ominousone

bassmasta, You will be pumped when you get your kit. It really is a nice kit, high quality, and fairly all inclusive to start pouring.

senko, I believe the shaker's were the original's. Chatterbaits are a company making shaker's. I could be wrong, and I don't want to start a war. If wrong, those in the know I'm sure will be there to dispute.

I think the best molds will be one's that are for baits you will or have used a lot. With that being said, I think that with lurecraft selling molds that produce a bait that is flat on one side that the flukes come out great, the jig trailers equally as well (like a chunck trailer), the beaver molds are good except kinda hard to pour, I think that's all the molds I have from lurecraft. Anyway, I hope that helps and good luck and have fun.

Thomas, Bob's tackle shop had a real serious fire over the winter, and as far as I know bob, and del are the only one's making alum molds. So in a really high demand area, we lost 50% of our suppliers, you could see how this could create a problem. And yes, Del's molds are great.

hey, make sure that you call and speak with del before ordering the kit, because his demand is very high and sometimes molds take a while to get to you. I would check and see what he expects the wait to be for yorur mold. I know that I had to wait a month to recieve my 5 inch senko mold. (I"m not complaining, I guess I just didn't know what I was getting into).

maybe tape over the hook would work... just like taping off edges when painting a room

I think making your own baits is for people who like to save money, like tinkering, want to make a specialized lure, or have ice on their lakes all winter like I do. Really I think all of the afformentioned reasons are valid, and everyone who does it has their own combination of all of those things.

jcook, not to sound like a homer for tackleunderground.com but I am currently building a pot w/stirer with the plans listed on said website. If you go there and look under the soft plastic forum for turkey fryer pot (or something similar) you will see how a bunch of guys figured out how to turn a fry daddy into a pouring pot (18 bucks at wally world). Also using a drill press and a custom bit you can create an automated stirring system for melting pots to keep your salt suspended and really bust out some baits. Using this system you can create a machine that would cost atleast a grand. Or buying the fry daddy alone you could save 40 bucks or so over buying a melting pot. Good luck.

I think that you could just not dip the hook in to keep it from being applied to the hook.

thomas, have you checked out the soft plastic tutorial listed on the forum on tackleunderground.com? It's really good, and will answer a lot of questions for you. I will tell you that 4:1 will make a bait too soft probably. I like my worms really soft and I tried 4:2:1 (plastic, salt, softener) and they came out too soft. Maybe like 4:2:0.5 would be good. Hey, btw who did you end up getting your mold from? A lot of people on here have mentioned Del, but bob's tackle shop is up and running too and I have heard nothing but good about him too.

I just got my turkey fryer and a nice large stainless steel pan to melt down the tire weights. I am gonna go look at the protective equipment and see what they all look like. I think that I may just set the pan to heat outdoors and give it some space for a good while. Wouldn't any moisture pop and explode soon after the lead is melted and then leave me with a good base of lead and slag remaining? I'm gonna have to just try this all and see what happens. Thanks to everyone for all the help.

zoomer, that the most complete list I have heard of for melting lead. I have a healthy fear of it, but I was only thinking of buying a good set of heavy leather gloves, and I have a face sheild for welding laying around. What's a welding cap? Also a cape sleeve w/bib, I haven't heard of that either. Any input and approx prices would be appreciated. I have bought a ton of lead stuff, but haven't used a thing due to the fact that I want a nice outdoor day to make my ingots.

wormy, if I remember right staminainc has lure bodies for a decent price.

you will also need a mold of some sort. If you are only doing this a little bit that would be all, but you may also want to invest in some heat stabilizer and perhaps some more plastic as adding some plastic and stabilizer will make a higher quality bait.

a book you say... I can't seem to get enough info, so what's the deal with the book?

bassbum, tackleunderground.com has a wonderful tutorial on making molds. I will say this though, I tried and my results were only o.k. and I ended up buying the molds anyway. Also, I will tell you Del's alum molds are so nice to work with for a fully rounded lure. Lurecrafts molds are great for baits that are alright having a flat side. I thought a flat side, yuck, but jig trailers, beavers, flukes, and i'm sure many others look great as a one sided lure (and some of them are one sided to begin with). Basically I'm rather new to this, but I am money and quality conscience and I would do this: buy the senko kit from del, you can't beat the mold and everything that goes with it for the cost figure out what you can use as a one sided lure and try a couple from lurecraft plaster of paris is cheap, so maybe try a mold with that (don't use engine paint to seal it, the paint comes off) if your good w/plaster than maybe you will want to use it more, but I think that you will find that approx 10 bucks from lc is not bad at all, and if your like me once you have senko's, jig trailers, beavers, flukes, and a lizard of some sort you'll have just about everything that you'll want to pour, and you could obtain probably all of those materials for under 200 bucks including picking up some more colors and glitters. That 200 bucks should get you enough baits to fish this whole summer and next summer you will only have plastic and whatever else the baitmakingmonkey demands to buy. Last words on this extremely long post: The baitmakingmonkey is as dangerous if not more dengerous the original monkey. Be careful. I kid you not, the monkey has demanded that I build what I am now terming my "Lab" or "workshop" to create my lures in. Mind you I have only been into this for a few month's and that's how deep I am now. Good luck be careful, and have fun. It really is fun making them.

is the mod podge just the regular mod podge or something special? I bought some of the regular stuff, but I'm just not sure if it's right. There were like 10 kinds at the craft store I went to and the fella helping me looked like he'd be much more comfortable picking out pink lace than helping a fisherman.

tackleunderground.com has a great tutorial in there member submitted tutorial section. I think the tutorial is like 7 or 8 pages long. It covers a lot of ground.

I went with the stick mold and it's perty dead on for a senko. I picked up the stick starter kit from del and love it. For $100 you get everything you need to make a ton of sticks.

you may want to try the lurecraft senko mold, I know it's a lot cheaper and you will probably recieve it two days after your order. it's a new mold, so, no I haven't tried it. It does say fully round mold which is something new for lurecraft. Heck I may try one of the molds just so when I'm pouring I can pour more sticks at a time.

Minn, I am starting to melt lead myself, and have done a lot of reading. A lot of people use these weights for jigs. From what I have read some people also buy pure lead ingots and mix them in with ingots that have been created from the wheel weights. O.k. how to use those wheel weights, to the best of my limited understanding: Get some kind of large pot and melt them down in thatm, the clips will melt off. You can either remove them with a magnet or a ladle. You will also need to remove any other impurities that rise to the top (oft called slag). After this you need to pour the lead out into ingots, there are ingot molds that you can buy but someone suggested to me that old cup cake pans would work well. Now you can use those ingots any time that you need lead for jigs. Of course you could do this in your pot and only make a one days pouring supply, but from what I understand it's better to clean all the lead you have acquired into ingots and use after. Also, I know that I have a real healthy fear of molten lead; I hope you do to, the stuff can really damage a person. Actually that's what has kept me from going on past buying my supplies and acquiring a 5gallon pale full of wheel weights (that and it has been only about 20 degrees here lately and I plan on working outside) sorry if I have confused more than I have helped

you can melt plastic using a microwave, just pick up a pretty good sized pyrex measuring cup and melt it in there. tackleunderground.com will probably answer most of your questions in there softplastic faq page. As far as start up kits, I really liked the one I recieved from del-mart.com I'd call and make sure he has everything in stock, sometimes you can wait a long time for aluminum molds. I just warn you, pouring plastic is something that you will pick up a starter kit, and next thing you know it you're building an addition on the house for your workshop (that's me right now).

isn't corking a weighted hook counterproductive? How about just cutting off some of the weight with a pair of snips? Or is the point a larger profile?

a lot of questions. First of all, I will answer all of your questions with this... read, read, read, and then practice, practice, practice. On this website and many others you will find a great deal of info on techniques, tackle, and whathaveyou. I know your thinking great, thanks, jerk... I will tell you this, a spinnerbait can simply be used by casting and retrieving, the longer you wait to start your retrieve the lower the bait will run. There are other techniques, but this is one. A plastic worm (senko, or other salt infused worm) is usually best fished by dead sticking it, or catching them on the fall. Use wide gap hooks or extra wide gap hooks and put hook point into one end, slide hook up to the eye, turn it around 180 degrees, and re-insert point into the worm so that it makes it weedless. Adding weight just above the the worm makes it a texas rig, putting weight higher up on the line before a swivel will make it a carolina rig, and adding no weight (are you ready for this???) makes it weightless. The only other way of rigging these is to just hook it in the middle of the worm and that's called wacky. If your at a wal-mart look at a package of Tiki-stick's they show all of these different techniques on the back of the package. And they only cost 2.92 which I'm sure is important for a high school guy. As far as surface, cranks, and others, I'm not even close to informed enough to give even a basic tutorial, I use them, I just don't know how to simply explain to you. Good luck and I think even if you try and use spinnerbaits and senko's alone you will have success, and it sounds like you already have them in your tacklebox or can obtain them cheaply.