wchilton

Here's an earlier thread with lots of good info http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/index.php?/topic/23961-best-round-nose-pliers/?hl=pliers You'll want to use a quality tool for the heavier wire you'll use on musky baits. Knipex brand has never let me down.

I've use wood (with clear coat finish), soft plastic, modeling clay, sculpey, but not hard plastic yet. The only things I know of that RTV sticks to is itself and GLASS. Don't mix RTV in a glass container...it's a real pain to clean out. I've mixed RTV in rigid plastic measuring cups and it peals away just fine so I'd expect no problem with using a hard plastic model.

Check out the Pyrex Prepware 2-Quart Measuring Cupon Amazon. If you don't need the depth of a beaker these are the ticket. They are thicker glass and are nearly tip-proof. I got one at a local department store.

Take a look at the "Plug and Plate" kits offered by Caswell plating. They start under $40 and are very simple to use. Gold is probably their most expensive but still not too bad at $68. Since you'd obviously use a top coat for lures you could plate the gold pretty thin. You'd have to check with them about actual coverage but I'd think you could get a dozen or more baits plated with the kit.

Anodizing is a process that forms a thin oxide on the surface of the metal. Can be done with some metals (aluminum, titanium) but not all. The way the color is added is by dying the oxide (dye sticks in the pores of the oxide) and then sealing by either a treatment or some coating. Don't think you can anodize iron. Anyway your hooks are already plated with a gold plate of some sort. Electroplating deposits a thin coat of metal on top of a surface. Never heard of plating with a metal that is RED. You might be able to plate with copper/brass to get a brown color but don't know if it would be enough. I left a sink fixture partly submerged in a mild acid solution (to remove water deposits) one time and copper came out of the internal parts and "plated" onto the chrome to make it yellowish. Your best bet for red may be to use a coating like DN which is made for coloring metals. Also check out "Caswell Plating", they have a lot of metal finishing stuff.

The "sealcoat" I use is a lure topcoat. I think it's an acrylic. Sold at Lurepartsonline as well as other tackle stores. Sold in a 4-oz jar, and there's also a UV version (I've never tried that one).

I've used sealcoat when I need a thin but durable top coat. It's a bit pricy but goes a long way and being water-based it requires no special handling like mcu's. Yozuri's are well made and fully sealed so all you really need in this case is to protect the new paint. I've had similar experience coating repaints with epoxy and having the extra weight change the action.

They do sell to small customers. I've ordered from them. If you want to buy less than the minimum of any item you add a dollar to the amount. For example, for quantity 10, you'd add one dollar so it costs an extra 10 cents per item. For quantity 50 you'd still add a dollar and then each item is an extra 2 cents.

lurepartsonline has a pretty good selection

D2T is formulated to be mixed equal parts by volume. You should just use 1:1 by volume regardless of the package it comes in. Mix ratio may be slightly different if you weigh it since the two parts have different specific gravities. Other epoxies can have different volume ratios, different weight ratios, etc. so you gotta use what's specified for each to get the best results.

The way you describe it with the hook weakening when you open it up is not something that heat treating or forging will help. The process of opening up the point is either stressing the steel or work hardening it (just like forging with a hammer would). Try starting with a more flexible hook and then do the hammer forging if you need more strength after its been shaped. Normally what you would want to do is shape the steel when it is SOFT and then heat treat or work harden when it has its final shape. You could also try to soften the steel on your hooks before bending it and then forge/work harden when cool. You'd need to heat it up red hot and then let it cool gradually to soften the metal (this is called annealing). Like someone said before, hooks are thin so they heat/cool pretty fast. You could try putting them on an electric stove burner (the coil type that turns red) to heat them and then just leave them on the burner to cool. Then bend to shape (they should bend easily), then work harden/hammer to strengthen along the bend of the hook. One other thing. Heating/cooling like that and bending can mess with the finish and hooks will rust more easily

Are you talking about opening the eye of the hook or the bend? Hook eyes are pretty strong and not likely to open. Some east coast fishermen open up the eye on trebles to attach to the lure and just bend them back shut and don't have any problems. If you're talking about having to straighten out the bend of the hook and then put back, I'd first test a hook on a scale and see how strong it is after you mess with it. You might find that you don't need to re-temper. "Tempering" is a word that gets misused a lot. The actual "temper" process is a heat treatment after "hardening" to make steel less brittle. The overal heat treatment for steel generally starts with heating to red hot (actual temperature here can be important but for many steels, a "cherry red" color is a good indicator), then the steel is hardened by "quenching" in either water or oil and that's what hardens the steel. After that, a re-heating to somewhat lower temperature followed by more gradual cooling will "temper" the steel by reducing hardness enough so that the steel is no longer brittle. That's the basic process. Different steels/alloys require different treatments so things could vary if the hook is made of something exotic. That much heat around a finished lure could be problematic. If you find that the hook is actually weakened, first thing I'd try is to "work harden" the bend with a flat hammer so it looks like a forged hook (slightly flattened along sides of the bend).

search for "saltwater-tackle-wrap" at westmarine.com made by Plano It's also available from Amazon. Also, serch on Amazon for "lure bag". There are several made by Boone that sound like what you're looking for.

Nice tip! I've been using a round-bottom silicone bakeware bowl for a while for mixing casting resin but hadn't thought to do the same for mixing epoxy. A while back I found some disposable "cups" that hospitals use for bringing meds to patients and they right size plus have ml markings on the side for measuring.

I've played with silicone molds for soft plastic and learned a few things. I'll just throw out some info and you'll have to experiment a bit to see if any of it is useful for you. First (and possible easiest solution for you) is that silicone rubber has a certain amount of silicone oil in it which can get depleted over time. Since urethane loves to soak up oil it could be that your urethane pours are depleting the natural lubricant in the rubber mold. I try applying some 100% silicone oil to your mold (one that's been used for several baits but hasn't yet been damaged) and see if that helps. You could wipe some into the cavity and leave it for a while/overnight and I think you'll see it soak into the mold. Make sure whatever silicone oil you use is 100% silicone. There's some available as model railroad lube (small bottles) and you may also see some sold as "rtv softener" for rtv silicone. Since you're not pouring HOT plastic, you might even be able to get away with silicone oil that has some solvent in it (like tire shine silicone) but use at your own risk! The next trick I've learned is to use ground up silicone from old molds as a filler for a new batch. I started out just using cut pieces (cut with knife or scissors) but found that if I cut the old mold into smaller pieces and add some silicone oil for lube I can grind it up in an old blender. Then I mix to ground up silicone into the new RTV after the new stuff has been thoroughly mixed with hardener. If you do this, make sure the new silicone/liquid is the same cure-type as the old/solid to avoid any compatibility problems. The most common two-part silicones are tin-cured. There's also a platinum cure RTV that's supposed to be a bit more durable but also somewhat more expensive. Not sure if that would help you out. First thing I'd try is some 100% silicone oil to maintain the release properties of the mold/molds you have. By the way, be sure and test to make sure you can clean all silicone oil off your hard baits before using it on your mold. It could cause problems with paint sticking. That's never been a problem for me with soft baits.

Hobby shops carry small pieces of balsa, but for larger pieces you need to find a lumber yard that carries specialty hardwoods (not like Home Depot or Lowes). Look in your local phone book for Lumber suppliers that specialize in hardwoods. You might also look around for anyone making surfboards. They use balsa for that, and they also use paulownia.

Scales used for reloading are ok as long as they can measure the capacity you want. For reloading, things are small (no more than tens of grams). When talking scales, higher capacity usually means lower accuracy/precision. You want the scale to have a range suitable to the application. The scale I use most will weigh a max of 1000g at 0.1 g accuracy. You probably don't need more than about 100g capacity for most lures (translates to between 3 and 4 oz), but you may want some extra capacity to weigh casting materials or uncut wood blocks etc. There are scales that will measure in several different units (grams, oz, grains, etc.). Look for one that has the units you need and save yourself the trouble of having to convert units.

I'd guess stamping foil too. It's super thin so you wouldn't feel the edge. Foil is on a plastic film with very thin layer of hot-melt adhesive on the back. You press the foil against your part, heat the front (of the carrier film) and the ahesive sticks to the part and foil then peels off the film and stays on your part.

Back when I was in college I had a 1/8 panther martin. Red dots on yellow body and silver spinner. It was a rainbow trout magnet to the point my brother and I had to take turns to avoid getting into a fight. I had 2 or 3 others exactly the same and they didn't catch. The trouble is when you get a good bait like that you tend to use it a lot and it gets lost! Mine got hung up on an underwater log. Had a second experience where a fishing buddy picked up an inexpensive Renegade jerk bait at Walmart that slayed fish like nothing else we've ever seen. We ended up buying all of those we could get our hands on. About 1/4 of them were "good" like that first one and the rest were duds. That first one of his got all the paint eaten off it and still caught fish just like when it was new. It finally got destroyed by a barracuda that shook his head a smashed it into a rock. I managed to save a few of those (after they were broken) and tried a few "autopsies" to figure out what was different but never uncovered the secret. A while later Walmart got a new batch of those baits and none of them were anything special. They had been changed slightly internally and that's all it took to eliminate whatever slight variation made some of that first batch so good.

If it's close enough to the right weight you could try cutting one of the points off of a treble hook. I've had hook points lost while fishing and it doesn't seem to affect action or ability to hook fish very much.

Yep, ProStreetGraphics is the site that has a list of printers that will work for printing your own patterns.

You can buy blank sheets of the water transfer film and print any pattern you like using an inkjet printer. It has to be a printer that uses pigment ink. One of the on-line sites has a list of printers that can be used.

Dick Nite sells a finish he uses on spoons. It's a tough moisture-cure urethane, no baking required. Moisture from the air is what makes it cure so you have to be careful to minimize air contact with the open can. Do a search for "Dick Nite" or "DN" to see how those here have used it.

I've seen the term "nitro proof" before for hobby paints. It's just referring to it's resistance to fuel used for remote control vehicles.

I found a pic that looks very much like it. Name is Williams Whitefish. Looks like a lot of the Williams spoons have that ridge down the center.