jigmeister

Easy just lay the hook you want to use on the open mold lining it up with the hook eye and cavity . with a sharp pencil or fine sharpie trace around both sides of the hook making an outline of the hook .Using a dremil tool with a small ball tipped cutter start grinding out aluminum about 1/2 the diameter of the hook wire . Check depth every so often by placing the hook in the slot you're cutting so you don't cut too deep . When happy do the same to the other half . Make sure the mold closes fully with a hook when you're done or you will have a flashing of lead around the parting line between mold halves . You can fill or block off parks of a mold you don't want such a skirt collars with JB weld or red automotive High Temp silicone .

Line twist ? We don't care about no stinkin line twist !

From what I have read a Hopkins spoon balanced heavier at the line tie end to give it a little wiggle on the drop when fished vertically . I have fired those 3/4 oz Hopkins spoons a long way at breaking fish and I don't ever remember a problem with them fouling in flight . I maybe wrong here but I have always assumed the distinct wiggle of a Kastmaster was due to the tail heavy attitude on retrieve and balance of the bait . I guess the way to know for sure would be to swap the hook on a Kastmaster to the thin end and see if it tumbles in flight and then see if the action on retrieve is impacted ?

OK got it you have both flat sides oriented parallel to one another . The kastmaster actually has a slight taper between both flats from the hook end and thinning out running up to the line tie end . (maybe 10 deg ballpark) Since you mentioned kastmasters I thought that's what you were going for . I think I remember seeing some big saltwater jigging spoons that are similar to yours in design though .

Great reading guys . Probably around 15 years ago I made up a balsa prototype crankbait copying an original big O with a built in adjustable ballast system to solve the mystery of hunting cranks (or so I thought ). I adjusted the weight up and it hunted , moved the weight down it hunted . Seeing not much of a difference regardless of ballast position I removed the ballast weight from the bait entirely and to my amazement it still hunted ? I had to figure it was just my luck to spend all of the time making up this adjustable bait that turned out to be useless for it's intended purpose . I contemplated the resonance factor in hunting baits and my thinking was that the bill , line tie .hook placement , lure shape , and retrieve speed all contribute to the frequency at which the bait oscillates while the density of the body material will have a set resonant frequency . Nicola Tesla performed a bunch of experiments relating to resonant frequencies . A major discovery was that any object had one and only one frequency where resonance occurs . If the frequency was then raised above or dropped below this resonant frequency of the object resonance ceases . If the oscillation frequency of a swimming crankbait body matches the natural resonant frequency of the lure body it should become unstable and hunt . Predicting the natural resonant frequency of a blank lure body was a problem though . I dreamt up an idea for a vibrating table that wood lure bodies could be placed on and slowly ramp up the frequency until resonance occurs (indicated by the lure wildly dancing about on the table ) and go until it settles out and record those frequencies . If you know the crankbait oscillation frequency with a given configuration and matched this to a lure body that resonates at this same frequency in theory you should have a hunting bait when resonance occurs and the bait becomes unstable. Could it really be this simple?

I believe the original Kastmasters have the hook at the other end of the bait (fat end) . I think the original Kastmasters are made from brass and chrome plated . The density of the steel compared to brass could impact the liveliness of the swimming action ? Guess you could try putting the hook at opposite ends of each bait and see which one swims better ?

Probably bothering you a lot more than it will a hungry bass . If the bass say it's OK it's OK regardless .

I guess you could drill into the mold cavity from the outside and put a couple of pieces of .030 spinnerbait wire into the mold and pour the lead in . After cooling pull the two wire pins and insert the two fine stand up wires into the holes and use a spring loaded centering punch to close up the holes tightly against the stand up wires . You could also try bending 1/8 " from the ends of the stand up wires over forming a barb . Shove into the hole and they would be hard to pull out .

I have made prototypes of lead heads and made molds using Durhams water putty . Its kind of like Plaster of paris but withstand the heat of molten lead better but breaks down little by little with each bait you cast . You can make a head of roughly the size and shape you want poured in lead using a 2 part Durham mold and then put features in by filing the lead (such as gills for example or eye sockets ) before making the master vulcanized mold after you are happy with your design . One word of caution about the Durhams water putty though . You have to make sure the mold halves are completely dry before attempting to pour hot lead into them or molten lead will shoot back at you thru the sprue hold .

Closest thing I can think of from your description would be a spinnerbait made in the 1970's called the "Tarantula " made by "Bass Buster" lure co owned by TV angler Virgil Ward . I know this probably isn't what you were looking for but it might jog somebody's memory .

Great job!

As has already been stated the skirt will be generally be thrashed before the thread ever lets go on a "properly" tied skirt but I use nylon upholstery thread with no glue instead of the flimsy fly tying stuff . I used to make and sell a lot of jigs and modified my football jig molds to pour a wire into the head like the old Brawley Bug jig to hold the skirt material in place . It was very fast to tie jigs with that set up since one end of the wire was already anchored in the jig head . Jigs I sold I used the wire wrap and never received any complaints about skirts coming apart but I still always preferred to use thread on the ones I made for myself .

I found diagrams for these reels online years ago but don't remember where but they should still be available . One word of caution if you're planning on upgrading to ceramic bearings . I put ceramic bearings in the 1600 series reels hoping to be able to cast even lighter baits and could not keep from backlashing when casting with the new bearings unless the brake was really clamped down (which kind of defeats the purpose) . Other reels I have upgraded with ceramic bearings all worked fine if equipped magnetic braking systems but the old Promax reels only have centrifical brake systems .

How big of a tube bait are we talking here & hook size desired ? If you can find one for 1/64 it will be a mold for tiny hooks that you'll have to modify mold to accept a larger hook size . You could try pouring molten tin in a 1/32 oz mold for less weight (or some other alloy about half the weight of lead with a similar melting point .

The Do-Nothing worms were poured with #20 Dacron braided line tied hooks in the mold . The dacron will shrink ever so slightly from the heat but other than that works fine . Braided super lines all melted when I tried pouring rigged worms with that stuff . Dacron line is hard to find now a days but it is still used by fly fisherman as backing on their fly reels .