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A lot of builders don’t pour hot lead into their baits. You have more control using piece of lead or powdered lead and sealing the hole in the bait between safety, added time, expense of melting pot, harder to get an exact weight, limiting the way you can weight your lure and possible damage to your blank is why pouring hot lead into your lure is not the greatest option in my opinion just something to consider

LIGHTER density. This will allow you to control the sitting angle for your glide. You tune the angle with ballast. Like I said, gliders and jerk baits are out of my field, but lighter density body gives you room to adjust with ballast positions. Dave

Well written thread, i wouldnt throw it away either. .

I bent this in about 5 minutes just using pliers. It's nothing fancy, but it shows how simple the process can be.

I think your buddy is correct and see this all the time with lure makers. Making something custom or unique is meaningless if if doesn't truly elevate the product and rarely is the case. Guys get hung up on trying to differentiate their product and make "unique" fish catching designs but in the long run if we take a look at commercial sales as an indicator guess who isn't around after a few years. Yes you need to differentiate you product but too many try tricks and gimmicks as that is easy in comparison to making a product that performs better. Jigs are really more about performance. A head designed to perform under certain conditions (fishing wood, slipping through dense mats, not wedging into rocks, increased hook ups, skirt flare, etc....is the only thing that really matters in the long run based on who really ends up using jigs more often. Jigs are in my opinion one of those lures that keeps lure makers honest. Easy to make wacky soft plastics and cranks as every sap that fishes will toss out cranks, top waters, and some soft plastics and reel them back in and will catch some fish (even if they have no skill). Over the years I have fished with a lot of different skilled level people and for many you would be hard pressed to find jigs in their arsenal. The better the angler the more use of jigs due to many applications they end up being very dependent on the angler knowing how and where to fish them.

Worm oil and small hands.( think wife, daughter, niece,) we hired a friends 2 daughters to package for us. They did a great job and saved us a lot of time for pouring.

Yes, they can be remelted and poured again. I've found that adding some new, virgin plastisol with some heat stabilizer helps me to be able to reuse old plastics.

I approach them just like any other bait. Wood hardener is something I would not use and don't see any need for it, especially with bass cranks and down. I have a few baits I make that are around 2 inches or under slightly. Have made a few smaller ones but more for kicks as don't really fish them as rarely target crappie or gills anymore. The rust crank comes in at 1 7/8 but after carving the master just made a mold of it so "making" those aren't difficult. The other crank is right at two inches but broad and no problem to knock out. As they get smaller easier I find inserting a dowel into the belly weight hole (wrap the dowel with painters tape to get snug fit) makes handling and carving the bait much easier. For baits the size you are looking to do would definitely look at using a dowel to add an area to hold onto/support while working.