dicknite

LOL! Yep! I just got off the phone with him! Sorry about that! Old, Ugly and Stupid is no way to go through life - and I can testify to that! I left you a message on your phone. Sorry for the confusion! Dick

Hey Kenny! In the email I sent, I told you we'd be back in the office on Monday - but that was optimistic, it turns out! Just got back and emailed you an answer. Check your email. For future reference for all the TU guys, if you need to purchase from Canada, and if you have a US shipping address we can use, simply email us - the special TU order page won't work for Canadian orders. We can force it through from this end tho, as long as there is a US address to ship to. Dick

milrtyme24 - please email me. If you paid for a bottle and it was hard when you got it, "that just ain't right"! I will replace it. dicknite@dicknite.com Dick milrtyme24 - please email me. If you paid for a bottle and it was hard when you got it, "that just ain't right"! I will replace it. dicknite@dicknite.com Dick

Marc David - what is the base structure? Like bluetickhound said, if it is translucent or opaque material, our Top-Coat will not change that. If it is clear, then it will stay clear and the Top-Coat will put a shiny finish over the pearl. The only time I have seen our Top-Coat make anything clearer is when the body started out clear, but it was dulled by wear. Then it fills in the tiny scratches and makes it clear again.

I did some work to the page and made it so you can now click on the pictures and see a photo of each color. As we all know, monitors are very seldom color-correct and don't show fluorescence well, so keep that in mind when viewing the pictures. Still working on the application page. Glad to see by nedyarb's post that things are working a lot more smoothly.

The liquid plastic top-coat (S-83) is a product formulated for dipping foam lures (like maybe spin-n-glows or cheaters) in prior to painting for a smooth finish. Not really very durable as a top-coat, but some folks like it for a sealer/base and a few actually use it for a top-coat. The "G" series of paints are lacquer based, fluorescent paints. Day Glow Pink is very popular for Salmon, Trout, Shad, and other lures. The "G" series is as close to opaque as we make (other than white and black). Most people lay a base coat of bright white and then apply the Day Glow's. G79 is our Orange Nite Glow, G80 is our regular Nite Glow. They both charge up with light and glow in the dark. They both REQUIRE a top-coat, as they oxidize without it. Our "S" series of paints is transparent. Many are fluorescent, and they allow the base color to show through. Good for a blue or flame stripe down the side of a lure, or for airbrushing patterns. The "I" series is our transparent paints with Holographic Glitter in them. I guess one of the things I should put on that order page is a link to a pdf file of descriptions and applications, eh? Dick

I finally fixed the order problem for you guys! I built a new order page for TackleUndergrounders! No more of the old, "send an email, wait for a response and for me to pack the order and weigh it so I can send you a PayPal invoice, wait for a response, me get the payment, write up the order in the computer, put the shipment into the UPS software, print the label, and ship the order all while you wait again" process... Trust me, I appreciate the hassle it has been for all of you, and I assure it has been no cake-walk here either... Well, it's all fixed, in place, and ready to roll! Now, you simply go to the site, click "Add to Cart" for the items you want, enter your information for PayPal, click "Check Out" and it automatically gives you your approximately 65% discount, figures the shipping (using a flat $10 rate now - I'll eat whatever more it is in order to expedite this process), takes your payment, and sends the order directly to my shipping department! Orders should ship the next business day from now on! Here's the link to the new order page - it's the same as the old link: http://www.dicknite.com/TU_Lander.htm You might want to bookmark it, make it a favorite, or whatever it is called in your browser, because it is not accessible from the main web site. It is only for TackleUnderground members and their friends and families! You are still getting the same price large-scale manufacturers get. It's in the neighborhood of 65% off of retail. The prices listed on the site include the discount, so there are no codes to put in, or hoops to jump through. Since you are going there from TU, I know you are legit! I plan on adding a few things to it in the future, like clicking on each paint color and having it pop up a window with information about it, MSDS sheet downloads, and the like, but for now, this is going to solve the biggest problem we have had - you having to wait for this fat old-guy to catch up enough to get the orders processed manually! I really want to thank you all for your patience over the past several years. You have been more than generous with your understanding and I can't express how much that has meant to me. TackleUndergrounders are the absolute best customers I have! Thanks again, Dick

Hey Folks! I came here to let you all know about the new order page I just built that will make ordering about a million times faster, then I ran into this thread! Before I talk about the order page, I want to address some of the things being discussed here on this thread. First, I DO NOT PUT MY PAINTED LURES IN A FOOD OVEN. Neither do I put them in an explosive atmosphere. NEITHER SHOULD YOU! My oven is simply a plywood "box" that has about a dozen shelves in each side. It is force-fed hot air from a ceramic heater in a completely separate area. At no time can flammable fumes find their way to the heat source. An explosion proof heat source is necessary. Use of a respirator is required also. No solvent is good for you (even alcohol can do severe damage!), so don't take chances. The reason I use 100 degree heat, as was mentioned, is simply to get the solvents to evaporate more quickly. It doesn't seem to actually decrease the drying time after the solvents are gone. Second, as for the crinkle effect, I wish I knew how to do that on metal lures. I have tried and failed miserably. This makes me think that possibly it is the fact that it is on wood... Maybe the brass I use is cooler? This is really interesting, and as you all know, I'm not a scientist so I would have to do a lot of testing on different materials and at different temperatures to come up with any sort of an answer. The fact that scuffing or sanding the original coat seemed to help in one case above makes me wonder if the first coat was actually completely cured. As you know, the cure time for this strain of top-coat is "Up to 30 days" to be completely outgassed and cured. We don't notice any difference after the first couple of days, but the solvent in the second coat and subsequent lifting / shifting caused by it curing on top of the skin of the first coat may have something to do with it. Third, as far as the MSDS sheets for the Top-Coat and our other Paints, Lure-Coat in general, I have them on our server and you can download them (they are PDF format, so you should be able to read them). They are large - each one is about 7MB. Lure-Coat (other than Top-Coat) is viewable here: http://www.dicknite.com/MSDS%20-%20Lure%20Coat.pdf Top-Coat is viewable here: http://www.dicknite.com/MSDS%20-%20Top%20Coat.pdf Hope this helps! Now I am off to post a message about the new order page that takes your order, applies shipping (flat rate), accepts payment, and sends the order directly to my shop - no more of this email, wait, paypal invoice, wait, payment, wait, shipment, wait stuff - your orders should ship the next day from now on! Thanks for being a great bunch of folks! Dick

Hey Folks! Got a spare minute and came to see what my friends at TU were up to... All of you are right! I does take me altogether too long to process your orders, I do get overwhelmed at times, emailing to get an order and PP invoice is a pain in the rear, and I am hard to get in touch with sometimes... (My wife is NOT looking over my shoulder, so I can say those things - if she were, I would have to claim perfection!) There is a light at the end of the tunnel! One reason for the email/PP Invoice is, as was said, the discount you guys get. I can't have that floating around out there, and PayPal is a bit of a challenge to allow discounts with discount codes... The other (main) challenge is shipping charges - they vary so wildly by address. A guy 2 miles from you might pay up to $10 more due to UPS routes, residential, commercial, etc... If I were to charge a flat rate, some folks would be getting taken and some would be getting a bargain. Not fair that way. The light? I have a completely new website being built that will take your order, remember you (login), look up your address and cross reference it with UPS, figure the correct shipping amount and when you order, it will apply the discount you are entitled to and correct shipping charges! So - like I have told so many of you before, I am really sorry for delays. I do try to make up for it when I can, and the problem is within 2 - 3 months of being cured! Next problem - packaging and storage issues... <to be continued> Thanks again for all your support! Dick

Mike - That is wierd - I think I remember replying to at least one of your emails saying that we could swap... Oh well, email me again and we'll get it done. No use trying to use something you don't really want! Or, call me - 800-324-5651 (Usually Wednesday to Friday is best - Monday and Tuesday are hell-days...) Dick

Hey Guys - Extremely sorry for the delays you have been experiencing. I sent off about 25 invoices last night to TU folks who have been patiently waiting. I included an additional 15% discount on top of your TU discount just because you are all so understanding. All the orders I sent invoices for are packed and awaiting a shipping label, so any PayPal payments will result in immediate shipment. Again - I am really sorry for the delay. It seems like it's always something! You folks are a great bunch of folks and I appreciate you a lot! Dick

Looked at it, but since there are solvents in our product, the bag has to be solvent-proof. One of the big (3M?) companies sells a useable bag system, but when I contacted them about Pint and Quart size bags - well, let's just say that they are pretty proud of their products! They wanted over $4 for a single pint sized bag - and that was if I ordered 10,000 of them! Still looking... Dick

Sorry Curt - I answered your Private Message. You didn't do anything wrong - we are simply overwhelmed with a Pink Salmon season that is coming on here in Washington - 6+ Million fish coming into the rivers in Puget Sound, and we are the "go-to" lure... Kinda running around like heads with our chickens cut off... You will receive a PayPal invoice. Thanks for the order! Dick

I make lures and paints because I figured out a long time ago that when I am punching someone else's time clock, they expect me to actually be there when THEY want me to be there, not when I want to! Now, I get to work 24/7/52! Much nicer...

He He... I have not had time to put the new top-coat formulas on the website... I have too many hats to wear, and the "website designer" hat is buried somewhere WAY below the "painter", "salesman", "accountant", "customer relations", "inventory manager", "office manager", "shop manager", "chief cook" and "bottle washer" hats... If you ever need information, simply email me (those that have tried calling have found that at certain times of the year, the "recptionist" and "voice mail answerer" hats are somewhere near the "website designer" hat) and ask away. I am more than happy to send samples for free if you pay the shipping cost, so you can see just how the different top-coats work on YOUR lures. Simply click on the link in my signature line on this, or any other, messages I post here and it will take you to the page for order information. Thanks for your interest!

I get calls weekly (okay, sometimes monthly) from people who want us to "dropship" for them. I believe there are some late-night infomercials, get-rich-quick books, or something like that out there that tell people that it is "easy to make money! Just find manufacturers who will send the items to the customers you find, and you can collect the difference between what the manufacturer actually charges and what you want to charge!" Only about a hundred problems with that scenerio - here are a few: Manufacturers of fishing tackle don't usually ship in onesey-twosey quantities - retailers do that. Shipping costs on a few lures are, percentage wise, quite expensive. Finding a manufacturer who will do this will be EXTREMELY difficult (I even charge my wholesalers, who buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth a year, a drop-shipping fee of $25 per order!). Some (not all) manufacturers, if they ARE set up to ship small quantities, would rather have the full profit and sell direct to the end-customer - you get bypassed. There is really no economic reason for a manufacturer to do a drop-ship program on low-dollar items like fishing tackle. Finding customers these days is pretty easy - get a wholesaler to carry your product and they do it for you! That's simply how it is. Most manufacturers won't sell off of their own websites, unless it is for full suggested retail PLUS shipping and taxes - they don't want to make their wholesalers and retailer customers mad - something about the manufacturer undercutting the wholesaler and retailer makes the wholesaler and retailer not buy any more product! I am an EXTREMELY small manufacturer - under a million pieces a year - and even I can't justify grinding the wheels of industry to a stop to package up a couple of lures to then take to the post office and mail off. It stops production and shipping of the 20,000 lure orders. Not really cost-effective... I do sell our paints to you TackleUnderground folks, at a discount, but that is simply because I have been coming here for years and you are a pretty good group of folks - and (let's be honest!) it promotes my paint line! I consider the heavy discount and time spent invoicing, packing, shipping, and accounting for the sales a good investment. (Heck, you all even helped me formulate a new top-coat!) Drop ship programs might work for higher priced items, I don't know, but I would wager that 99.999999% of all the tackle sold on retailer websites is shipped from a warehouse that the website owns and keeps full of product. Just my two cents - I hate to see someone get all excited about something that there is little chance of happening. Heck, I even buy used lottery tickets - they are WAY less expensive, and there is only a 1:7,000,000 less chance of winning! Dick

The excise tax is only on products produced for sportfishing - paints, thinners, brushes, glitters and the like do not have it. The only thing you will pay excise tax on without the Form 637 being filed are hooks, swivels, bodies, fishing line, and those sort of things. Getting the 637 filed saves you time and aggravation in the long-run. When you sell your product, you pay the excise tax on the whole thing, since the whole thing is for sportfishing - I believe (Your CPA might know - I am not one, and don't claim to know anything, let alone anything that could get you in trouble!) you can deduct (or file for a refund) the excise tax on the components you already paid it on, but the products themselves become part of the new product, so you still have to pay the 10% on your total sale price... If you have the 637 filed, you don't have to worry about the math and hassle of calculating it out (if you can). I believe the Form 637 is a permanent item - once you have it, you don't have to mess with it again. 720 tax is paid to the IRS. Dick

I've been spraying our S81 Moisture Cure Top-Coat through an air brush for about 15 years now - it works fine. Simply thin with acetone to a consistency you can spray a wet coat (I start 25 - 30% thinned and adjust from there), then let it dry. Clean up with lacquer thinner (take the brush apart and CLEAN it, don't just spray LT through it - no surprises next spray that way!). Works well with small to large air brushes as well as touch-up and larger guns. Dick

You might try http://www.blisterpackaging.com - that is PowerPak who makes blister machines and also sells all sorts of blisters and clamshells. I believe he is an advertiser on here... Used to be anyway. I bought two machines and still buy all my cards and blisters from them. Great folks. Dick

That one works for ordering - well, really for anything for you guys, but email to that address goes directly into a "TU Orders" mailbox for processing. 2 other ways to get in touch - Regular email: dicknite@dicknite.com Toll-Free Phone: 888-321-LURE (patience might be required - only 4 people here (all in production), so sometimes the phone goes to voicemail...) Thanks for giving out the email, Bob! Dick

Blazt* - Sorry, didn't see the email. Sanding should not be a problem at all, as long as it is completely out-gassed (solvent all gone all the way through). If it isn't, you will gum up your sandpaper - which would simply be a pain. I agree with RayburnGuy that 400 would be a good starting place - of course that depends on how thick it is to start, but anything rougher could really dig in and get to your paint. Have you experimented with simply brushing the surface with acetone? I have done that on lures I screwed up before the top-coat was cured fully and it smoothed things out nicely ready for another coat. I'll try to watch my email more closely. Just introduced a new Kokanee Dodger and that has been dominating my attention. Well, that and Uncle Sam. (Excise taxes - a fun part of our businesses! <NOT!>) Dick

That's an EXCELLENT question, John! We have been packaging Dick Nite Spoons with both Skin-Packing and Blister Packs for 15 years (maybe more??) with the old style S81 and never had a problem. The "New" S81 is so close to exactly the same as the "old", I can't imagine a problem. The S82 and S83, however, have never been tested for this - we did worm and tackle box testing, but not blisters... Look forward to any responses either way - Thanks John! Dick

Excellent instruction. We use nirogen in our shop for all containers of top-coat. Even have it on the top of the TC waiting to ship. Anything that doesn't absorb moisture and is heavier than air will work. Bloxygen works well, I am told, but we use enough I simply got a bottle of nitrogen from the welders supply and regulate a bit onto the top of anything that is ever opened. Thanks for the good commentary, Bob! Dick

My Bad, as my son would say! Really doesn't matter as long as we all know which one we are talking about. WRTC could be shortened to WR, since they are all TC (Top-Coats). Leave it to me to re-confuse an already confused subject! Dick

Dang! Sounds like some of the S82 (Water Reducible Top Coat - or WRTD) got out in the wild in metal cans... Sorry about that! It will NOT affect the quality of the finished product, but since it "Pinks" (turns pink) when it comes into contact with steel, we decided to use plastic to keep the confusion and concern levels down. Some of the test samples were packaged in metal prior to our finding this out. As for the "brown crud" that some have said is building up around the lip of the can, I can only guess that it is rust. I would wipe that out and then transfer the liquid to a glass or plastic container. Any new S82 (WRTC) is being packed and shipped in the plastic (HDPE) containers. If anyone paid for S82 and it came in a metal can, if you are concerned with it, I will re-ship in plastic. (There should only be about 4 pints/quarts possibly in the wild.) If it was a sample product, anything you purchase in the future will be in plastic. Really sorry about this - not sure how it happened, but those of you who have been following this oddessy know that we were running around like heads with our chickens cut off, so anything is possible, I guess. I would like to request something - the term DN2 is extremely confusing for me and others - since I now have 3 top-coats. Some folks are emailing me and talking about DN2, then when I go their order history I find that they ordered the new moisture cure, which they are calling DN2. Others call the moisture cure DN1 and the WRTC DN2, I even had 2 folks email me asking about the new DN1... Aaaargh! :^) If we could use either the "S" number (S81 is Moisture Cure, S82 is Water Reducible, S83 is Liquid Plastic), or the type (MC, WRTC, LP), it certainly would keep the confusion at a minimum. I'm getting old and it is getting harder to keep track of these things...