Well I just bought myself a worm pouring kit from fishing world. I was wondering, can you melt down store bought worms to make new ones?

You can.  They are not as soft as the original and you will lose some of the coloring.  I would add some of your liquid hand pour plastic to the scrap plastic.  This will help it not burn so easy and make your bait a little softer.  Using scrap is good for pratice, but I would stick with hand pour plastic for my baits.  A word of caution, pouring baits is highly addictive.  Have fun.

You can. They are not as soft as the original and you will lose some of the coloring. I would add some of your liquid hand pour plastic to the scrap plastic. This will help it not burn so easy and make your bait a little softer. Using scrap is good for pratice, but I would stick with hand pour plastic for my baits. A word of caution, pouring baits is highly addictive. Have fun.

+1

Upnorth, thank you. I'm really looking forward to getting started. My kit should be here in 3-4 days. Once I get the hang of it I want to make my own molds. Hopefully this will help with the cabin fever this winter

Do you guys melt your plastic in the microwave or on the stove?

I use a microwave and Pyrex measuring cups.  The measuring cups are great because you can pour directly from them.  Make sure you use Pyrex.  I have heard that other brands such as Anchor House, can explode.  Get yourself a cheap microwave (mine was about $40) and some Pyrex measuring cups of various sizes and you'll be ready to rock.  Most of my molds are aluminum, but I have made several of my own out of fiberglass resin.  There is a tutorial on how to make resin molds along with tons of other info on tackleunderground.com.  Let us know how it goes.  Good luck!

Yes, I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for the info., you have been very helpful I read some horror stories about using the stove for melting plastics

I do mine in the basement using the oven. I heat the baits up to 400 slowly for about 10-15 minutes.(This includes heat up time) The microwave is too smokey. This will make them into liquid. I also use pyrex. I dip a senko into plaster paris let it hardin and then remove the lure. This makes a nice mold to pour into. Then I let it plasterize and slowly pull the original lure out. Melt down your plastic and pour it into the hole. Let hardin. The worms should then come out whole and should not rip. It beats throwing your old baits away. If I had a way to post pictues easy I would post some. THey are as good as the originals. Sometimes better in my opinion. I like taking two colors and making swirls and such into the worms. (Brown with white swirl or pumpkin seed with creme swirl) My baits tend to come out very soft. 8-). I use garlic and salt and glitterize everything with whatever need be. Of course store baught molds would save you hassle and such but the whole point for me it is to make new baits at almost 0 cost.

Basswagoner, I would really like to see some pics of how you do that, I'm a little confused :-/. Does that produce full round baits?

A candy thermometer is a good investment and gives you an idea of what the plastic should look like dripping from a stainless steel butter knife when it's ready to pour (no wood should ever be used to stir plastic). I find that the lower the temp the better, especially for a microwave, and the temp range that affects glitter or color least is between 280 and 315. Any hotter and you start to get black clumps.

Old plastic is fine, but expect the salt to settle out and the lure to be harder or softer than the original. Used plastic takes much less time to heat than new plastic and care must be taken not to overheat. If you start seeing smoke, it's too hot and the plastic is close to being ruined.

The temp should be below 280 IMO. Never reuse 3x plastic or mix it with regular plastic.

Not all glitter is equal. Metal craft glitter catches fire in the microwave and curls/pales in color in a soft plastic's Production Pot when overheated. Some colors (violet and maroon) bleed at temps above 320, which is okay for some color combos.

Unless a mold is a two part, you'll always get a flat surface. The bait will still catch fish, but have a different action which may not be significant. I used 1-part silicone molds from Lurecraft.com until making my own 2-part stick and grub molds. Visually it is more appealing to humans; bass could care less. Some lure designs only need to have a one part mold (Beavers, trailer, finesse worms , etc) to produce a good lure.

Once you start, it's hard to stop and once you catch fish on your own baits, you won't buy the same design from someone else unless the bag is in a clearance bin.