DaveMc1

There are small amounts of additives added like anti clumping/caking agents in the finer grinds that keep it from clumping up. something you don't have when you grind it yourself. I have ground up my fair share of several different types of salt. I always found no matter what salt I started with and no matter how small the batch was and no matter how slow I mixed it would clump up bad in the plastic. I found a gallon jug of "worm salt" in a box of bait making supplies when I bought a guy out once. It was great, mixed in the plastic just fine, dispersed great, didn't clump. Took a sample into a major salt wholesaler here and have been buying part skids of 50lb bags ever since.

What I have been doing for years. EVERYTHING gets weighed, plastic, salt, colour, flake. Only way to get consistent results day after day.

No. BaitJunkys has been selling Calhoun. Leonard is now directing all supply (plastic, colourant, glitter, bags etc) to baitplastics.com Who is a distributor for Polysol and now also sells the degassed BaitJunkys plastic as well (it is still the same plastic BaitJunkys has sold for the last 5 years)

The company behind Spike It/LureWorks is one of the largest supply companies to the soft plastic industry as a whole. Their pigments and dyes are always consistent in my experience.

I started with the LureCraft press a long time ago. I stressed it real quick and stretched the main bolts on it. I then built one out of a 3 ton arbour press which worked great for a couple years until I got sick of working my shoulder too hard. After that I said screw it and had Leonard at BaitJunkys build me this wonderful device. 2 tubes at a time, bolts to the bench, double activation buttons for safety, runs on air. best thing since sliced bread of you start cutting a lot of tubes. I can sit and cut a couple thousand at a time in a couple hours.

There are no real "Brands" when it comes to injection machines. You either buy one used or you have one custom built for you. Be warned though, numbers I have seen first hand from Zorn for a new injection machine is $40k - $60k for just the machine and $8k - $10k on the molds (each). There is a lot to these machines and it's not as simple as you put one in your shop and it produces the baits for you. My advice, IF you are serious and can make a serious investment and wish to take it to that level, contact Mr. BaitJunkys (Leonard) directly and discuss your needs with him, I know he may have a few options for you.

This has NOTHING to do with being a hobbyist OR "Production Guy" as you put it. Neither myself nor Frank (that I am aware of) are running ANY production equipment by the way. We are using the same methods you are to make soft plastics, we just have found ways to maximize our efficiency while using "hobby" equipment. I don't always see eye to eye with Frank (and thats been public in the past) but I will stand behind him on this one 100%, you can only speak for yourself, not the rest of the membership at TU. I don't use glass beads (for my own reasons) but I do shoot with salt (I use a lot through out the year) and I have never had to add anything because of it, again, using simple hand injection equipment available through Ultra Molds to everyone here and I use Pourasol from LureWorks, I do add a touch of heat stabilizer when running large batches (2-5 gallons) of White or Pearl to keep the colour true over a long period of time on the heat and thats it.

This is a loaded question and will usually get a thread locked. Best advice I and many others could give, try as many different brands as you can and figure out what works best for you.

It is nothing more than Polysol (where they're buying it from and putting their label on it)

These guys will be able to custom make you anything you want for tubes in 1,000 - 2,000 piece minimums.

I am still just shooting all my baits by hand I much like Frank have figured out what I needed to do to be very efficient and aren't afraid to put the work in to make the baits LOL. As of right now I am not using any equipment that everyone else on the forum can't get.

Most of LPO's house baits are from D&J, their tubes all have salt.

Sorry, I found it easier to include my comments in the quote. The main thing I think the OP should take from any of this is there are NO do's or don'ts, just start adding and experiment with it.

you need to look at the Lureworks side of Spike It https://www.ispikeit.com/product/342/natural-glow-128 Products not manufactured in the US are billed duty (percentage depends on the product and country of manufacture) US made products are exempt. Brokerage fees get your package through customs faster, if it is shipped in through Canada Post they don't bill brokerage, but your package can be held in customs until they get to clearing it, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. You almost always get billed sales tax (although I wasn't billed anything on a $1000.00 order of lures I bought for my store this past week, came in through Canada Post) With the vast majority of the soft bait supplies being manufactured in the US you just need to bite the bullet and pay the associated costs. You're going to pay them if you buy direct or buy the same product in Canada (if you don't think those fees are included in the Canadian pricing you're nuts)

Spike it Natural Glow is $14.50 for a half pound (8oz) add shipping and exchange and your NOWHERE near your $54/6oz you bought up here. hell, for what you paid you can get a pound of it from Spike It

you will likely have issues with the tails and a plate. your colours were probably a bit on the hotter side and the temps were off a bit. If the viscosity of the 2 colours is the same you will have no issues. lower temps when shooting laminates and keep the temps between the 2 colours as close as you can.

Spraying them is going to produce a lot of over spray and be a bit difficult to achieve the look you are going for. What you really need if that mold recut as a slide bar mold and eliminate the paint all together. Or better yet find a production shop with a wyandotte worm mold and buy them by the thousands in the colours you want.

I thought for sure they were krews

Those are from a silicone open pour mold, the guy that poured them made the mold himself

Funny thing is, as soon as you import the mold and make baits from a patent protected design, you yourself are violating the patent. The likelihood of getting a C&D letter may be low but none the less, the minute you copy the product you are liable whether or not you sell the bait for profit. And I will 100% agree with Leonard, buy (North) American and support your own people.

This is until they want to hit you for a little more money down the road and tell you your plates dried up and you have to pay to have them re-made

No one was arguing that they didn't, the OP made the comment on why they were so cheap, I simply answered the question

It's that cheap because it is sand cast, not machined. That is why the cavities are so rough.

Laminate plates will not work to get a back/belly laminate when the left and right halves are in each mold plate, you will get the left half one colour and the right half the other colour.

Do It really likes to mess with you with their marketing and pictures on their website for the essential molds. If you pay attention to most of them (last I looked anyway) they show you a picture of a bait produced in a CNC mold. This is the case here, these baits were made in their single cavity CNC mold, not their essential mold. Just looked, EVERY one of the Essential molds have pictures of CNC baits for them. If you look close in the pic you posted you can see cutter marks in it, something you won't find in a sand cast mold. you are only going to be able to laminate one of the 3 baits in that particular mold, the one single cavity.