atijigs

I don't currently tie skirts. If I did I would probably glue in the guard after tying. I also use the nylon pins. I keep them in for the painting and cureing. I only leave 3-4 mm sticking out to grab onto. It makes the painting very easy. By leaving them in while curing you have a nice clean hole. I usually go with 3d eyes and like to place a dab of d2t over them. I place the weedgaurds at the same time. I am coating the eyes.

Some colors may require a base coat to get the shade you desire. The manufactures often will list the required base coat. If you are starting out with a plain jig head it is chrome like. The glow colors usually require a white base coat. Once you start playing around with it you will be only limited by your imagination.

They all will work. The electrostatic gun will give you a universal covering. Using heat will give you a covering determined by temp. time of contact and will very in thickness depending on pressure, contact time and fluffiness of the paint. Electrostatic= same amount of paint every time. Heat, with practice you can get pretty close. The paint will work either way. Technique determines the thickness of paint on the jig. One other thing is size. It is hard to dip a 10 oz. jig. It is like trying to dip a bowling ball in a bucket of sand. Small stuff will work by heating and dipping. The paint works the same either way.

Rods and cones. Cones=color. Rods=black and white. Humans have their cones toward the center of the eye. Peripheral vision is rods. Animals that have good night vision have a much greater density of rods in their eyes than cones. Thus blaze orange for deer. The interesting thing is rods pick up movement better than cones. Thus the "I saw movement out of the corner of my eye". The problem with fish is any light they get is reflected off the water surface. Thus the longer wavelengths (red) will only penetrate to a shallow depth and then turn to dark (or black and shades of grey) . The depth and clarity of the water will determine how far the different colors will be visible. Once that critical depth has been reached everything is black to grey or shadows. Take a prism and watch it separate colors. Thats what the water surface does. It acts as a prism. We can only guess what they see. My personal opinion is that the UV receptors in they eyes of fish are like us with night vision goggles.

I see a lot of nice pics in the gallery. I am having trouble trying to get pics of some swim baits. They are just what I was trying to produce but it does not show what I want in the pics. Jigs are easier. The translucence of the plastics seems to distort the color. I am going to try taking them in a tank. I really would just like to get a pic of what I see. Any suggestions would be helpful. The background may be the issue. I don't know. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

Please do. I like the idea.

I don't have the 1.5 but the 2 oz. is 2 and 1/16th inches.

Senkos should not be much of a problem either way. Some of the other hand pour molds if injected will give you tags in the vents. You have to decide if you want to remove these or leave them. Even pouring when the mold gets warm you will start seeing the plastic working it's way into the vents. They are easily pulled off. Senkos are easy to pull vent tags off. Some of the craw molds are a different story.

My testing tank is a small aquarium. When I was a kid we had an in ground pool. I regret as a young fisherman that I only fished topwaters when I had a great testing tank at my disposal. The testing tank in this thread is a work or art. We used to build hockey rinks in the back yard trying to get plastic and borders to hold water an inch deep. That tank is a work of art in English or any other language.

That is fantastic. I am so glad I don't do hard baits.

For admin. The classified forum is up and running here.

It wouldn't be coming from the powder. Do you have something else that has dripped inside the heat gun? Try running it by itself without heating a jig.

I did notice that my classifieds link does not work anymore. Anyone else ?

You will be fine. I would suggest a couple of things to do before you cure them. Be sure the hook eyes are open. If you have paint in them carefully open them. The paint can chip easily when they are not cured so be careful. Get yourself a designated cookie sheet. I hate to tell you this but if the eyes are closed with paint and you hang them head down there will be a good chance you will have nipples and even drips depending on the colors you are curing. Just so you don't get too disappointed try hanging a few hook down. That way you will have some that will look great after you break the paint drips off the hook. Good luck. You will find certain colors are more forgiving than others. If you have white or black curing go hook down at first,

I am probably in a minority here. I am a firm believer in using the hook eye to judge the amount of powder paint on the jig head. I do not use a fluid bed. Larger jigs are tough to dip. There are ways around this. My opinion is the temp of the jig is the biggest factor. I look for the eye to be covered and open. If I have a closed eye then I know that the jig will have to be cured with the hook down because it will run. Different colors drip less and you can cheat a little. My personal opinion is that if the hook eye is closed you have too much paint on the jig. If you run it through a heat gun for a couple of seconds and the eye does not open up then you have way too much paint on the jig and curing can be an issue depending on what colors you are using.

I did 1 cold pour. I have the advantage of having an assorted mold that has larger heads so the mold will warm up faster. This is using 70% hard lead. On the second pour I added the hooks in the 1/16,1/32,1/48 oz. sizes. I did re pour the larger sizes too for the second pour with no hooks. Maybe you can see something different in your mold. You can see on the pic I did not get a full barb on the 1/48th but for a cold pour I would not be disappointed in that. I do angle the handles up on this mold but other than that nothing special. This mold has been modified slightly for hook size but nothing done to the sprue hole or pot port. I hope this helps.

Something is not right. Do your other molds pour alright. I have the pot warming up right now. I will post a couple of pics. I won't shrink them down. Maybe you can see a difference in your mold. I have not ever seen it but I suppose the mold could be defective. I have had tough pouring molds but it is usually technique. This is an interesting mystery.

That mold's pour slot is narrow and to the hinge side. Not directly at the bottom of the sprue hole. When you pour it next time tilt the mold with the handles raised(about 35 degrees).. When you try the warm up runs with no hooks fill the larger size heads first. Once you get the angle of pour down it will be a piece of cake. Good luck.

If you are using pure lead you should not have that much trouble. Try pouring without hooks until the lead comes out the bottom or fills the hook slot. When the sprue flattens out on top of the mold also indicates the mold is warm enough. If you are not getting any lead in the head and only a sprue you are not getting the lead stream going down the opening. I only set my pot at 7 for pure or very soft lead. There is an open slot at the bottom of the sprue hole isn't there?

I usually can get any mold to pour. This Ultra Minnow spinner bait has to be poured with pure lead. (IMO). I am a fan of soft lead for pouring but that is not what I had in the pot at the time. I have poured for years so I know most of the tricks but this one beat me today. Next time will be with pure lead because I hate breaking down mis- cast spinner baits, I did a search on this and found others with a similar problem. I think the solution will be pure alloy. I will report back in a while when I try it again.

I agree. I could see that the Trokar may have a purpose fishing solid body plastics where you want the hook buried. With the surgically sharpend point it should cut vs puncture through the plastic. I can't see the extra dollars but for some it may make the difference in a tourney.

I was doing some laminates with a new mold. I was using two pyrex cups with equal amounts of plastic in the 25$ microwave. I knew that equal amounts of plastic is a good thing. I did not know that it is bad thing is to have one cup larger than the other. The bigger pyrex cup heated the plastic much faster. To make a long story short I overheated the clear to a slight yellow trying to play catch up. It was a two part laminate 6 inch swimbait. I wanted blue dorsal with clear and silver glitter ventral. I went ahead anyway with the slightly yellowed clear. The baits turned out great but I know the clear was overheated. The overheated clear along with the blue dorsal gave a really nice chartreuse look to the belly. I have no doubt the baits will work. My biggest question is how much does the overheating affect the properties? Should I discard the rest of the mildly overheated plastic or dye it a darker color and use it for a different bait? I am only talking a small amount because I was testing the mold. At what point should it be tossed?

Drag it lightly across your fingernail. If it scratches you should be good to go.

They pour easy enough. As Gloomisman stated you have to be careful removing the sprue or you will have a loose jig head. If the head is to be painted it is not a big problem. I prefer to twist the sprue off holding the jig head in a flat long nose(no serations on the beak) twisting against the hook eye. After you do enough of them you can get them off easily with no loose head. Another trick is just give the loose head a little squeeze with the non serated pliars. If you do it carefully you will have two small flat areas to paint your eyes. Do-it has these molds in production models. They are over 100 $ each.

If you need some let me know. I have 3.5 boxes of 4000 of the bronze #6s. Send me a pm .