McLuvin175

Amber 114, Gourd 172, or Scuppernong 202 from LureWorks should hit close to the mark depending on the shade you want. I would stay away from a Motor Oil of a fluorescent yellow as that will tend to get you the green surface tone you seem to want to avoid.

Soft plastic "odor" can come from many sources. The resin used by the manufacturer usually is the culprit. But additionally the plasticizer used, secondary oils, and even heat stabilizer can all add to a chemical smell. These all vary by manufacturer and can even vary within the same manufacturer based on the formulation used for a line of plastisol versus another line of plastisol. So it will depend on where the "big name"'s purchase their plastisol or what they use if they compound their own. None of them are likely to share that information with you. Oil seepage , in my experience, happens to all plastisols from all manufacturers. The only variable is how quickly and how much. This obviously varies by supplier and formulation. Usually storing in a hot environment over time will accelerate this phenomenon versus a climate controlled environment. One question is did you add anything to your baits when/after you packaged them? Softener? Worm OIl? Scent? Mineral Oil? etc.

Spraying may work but it will render a different look versus a dip. The additional amount of work you'll have to do to spray all sides of a worm tail probably isnt going to yield you any benefit. You might be better off just thinning the paint so that your not putting on such a thick coat. I would recommend the solvent system the manufacturer suggests. A generic thinner may be to slow in drying to help with this issue, then again it may not. You have to test it if you plan on using your own solvent. You might consider slinging off the excess as well. If applying a thinner coat helps it may become necessary to use the addition of a white base coat to make colors look bright especially over dark colors. A paint will give more eye appealing result compared to using a transparent dye like Dip-N-Glo. Painting the tails gives you the ultimate flexibility to have almost any color combination on demand with not near as much work as actually shooting a tail shot. The ultimate question is do your customers complain about the "puddle" and if not should you worry that much about it? If you have thousands to do (sounds like a good problem) you dont need to make more work for yourself. Just a thought. Use it as a positive trait. Hand poured. Hand painted. A work of art and no two are alike.

Watermelon 101 from LureWorks would do the trick so you dont have to mix your own. Keep in mind that stick bait is likely loaded with salt so if the baits you plan on shooting are not loaded with salt you get a different look.

It was Scuppernong 134. That being said I know that the Scuppernong 134 will be discontinued once they sell out their stock. The Scuppernong 202 will be the replacement and is a close match. Its up to you as which one you purchase. Just know that eventually the 134 will be gone and at some point youll have to switch to the 202.

These guys make some cool shrink skins, although not stencils as you mentioned https://www.jigskinz.com/ I suppose you could use shrink film to make a stencil but it would seem difficult to get even shrinkage and maintaining alignment. Seems like a more rigid vacuum form you could use over and over is a better route. I ran across this guy in Australia. He 3D prints two part stencils that custom snap around the lure. Makes for some good looking baits. http://www.lurecolourstudio.com/ I could watch these all day....

Should just be a low-level of Hi-Lite Blue and Silver Glitter in 0.040" Hex or 0.035" Square will work (It doesnt appear to be Silver Holo). I'll bet the opacity comes from the salt. If your using salt you may not have to add any white colorant.

Hard to tell by the picture, but it looks like black with purple glitter. Am I missing something? Reaction Innovations make a sweet Black Light but its a laminate. Black over purple with purple glitter. As far as the purple it kinda looks like Violet based on the shade. I would have to have one in hand to check against to be sure.

All soft plastics exude some amount of oil over time (some worse than others) so it may not be that they were packed in worm oil; just normal seepage. The longer that bait sits the more seepage you tend to get. If your painting minnows is it a simple back color or is this a more complicated multiple step paint job? At any rate a paint job is only as good as the surface prep you do. You need to remove the oil to get any paint to adhere well (water based or solvent based). There are no surefire methods but here are some ideas. Dump the baits on some cardboard and let it soak up some of that oil. Take some paper towels and dawb up and wipe down the baits as much as possible getting as much oil as you can. Then douse them with a good soap, something like full strength Dawn works best, not the cheapo dollar store watered down stuff. Lather em good and rinse well. Lay them out to dry on some clean card board or paper towels to dry. You can speed up dry time by putting a fan on them. Then test a few by painting them to see how you did and how the paint behaves. If need be you can wipe the area to be painted with something like Acetone to remove any residual oil, check how the paint behaves. That should be a good start and give you some positive results. I hope your making enough off these minnows to make it worth your time, its going to be a lot of work. PS Dont clean your baits to far in advance of painting them, the sooner you paint them after washing them the better your results. Remember that baits exude oil so if you wash them and let them sit 2 weeks before you paint them then it may give you problems where you have to wash them all over again. No sense doing work twice. Good luck and let us know how you fare.

So long as the paint has not dried and is still wet something like Acetone should work fine. If it has dried on your airbrush it may be necessary to step to something like Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) to lift it. They sell SB Coat Thinner which is ideal for clean out and clean up. Again its always best to use the thinner system that the paint is made from but if you have some other stuff in your inventory that works then go with it.

Not Dip-N-Glo; and definitely don't add that to plastisol cold or hot. Look at the LureWorks side of Spike-It's website. Under the colorants section you'll find Hot Pink 111. As with all fluorescent colors it is better to add them to cold plastic prior to cooking although I have been successful in adding their colors while hot. Just stir as you add and don't let that colorant sit in a blob under heat as it is possible to congeal it where it wont disperse. Dip-N-Glo is meant for a quick field expedient way to add some flash to finished soft plastic baits.

Looks like a standard watermelon color with the addition of Grape or Purple glitter and some Yellow Gold glitter. Think LSU colors. Pick the size glitter that works best for your bait size. In the pics it looks like 0.035" square purple and 0.015" gold with some 0.035" black.

Emerald Green 121 Ask your buddy if this is the right shade of Emerald Green from LureWorks. Email this product to a friend

My thoughts, If the clear coat you are applying over gold/silver is solvent based too then that can create problems. If the clear coat solvates the underlying paint the particles of pigment can be lifted and reoriented. The best metal looking paints usually have their pigment particles "leaf"; meaning they layflat with the largest reflective surfaces all facing one direction. If that orientation is altered they get dull in a hurry. I wonder if a water based urethane; which shouldnt disturb the underlying paint, could act as a barrier to protect that metallic coat when you finally top it with 2-part Urethane, Solvent thinned Epoxy or something similar which will give the final toughness you seek. And i do agree the smoother the substrate the shinier your metallic coat will be.

Although not ideal it would be better to use Softener instead of Worm Oil. Now this will depend on the manufacturer of said products. I have run production using Mineral Oil as a mold release. We would cut it with Isopropyl Alcohol and only add 5% mineral oil. Loaded that into a old pneumatic paint gun and sprayed the mold. At only 5% oil you were left with a very light coat of oil after the alcohol flashed off. It did not have any deleterious effects at that level. Baby Oil is probably a heavier weight than the mineral oil I used but this principle should still work. You could mix a solution like that and apply it with a brush versus a gun.

Worm Oil is your problem. Dont use it as a mold release. It will do exactly as you are observing, making the baits sticky. Mineral oil will work as a mold release just dont over do it. Pam and other cooking sprays use some form of vegetable oil/ seed oil and Lecithin. Those seem like things that critters will feed on. Probably fine if you use your baits rather quickly. If your storing long term you might run into issues.

Any paint is only as good as he surface it is applied to. An oily surface will rain havoc on any coating applied over it as it actually acts as a barrier between the paint and the substrate. As you call splotchy I would call fish eye and this is most likely due to surface oil on the bait. Wipe away excess oil. Wash with a good strong dish detergent, rinse then dry. Or wipe clean with a solvent like Acetone. Then try dipping again. I think that should help with your issue.

Read the above post and check out the attached picture. You need to use paint and not a dye. Spike-it/LureWorks has a variety of solvent based paints that will work (Worm Paint, SB Coat, and VPI). Just remember laying down some white as a base coat first then coming over with your final color will make the color bright and give it the pop your looking for on dark colored baits. You would want to dip tail colors as it is much easier and faster than trying to airbrush.

There are 98 drops in a teaspoon and 295 in a tablespoon. So you could just say 100 drops in a tsp and 300 drops in a tablespoon and that would get you close enough. You should be able to do all the volumetric conversions from there. Most manufacturers go by weighing everything. For a batch I just assume there are 8lbs of plastic to a gallon, regardless of whether it is hard or soft. And 40lbs for a 5 gallon bucket. When working in large batches like this the difference isnt noticeable in the end product so i have never felt the need to adjust my color formulas based on the plastic firmness. Then its a calculation of how many grams you add. I always used "X" number of grams per "LB" of plastic and that is how I store my recipes. Then regardless of the size batch I am making I can get consistent colors. The key is to find a gram scale that has decent resolution. Ideally 0.01g resolution is nice but they can get expensive for decent one. You should at least get a 0.1g resolution with a capacity of at least 1000g. That will do most everything you need to do. You can find cheap ones on the internet: Amazon comes to mind. So if you are adding 600 drops per gallon thats 75 drops per lb of plastic (600/8). If you get that gram scale weigh out 75 drops and thats your number of grams per LB of plastic. Just assume for this purpose its 1.2g for 75 drops. So in a gallon batch you would weigh out 9.6g (1.2g x 8 ) of colorant. Using the same process you would add 48g for a 5 gallon batch (1.2g x 40) In the end it much faster and more accurate than volumetric dispensing. You can do the same process for glitter. It might be a lot of work to convert your formula book but in the end if your turning your hobby into a job its what I recommend you consider. Good Luck.

You shouldnt have to wait long.

Plastisol is not UV stable and will turn color over time with exposure to UV, this should be true regardless of manufacturer. The color progression is similar to what burning the plastic is like. Which would explain why your blue turned green. I imagine your blue ice has a light pigment load making it susceptible to color shift faster than a "color" that is loaded with pigment or opaque. You can get into pigments that are not UV stable as well but thats a whole other ball of wax. Best remedy....keep em out of extended exposure to the sun.

Methiolate 132 from LureWorks. It will have a slight bleed.

LureWorks/Spike-It's Chartreuse 181 is the most transparent fluorescent that is not a bleeding dye colorant and works great for tail-shot colors. If you want something more opaque then look at Chartreuse 126 or Chartreuse 108. I woldnt use Chartreuse Dye 107 as it is a bleeding dye and may "green" up the black bait over time.