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"Making a living" is a shaky statement. How much money do you need to "make a living?" In my opinion you can make a living making lures. The higher the amount that you expect is relative to the amount of money, dedication, and work you are going to have to put out. There are already people and companies making money doing this. So it is a no brainer that it can be accomplished. The number one thing that you need is drive and determination. Then, you will need to use your brain to design your product. Next you will need some MONEY. There are so many participants on this site that make statements like; "I don't have much money", "need something cheap", and "too much work" that I feel that you can count them out of being any competition to you. Very few people have built a successful business on nothing. To me…. this is a no brainer too. Next, you will need a great product. Those that started on Tacklemaking.com and moved over here 15 years ago did so because they were tired of buying crap. They were tired of putting out hard earned money for garbage. The base for all of the stuff on this site came from the dedication and hard work from those individuals (especially the work of Red Gator that started this site to begin with.) The work that they did was so original and innovative that big bait companies came here to get information on test results and how it was accomplished. A lot of truly wonderful and innovative work was lost here due to sever crashes. SO DON’T MAKE A BUNCH OF CRAP AND SELL IT!! You may make money in the short run, but once your name is trashed by turning out crap you won’t be selling for long. Your name and reputation is everything, so protect it! All of this tax stuff is pointless. If you are trying to make enough money to make a living you will have to make yourself a legitimate business. Why, because by doing that you get huge discounts and tax breaks on buying material to make your product. If you pay full retail price on material to make your product you stand to loose huge amounts of profit. Plus, you could be caught by “The Man”. We all have an idea what could happen to us now if we don’t pay taxes on the money that we make at our current job. Same thing applies here. Once you make yourself a legitimate business you will need to keep detailed and accurate records of where your money is spent and how much profit you make. Take this information to a tax preparer and let them worry about it. Most of us do this now and the cost is a little more because more than likely you will file quarterly. However, as in everything, the more you know the better off you are. If you truly believe that those that are successful at doing this are going to just lay it all out here on the site for everyone to follow, you are mistaken. You will be their competition. Most businesses of any kind don't want to help their competition. That would not be very smart to their bottom line. So if you are one of the few that have the drive and determination to make it happen, get to it. Time to roll up the sleeves and get busy. You will learn as you go. I wish you the best. Skeeter

Really nice setup... it looks like the perfect hobbist machine.... not so big that you feel you need to use 1 gallon of plastic to fire it up. Would love if there were more things in this size for personal use. Again - nice setup - very impressive. J.

It is indeed a banana head, I make that one too, the 3/16oz makes an awesome bitsy bug type jig.

Holy crap...the work some of you guys are able to achieve is absolutely incredible. Wish I had the skills/knowledge to build something like that! I went in another way with my knowledge which would be medical knowledge on how the body works/why it doesn't/how to fix it when it's broken but would LOVE to when day be able to learn how to do some metal working and wiring when I retire many many years from now haha.

Kind of looks like my banana head.

I use sst measuring spoons I stole from a kitchen drawer. Your method is way better than mine.

Forgot to mention I mix my paint in @2 oz. bottles I buy at a craft store for 50 cents each.

yes if using medium plastic you will need a fair amount of softener, even if using soft plastic you will still probably need some. the whole idea of the stick bait is to get the right weight to make it sink but also the right softness to make it wiggle. too soft and it wont rebound itself to keep wiggling, to stiff and it wont flex enough to wiggle. i put a lot of time an effort into the right ratio of plastic / salt / softener to get it just right. my suggestion is to experiment with formulas, write everything down and use different colors so you know what is what, test them in a pool or fish tank or even a clear lake to see what works the best.

If you ever get a chance to see one of those work . Be prepared to see an amazing piece of equipment . They can do almost anything except have babies .

I would like to know where to get one of those Blister Packaging Material packs, Can you help me out?