Covering up paint mistakes FYI

[flymoron]

I have made a LOT of powder paint mistakes, I have tried recoating with other colors etc.. and nothing worked good. But I trued “bama craw” color and it worked great! I have a pile of previous unusable jig heads that are all bama craw now!

[DockShootinJack]

Sounds like a great color

[SuperDave336]

All the many colors I have but that’s not one. Looking at them they’ve added several new ones since I purchased mine.

[Takeum]

A lot of times you can clearcoat with nail polish to hide smears or eyes with glue by applying another coat
I

[TreednNC]

Hooks and lead are cheap when you roll your own. Thankfully my favorite hooks are anyway. I gave a member here about 100 +/- heads that were either mistakes, blemishes, experiments, etc. He was happy to have them for brush pile season lol.

$0.037- Hooks
$0.015 Lead (based on an average jig weight of 0.12oz if you poured equal amounts of 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, and 1/4oz heads, and lead costing $2/pound (often free though)

at roughly a nickel in materials per head, it's not worth my time or labor to try and make chicken salad out of chicken dung

I might would reconsider if I were using a more expensive hook where hook costs alone were $0.15 a piece ( xx heavy mustad, priced per 1000 from Barlows)

[Cajuntec]

I kinda go the other way. Although hooks in bulk may be cheap, and I use a lot of reclaimed lead, I’m of the “waste not, want not” mentality. I don’t like trashing perfectly good materials, but like flymoron, I want them to come out right. So I usually have a bucket of “mistakes” - whether it’s a bad pour job, or bad powder coat. When I have enough, and when I’m pouring one day, I will break out the little torch and just hold the jigs over the pot. Melt the lead, tap the hook on the rim of the lead pot a few times, and put it aside. I’ll skim the impurities (burnt powder paint mostly) and repour them all at the end of the melt session.

I’ve got a preference for throwing really light wire spinnerbaits (more vibration) for bass, but they get mangled really good on a decent size fish. Some hooks, beads, swivels, skirts, blades (and re-melted lead) have been on 3 or 4 spinnerbaits so far because I keep reusing the components. The only thing wasted is the mangled wire.
All the best,
Glenn

[TreednNC]

I kinda go the other way. Although hooks in bulk may be cheap, and I use a lot of reclaimed lead, I’m of the “waste not, want not” mentality. I don’t like trashing perfectly good materials, but like flymoron, I want them to come out right. So I usually have a bucket of “mistakes” - whether it’s a bad pour job, or bad powder coat. When I have enough, and when I’m pouring one day, I will break out the little torch and just hold the jigs over the pot. Melt the lead, tap the hook on the rim of the lead pot a few times, and put it aside. I’ll skim the impurities (burnt powder paint mostly) and repour them all at the end of the melt session.

I’ve got a preference for throwing really light wire spinnerbaits (more vibration) for bass, but they get mangled really good on a decent size fish. Some hooks, beads, swivels, skirts, blades (and re-melted lead) have been on 3 or 4 spinnerbaits so far because I keep reusing the components. The only thing wasted is the mangled wire.
All the best,
Glenn

I've done that a few times, but since I quit saltwater fishing, my lead consumption has drastically dwindled, and I've got way more than I'll likely ever use in my lifetime. I have a pile in a bowl that have obvious defects that I'll reclaim the lead from once the bowl gets full, but once I figure out a new mold's nuances, I usually dont get many. Of the one's that escape the initial QC scan, I'll find when painting, and those usually get tossed aside for experiments and such.

Funny you mentioned waste not want not. As loose as I may be with lead, I watch some tying videos where guys waste so much marabou but pulling all the fluff of a quill in the same direction, and then cut to length. I cringe because on MOST quills, I'll strip and stack the fluff off the rachis, then cut to length, so as not to waste it lol