Laminate Question?

[JBE]

For the guys making and selling a lot of laminate colored baits. What do you do with the sprues that are left over? Seems too time consuming to cut them in half if doing much volume and too costly to throw them all away. Also from a cost perspective how can the prices remain the same as the solid colors. I currently just hand inject all my plastics and can't seem to justify adding laminate color baits to my color selections. ?????????????????????

[Frank]

On laminates I sell to dealers I add the price of the plastic that cant be used again. I have a bait that weighs an ounce but 1/4 of it is sprue. On baits I sell I add the price of the sprue on all the baits laminate or not just to cover if they cant be used again. But have to admit 90% of what I do is a laminate bait. I have one customer that uses certain colors I make for him as a single color in his line up. Then I just add labor and no cost for the plastic. I think laminates will open a bigger door for you than single colors. Colors people come up with will blow your mind and they will pay for it. I have alot of plastic that has built up and could stand for some remalt work. Frank

[squigster]

I do not sell mine but I remelt all the sprues. The fish don't care most of the time as much as people will debate about different colors, shades and hues. Sometimes it does make a difference and I have my own confidence colors, but a black senko with a million different colors of flake is just as good as a green pumpkin one when they're on them. I am pretty sure the one senko yammamoto makes is just what i said. Its loaded with a multitude of flake colors and I think he dyes them all black from left overs but I have no proof of that. I also will save the sprues if I am doing a lot of the same color baits and I end up with a lot of sprues I just remelt them and make a few more baits in that batch. If you are selling them then its a little different because if you do not add heat stabilizer the colors will darken on successive remelts and people can complain about a new bag not being identical to a previous one.

I have about 50 lbs of old plastic in sealed bags and when i get bored, I throw it all in a presto pot and melt them all and make whatever color they come out to be. if I like the color they come out, then I use them, or I add black or greens or whatever to get a color I like and I try them and give them away to friends. Yes you cant make identical ones again because of the mixture but I personally do not care. If they catch fish great, if not I still had fun making them and did not waste any plastic.

As far as laminates, the prices are the same as a solid color because they have injection machines or hand injectors and most guys use two separate hand injectors (one of each color) so you use the same amount of plastic to make the bait so no additional cost involved. maybe a little bit more time to setup two colors but not much more. The plastics stay separated in the injectors so you can remelt them. If you do swirls by hand pouring then you can still remelt them but then it ends up like the old plastic I mentioned above. Laminate baits are more attractive to fisherman and to the fish and do sell better for the most part. Three color baits are really good too. Roboworm makes those and they are really good baits. Hope that helps.