Practice with Old plastic - Can you melt with Microwave

[smallie_seeker]

I have been reading alot here lately and have got my supplies in, so I am about ready to start pouring.

But I have a bunch of old plastic that I would like to melt down to practice with before I start using up my supplies. Because I bet my first few pours (if not more) are not going to be perfect.

So can I melt down old plastics in the Microwave to practice?

Or do you have to use a stove to melt them? From some other threads I saw that you have to melt them slowly.

So I was thinking of the microwave 10-15 seconds at a time until they are good and gooey. Will that work?

Thanks,

smallie_seeker

[smallie_seeker]

Of course two minutes after I post this I find a thread here through a google search on how to do this!

Microwave 2-3 minutes. Check after the 1st minute and stir..

[alsworms]

Also be VERY careful as to which brand of bait you're melting down. I'm definitely no expert in this area, but past experience has told me there's at least 3 brands I would NEVER try remelting.......

Berkley

Yamamoto

Zoom

[One Sock]

OOOF, be careful what you choose to re-melt, some stuff out there will put off some very noxious fumes thast could probably kill small woodland creatures.. If your willing to pay for shipping I could scrounge up some scrap you could practice with, I have about 40 pounds of it :-)

[David Reid]

Smallie_Seeker, One should be very careful with what one mixes. If one is remelting plastic it should all ideally be from the same source and ideally the same plastic brand although often this second situation is harder to achieve. One should not mix disimilar plastics as while most petro chemical plastics will eventually break down in the long term often in this situation where plastics are mixed the plastic merely disintergrates breaking the long chemical chains into smaller chains but leaving particles in the enviroment that do not break down often for years and centuries and in some cases millennia.

What Alsworms and Sock are saying is correct and makes a lot of sense. It really does comes down to the original source and type of plastic. Eg. The Japanese are using quite a lot of polyesters mostly aliphatic polyesters in their manufacture of SPs whereas in the US the plastics of choice tend to be PVC Dispersion Plastisols of various origins. The longterm answers are in biodegradable plastics and this is what people like Berkley have set out to do with their use of Gulp although I note they disregard this with things like their Powerbait and others. Nothing is perfect unfortunately and sometimes there are marketing reasons behind decisions. They didnt grow to be about the third biggest fishing takle company in the world by doing everything 100% correctly and ideally how it should be done. I encourage you and others to be judicious and very cautious with your mixing of plastics. It is rather ironic and not by mistake that 2 of the countries which have a long history of plastics manufacture and and exporting a lot of their plastics often of an inferior nature in the past all over the world in their products and who are 2 of the largest plastic manufacturing countries worldwide namely Germany and Japan now have very stringent controls on the manufacture and recycling of their plastics and are now starting to push the use of biodegradable plastics more and more. In the above examples Berkley and Yamamoto both use high pressure Injection Moulding and the products they use are slightly different plastics. I cant speak for Zoom but I imagine the case is the same.

As a general rule I suggest you follow the following general Guidelines:

1) Dont blend any of the 3 bait plastics mentioned into your remelts.

2) Dont if possible mix other plastics in your remelts.

3) If it gives off particularly noxious fumes when being heated and remelted dont use it in your remelt.

4) Exercise discretion at all time when doing remelts.

5) Try and use plastic of only 1 type and preferably 1 source in your remelts.

6) If mixing plastics which you are not entirely sure of try to use this plastic for preheating your molds rather than using it for baits, onselling it, or possibly contaminating the enviroment with a mixture.

Hope this is of some help. Always remember "a little knowledge is often a dangerous thing" and "through a glass we see darkly". The situation is improving and will only improve for the small operator and manufacturer if they exercise caution and dont do things they shouldnt. David

[smallie_seeker]

Thanks for the repsones guys. This message board is very similar to my "home board" where you get helpful responses and not blasts that try to make you feel like you know nothing,although, at this time I no very little right now . That will change I am reading to try to gain more knowledge. I am not getting in to this to sell, but to fuel my fishing habit and make my own creations. Nothing gives you more satisfaction than catching fish on something you made! I have been tying arctic fox and rabbit hair jigs, and making spinnerbaits for sometime and loved it so much that I had to get into softplastics as the next step in my addiction. This winter I caught the most and biggest Smallies I have ever caught in the cold water, and I truely believe it was due to the baits I made. I outfished a couple very good fisherman this year on my baits and it was a very rewarding feeling.

The plastics I use and have scraps from are from hand pours from a couple guys I buy from. The only high volume plastics I buy are tubes, and thats only because you can get them in almost any color, size and scent you want, for about $0.20 each if in bulk. But all of my go to baits are from small home made guys hand pours and custom molds!

So, Thanks for the tips not to use the Berkley and GY! I do have some Mizmo tubes I was going to remelt with the other stuff, because they were close in color to the hand pours it had scrap from.

I am going to HD tomorrow to buy supplies to build a ventalation system for my workshop. I dont want any fumes to make me grow another arm! Although that might come in handy to pour more baits!

Thanks again guys!

[willie525]

yeah berkley smells really bad when melted

[One Sock]

as does zoom..oooooooffff. funny you mentioned other guys plastics. when i first started i melted down some stuff i bought on e-bay, some was fine to re-melt but others were really bad, not sure what they were using to make worms but it wasn't good