Been a while, but these will do

Been a while since I’ve poured and painted. Don’t think stick-on eyes were a thing. Built a bunch of fluid bed cups. Ordered a bunch of eyes and hooks, and away we go. Experimenting tonight but so far so good. Some tweaks to be made. I need to find my forceps rather and warped needle nose lol. Feedback for improvement welcome. I got the paint on the hooks a little dialed down. My lead and mold was giving me a fit when I poured this evening. I ran out of fuel in a stove I use to heat the lead and it poured cold, so some no so great pours. Melted the ones that were awful. Need to figure out (research) how to cut the excess off and make it look good.

Attachment 398669

Look good. I use a very dull pocket knife to clean the heads if they need them. Its REALLY dull so no danger to cutting myself but a fine metal file will also work. Good job!

Dull old pocket knife and a small file

Looks great to me!

I use a razor blade and emery board for cleaning my heads. I buy two different grits options for the emery board and on each board has two different grits so you have a total of four different grits to choose from. I'm careful to file head away from me so that I'm not inhaling all the lead dust.

When I heat my jighead, I heat it as close to the edge of the heat gun as possible so that the barb isn't in the heat. This way it gets minimal paint on barb and what paint does get on hook shaft is still powder and can be easily rubbed off with finger or fingernail. Same with non barb heads. Razor blade can also easily get paint if it does harden off hook shaft.

As far as the paint on the hook. I use a heat gun and hold the jig by the hook near the bend . Heat the jig, dip in the paint. Then you can just use you finger to wipe the paint off the hook. Before you return it back to the heat gun. Give it a try it works for me.

Thanks for the tips! I screwed this batch up. They still caught fish, but I took a shortcut when finishing them, and the eyes slid forward on most of them lol. They still caught fish Saturday, but it still erks me.

I don’t paint the head. I hold by the shank and heat, then grab the jig by the eye with bent tip needle nose pliers with the pliers back along the point and dip, then tap and return to the heat to glaze. Haven’t had to clean an eye in ten years.

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Originally Posted by skeetbum

I don’t paint the head. I hold by the shank and heat, then grab the jig by the eye with bent tip needle nose pliers with the pliers back along the point and dip, then tap and return to the heat to glaze. Haven’t had to clean an eye in ten years.

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This is the way I did it for years.

Thanks for the tips. I need to make some more up. I "ruined" most of these in the finishing process. Tried to take the easy way out. Pink turned out perfect. Yellow was pretty decent. Orange and junebug not so much. I was trying to avoid clear coating them, and cured them with the eyes on them. No clear coat. The eyes slid forward and some of them look like the minnows that youve caught 4 fish off of, or bream have hit a time or 3 :dono