alsworms Posted January 14, 2004 Report Share Posted January 14, 2004 Well I found out something the hard way (as usual!!). For those of you who don't know this, the brand of softener DOES make a HUGE difference in your plastic. For the past 2 years I have been using 3-G softener. I had been mixing 7 cups of softener in a 5-gallon jug of Calhoun plastic. Well I finally ran out of 3-G yesterday and mixed Lure Craft's for the first time. I wasn't sure if the brand made a difference, so I started with 5 cups of Lure Craft softener. Needless to say, the plastic poured like water and the baits felt like mush. Had to reharden everything again. Next time I'll start with 1/3 cup per gallon. The bottom line is I apologize to those of you who followed my mixtures on previous posts. You have to be VERY careful when working with softener. I thought my learning days were over. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattbell Posted January 14, 2004 Report Share Posted January 14, 2004 The same applies to hardener. With lurecraft plastic the most effective hardener for me was from barlows, then lurecrafts, then the stuff from Janns Netcraft?. It would take me 15-20 times more of the stuff from janns than the barlows to get the same results. The difference between lurecrafts and barlows was not too great. I just started w/ calhoun plastic and it is different. I found it to heat faster, but it cools very slow. Just a question for you, I have the soft hand pour calhoun plastic and I need hardener for the bait to even keep it's shape. When I used the straight plastic, it was a gooey mess that never got better w/ time. Do you have another type of plastic? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alsworms Posted January 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2004 I believe Calhoun sells 2 other durometers of plastic; regular and saltwater. The only problem is Calhoun is no longer distributing to us smaller tacklemakers. You might check with Del at www.del-mart.com and see if he has any of the tougher plastics in stock. I'm assuming you're keeping the hand-pour version mixed properly? While Calhoun settles very little, it will separate over time. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
