time, paint the eye color (I like yellow), wait a couple of hours for the paint to at least partly dry, then use a sewing pin to do the pupil in black. If somebody's figured out how to do it with powder, I'd be very interested in hearing, this is the slowest part of my paint process. I've wondered what fish think of my baits with the "jaundiced" eyes, but they work and the eyes are very visible.

I also use the badger sandblaster to spray powder paint, as well as their very inexpensive external mix paint gun. Both work well. I use a hot air gun to heat the jig, dip it in a fluid bed for the base coat, back to the hot air gun to finish the melting of the base coat, and while it's still hot, spray with one or two colors of powder in the badger guns. Because the base coat is still melted, the powder sticks well, then back to the hot air gun to complete the melting. (I just spray over a garbage can, the countershading uses very little powder, I don't attempt to salvage it). This gives a nice blended countershading. I have several guns hooked up to an air distribution manifold so I can just grab the color I want to spray, then just heat cure and paint the eyes. Part of the trick with the sandblasters is to keep the air pressure low (about 20-25 psi), so the powder doesn't come out in a fog.