McLuvin175

Carolina Pumpkin 102 would get you close and probably make anyone happy with a match. Cinnamon 191 would probably get you closer to that pic if your a little more demanding, not Dark Cinnamon 190.

There is something to consider; there are many types of thermocouples K, T, B, etc. I have always used J-type thermocouples. Most temperature controllers need to be programmed or set to the appropriate type of thermocouple being used. If they are not they will work but give incorrect temperature readings, so even if it says its 315F on your controller it might be 400F in actuality if not set up correctly, double check that. If the thermocouple probe became detached then you definitely will get erroneous readings leading to a run away system. That should be easy to determine. Depending on your system there is a possibility that your contacts that control the heaters locked close. This can happen with direct contact relays though it is rare. It is less likely in something like a mercury relay or solid state relay. If the contacts are internal to the temperature controller then that is harder to check. You will have to use a volt meter to see if the output signal coincides with the temperature controller output when it cycles during heating, there usually is a light indicating that the controller is sending a output signal. Check that too. If your system got hot enough to carbonize the plastic then you dont have many good options. Strong solvents can dislodge some gooey plastic but the hard stuff is another matter. You might have to disassemble the unit and ream/clean all the fittings to make sure they are unobstructed by burnt plastic. Been there done that and its no fun. That burnt plastic never stops stinking. I have a friend who burned down his garage and almost his house. Lost all of his lure making supplies he accumulated over the years. Never determined the cause but he had just finished doing some pouring. Its a reminder to be careful with this stuff. Keep a fire extinguisher handy and hope you will never have to use it.

Nope. No Silicone at all, unless there is some used to reduce surface tack. It is some type of Thermoplastic Rubber.

Those look like Terminator Lures "SnapBack" Series of Tubes. Strike King was the first to market their 3X series of Baits followed quickly by Terminator Lures with SnapBack. They were both Marketed as made with CyberFlexxx. Now you can find Elaztek, which is basically the same as CyberFlexxx but i know they have tweaked the formula and made it a bit better (reduced tackiness). There are other manufacturers that are beginning to try to market this material in soft plastic baits but they seem to be foreign entities so far. This rubber is a whole other animal when compared to traditional PVC when it comes to manufacturing and processing. It has been discussed to try to introduce this material to the hand pour market but getting people to re-invest in new colorants and new equipment can be a hard sell. That being said it still may happen but you not likely to find any at an affordable price or in small quantities. Like Mark said dont mix those with your PVC Baits, it makes one heck of a mess, keep them separated. To reduce tackiness of those baits you can use a light coat of Talc. They may look ugly in the bag but the talc will wash off in the water and you can always reapply as needed. Also keep in mind the more you cook that stuff the more the resin breaks down and the stickier it will get. It does have a Pot Life just like PVC; but not as smelly as burnt PVC. In addition to the great stretch it will float like nobody's business, no flotation needed. Good Luck!

Here: http://www.ispikeit.com/Store/p-281-sb-coat-clear-3000.aspx Airbrush or dip applications work great but not recommended for paint brush application over a painted surface as it may solvate and lift the underlying paint. Provides much thinner coating versus a hot dip in plastisol. Works great to seal CoLure Coat water based paints where a hot dip in plastisol is not practical or desired. If you are already using solvent based paints like SB Coat or VPI that dont need a seal coat this will still add a nice shine to the finished product. Hope that helps.

Salt is your missing ingredient as it will give that cloudy look. As Frank said the granular size of the salt will determine the cloudiness based on the amount you add. Most manufacturers and people use a "fine" grade of salt that is a smaller particle size than conventional table salt. There are plenty of threads on this forum as to where to find some locally or most suppliers carry some of that type of sale as well. If you look at Zoom bags the sticker will say "Super Salty Plus" meaning it has Salt. Or it will say "Better than Salt" meaning it has no Salt. No salt is better than salt? Hmmmm Arch, LureWorks JuneBug 125 is a match to the old school Junebug that Zoom used to make. In recent years Zoom has switched their colorant for JuneBug to different shade. The new shade has a much blue-er undertone. I think you would be happy with LureWorks Violet 193 as it is a closer match to the current blue shade JuneBug Zoom is making currently.

Mark, If the Dark Blue color was a pigment and not a dye then you wouldn't get any mixing with the bleeding chartreuse to get a green line. As the chartreuse dye migrated up the blue back you might have a greenish tint to the blue but I don't think it would be that impressive. If the Dark Blue was a dye I suppose you would initially get some mixing into a green shade where the two colors meet but I suspect it wouldn't be a nice defined line like you would want but just a gradual undefined gradation from blue to green to chartreuse. And that wouldn't last as over time he bait would just turn some shade of green as the two dyes just mix completely in the bait.

All Dyes are Colorants, but not all Colorants are Dyes. So to be more specific Colorant is a generic term for all colors like Pigments, Dyes, Pearl Powders etc. I know a lot of people also use the term Dye as a generic description for colorants as well but really shouldn't. True Dye's are a different class of colorant as they are soluble in the plastisol both when it is a liquid and even after it is cooked and solid. Which is why they migrate through out the bait over time and even to other baits if they happen to touch each other. Think of pouring sand into a glass of water, that's like a pigment in PVC. It pretty much stays where you put it and doesn't move. Think of pouring sugar into water, that's what a dye does in PVC. It soluablizes and by osmosis migrates. I know LureWorks/Spike-It identifies their bleeding colors by adding the word "Dye" in the name, so the Cherry Red Dye 120 is a bleeder. That being said it is the color most people use in the belly portion of Red Shad and Tequila Sunrise. Since the back of those color schemes is Black you don't notice any bleed that occurs. If you are doing a single color like a Cherry Seed then it shouldn't be a issue. The advantage of a dye is clarity and transparency over pigments which makes for some beautiful brilliant colors. You wouldn't use them any differently than any other colorant other than to take note that they will bleed so you will have to consider doing two things: One, make sure that if you are doing two color baits that any bleed will not affect the look over time as the dye bleeds, like in a Red Shad. Two, if you just do a solid one color then just make sure to keep them segregated from other baits for storage or packaging purposes to avoid any bleed. I hope that helps.

For the best results go with a white base coat first then go over that with your final color. That will provide the brightest final color. Going with out a white base coat will work fine too it will just give a different more subtle look. Some Worm Paint or SB Coat Paint from Spike-It/LureWorks would be your best option. The traditional Dip-N-Glo will work too but those are transparent dyes so they will give a different look than a paint will. If you want a true Fire-tail color you might have to custom blend some Hot Pink and Blaze Orange paint at some level or ratio. That will give you your pinkish-orange firetail color.

Glitter near the surface should appear green and the purple pigment will shift the green color of the glitter over to blue when it is down in the bait. You should have a blend of green and blue mimicking the way a June Bug looks even though you only used on color glitter. You could say it was one of the early color shift recipes. If that's not what is happening for you then you might want to dial back your temperature if you can.

Do you know the founder of GreenPeace left his own organization when his nut job followers wanted to ban the Chlorine atom? Because the "C" in PVC is Chlorine and PVC is bad in their opinion. Since that didn't go over well they took to the next best tactic by banning the plasticizers that make PVC soft. All these years later here we are, fretting about Phthalates. You also need to consider that most of the colorants added to plastisol contain phthalates as well in addition to worm oils. There are some alternatives but imagine that, they tend to be much more expensive or a entire different beast like "Gulp" or "Elaztech". There is no such thing as a Biodegradable Food Grade Worm oil, unless you are talking mineral oil; which isn't compatible with PVC baits. Don't mean to come across as rude but this topic gets me fired up. The hoops bereaucracies make you jump through and the lawyers just waiting till you slip up. My advice, don't go down that road; as in advertising Phthalate Free.

It is always easier to soften a hard plastisol than it is to harden a soft plastisol. If you must harden a formula i wouldn't add but a teaspoon at a time to 1 3/4 cup of plastic and go from there. 10% by weight is the maximum I would even recommend to anyone trying harden plastisol. Remember that Hardener does not have heat stabilizer in it so when you add it to plastisol that resin is unprotected from heat (ie easier to scorch). Also keep in mind that baits can take up to 24 hours to reach full and final firmness. They may feel soft when you first pour them but come back tomorrow and they will be slightly stiffer. It is best to get the right formula that works for the majority of your body styles so you don't need to tweak it but only in certain circumstances.

Hmm... hard to tell without a sample in my hand. I have learned this about Keitech baits, a lot of them have salt and interestingly enough an additive akin to Berkley's Powerbait that can throw the colors making weird shades that aren't all that easy to match with a single colorant. That "powerbait mimic" will give that shad bait the brownish looking back ( I suspect it is not in the belly portion of this bait, only in the top half). You will have to mix some black and brown colorant at some ratio to match it; a dark brown smoke if you will. Also looks like they are using some Sparkle Violet and Sparkle Green Glitter to get the "rainbow" in something like 0.015" Hex along with some small black flake. A large particle pearl white would look good in the belly, like Sparkle Pearl; I cant tell if they are using a hi-lite pearl there but it wouldn't make sense to do so. Add salt if desired. Again this is based off of a picture from their website and just my WAG based on experience.

Zoom's Junebug has changed over the years. LureWork's Junebug 125 is a match to the old school traditional Junebug color. In recent years Zoom has switched to a purple that has different shade and undertone than the original Junebug. If that is the shade of Junebug you want to match then Violet 193 would be the way to go. So for the Junebug 125 use 10-12 drops of colorant and 1/8 tsp Emerald Green 0.040" hex 1/16th tsp of Emerald Green 0.015". For the Violet 193 version use 5-8 drops Violet 193 and 1/8th and 1/16th as mentioned before. For the Green Pumpkin recipe whether your using Green pumpkin 109 or Green Pumpkin SP 156 use 8-10 drops of colorant and 1/8 tsp Black 0.040 hex. These formulas are all based on 1/2 cup (4oz) of plastic and it makes no difference the firmness of plastic you are using. Good luck and as always you might tweak the formulas to accommodate your bait design/size as well as if you are adding other additives like salt etc. and just personal taste.

On a per cup basis: BACK 15-20 drops Black 103 BELLY 15-20 drops Cherry Red Dye 120 about 1/4 TSP Pearl White 127 Those are LureWorks colors. If you don't have them you'll have to improvise with what you do have. That will give you a traditional Red Shad but everyone likes to put their own spin on it. It's a starting point. Good luck.

Back is solid Black. Belly use a Pearl White with a bleeding red dye color. On a side note use a Hi-Lite Blue instead of Pearl White and you will have Tequila Sunrise.

Looks like air entrapment to me. Ring type molds are a bugger because it is hard to vent out all of the air in the mold when you shoot them just because the nature of how the mold is cut. How do you orient the mold when you shoot it? It would be ideal if you shot the mold with the parting line (the seam on the bait where the two halves of the mold come together) is in the north/south position. This allows any air to rise to the top as you shoot the mold and be vented out. If the parting line is not in the north/south position but instead in a east/west position the air will rise to the top of the rings and become trapped with nowhere to go. Using some additional hand pressure when you shoot could help reduce the incomplete rings but not as much as proper venting.

pouringbaits55, that was 6-7 drops of Cotton Candy 165 to 1/3 cup. Pinch of red,black,grape 0.040" glitter. Adjust accordingly. That might be too much color, especially if you plan on loading with salt. Let me know if it works out for a match to Yamamoto's Cinnamon color, I'm curious to know.

Dyes are a double edged sword. They give you the clearest most transparent beautiful colors you can imagine....with the draw back that they bleed. There is a reason the "back" of the original sample bait is black. The dye has bled into that black a long time ago, you just cant see it. Same principle goes for a color like Tequila Sunrise. You have some red dye with Hi-lite Blue in the belly and a black back. That's virtually the only way you can get away with using a dye in a laminate. The color combination I recommended wont be as beautiful as your original, since it is pigment based, but I think it will pass muster.

Without a sample to look at its hard to help. I searched Yamamoto's site and I think the best route would be Cotton Candy 165 colorant from LureWorks. That would give you a brown surface tone with a pinkish under tone. The Cotton Candy 165 looks different when hot versus when it cools. When you first use it wait for you bait to cool down before you make any adjustments to your final formulation. The sample chips I poured don't have any salt in them so take that into consideration when evaluating them.

Snow, When trying to match a color one of the first things I do is a "bleed" test. Pour a "white" chip out of Plastisol, let cool then lay your bait on it, in this case belly side on the chip. Check back in about 2-8 hours or so to see if any color bleed onto the white. If so you know you are dealing with a dye. If no bleed then you are dealing with a pigment (there is a difference between the two). In this case your original sample is probably has dye in it, which I usually try to avoid if possible. It is hard to tell from the picture but it looks a little too orange for Copper Pearl to make an accetable match by itself. Here is a sample of Amber 114 colorant and Copper Pearl 142 from LureWorks that would be a good non-bleed replacement that I think you would be happy with.