carolinamike

Well guys, I found out yesterday I don't know what I'm talking about. Yes, this will work on whites very well, but it will not opaque clear colors. Also, it will be sold under the name UV Brightener or UV Glow and that's exactly what it is. In a clear bait this is going to react with any UV light that penetrates the surface, therefore making the baits stand out more to the fish. Sorry for misleading you, I think I've got my ducks in a row now. But if you have any more questions, you can always give Bruce or Don a call at Lureworks.

ute, you'll probably need to give Bruce a call and ask him, keep in mind that when I mix plastic it's usually 5-10 gallons at a time. So most likely, what I'm using is probably going to be a little different than what you hand pour guys use. Which it's the same stuff, it's just in different strengths so it makes it easier for you guys to measure out., if that makes any sense to you. I'm using less than a tablespoon to 5 gallons of plastic and seeing a considerable difference. I'm sure this is a product you don't want to over use. rixon, I'm sure it will have an effect on some colors, I've not tried it yet on any other colors, but I know the opaque colors are definitely what you want to use it on. Non-bleed chartreuse or maybe an opaque yellow, it may help these some, as far as using it on a clear color, I really don't think it will help that much. You got to remember this stuff acts with the light. So on a clear color that light passes through, you're really not going to get the reflective properties that you're going get on an opaque color. Also, I don't know for sure but my guess is that it would opaque or semi opaque a clear plastic and probably not going to give you the results that you're wanting. Think of this stuff kind of like a laundry brightener, it helps the colored t-shirts, but it really does wonders for the white ones. Think about how a white t-shirt that's washed with a laundry brightener glows under a blacklight. Guess what, when you use this stuff, the white worms also glow under a blacklight. And please don't hang worms on your shirt and go to the disco. mike

Mountain Man, yes I'm sure the easy flow plastic will float. You'll find there's very few salt water plastic or hard plastic baits that do float. Most of your soft and medium soft will float will the soft being your highest floaters. But if you add salt, or a whole, whole lot of flake, you will lose bouyancy. Fuzzy Grub, when you call Lureworks, use ext. 106. If Bruce does not answer, then leave him a message and he will get back in touch with you. If it's urgent, then you can go to ext. 101 and ask Tammy or Katie if Bruce is around and can take a phone call right now. Bruce has already probably forgotten more about plastic than what we all know put together about plastic.

I decided to give one of Lureworks new products a try and I have got to say I am very impressed. In my shop the lighting is very good. There are 16 8ft. flourescent tubes lighting a 20x20 work space. So it is bright in my shop. So the other day when I added optical brightener to my barrel of white plastic, I turned around to do something, when I looked back in the barrel, I thought that it looked whiter in the barrel. When I started the production run, I immediately noticed once we started getting good shots, that the white was definitely whiter. When I run a large number of white baits and hang them together on the bars to cure, when a bunch of white worms are together, you tend to get a little bit of a yellowish look. Pull the worms out individually, and they're white, with this brightener this yellowing tint seemed to almost dissipated to less than half when all the baits are hanging together. And of course the individual baits are great and I thought they couldn't get any better, but the day I did this it was pretty warm, so I opened up the big doors of the shop to let some air in. I had laid one of the worms on top of a barrel near the door, when I opened the door and the sunlight came in, and shined on the worm, wow is all I can say. In the sunlight, this stuff is bright white. If you've had trouble with a yellowing tint in white coloring, this product is going to help a lot. I can't wait to put one of these worms in the water on a bright sunny day. This stuff is kind of like a UV brightener, I was told if I put the worm under a blacklight, that it would really shine. If I'm not mistaken there's an old blacklight out in the building, I'm gonna try it this weekend and see if it glows like they say it does. We'll try to take some pictures of it and post it so you can see the difference. Truthfully I was amazed.

Guys I've got to help Dave out on this one. Dave you were sent a sample of a new plastisol product. It's Lureworks, if I'm not mistaken, Easy Flow Plastisol. This plastisol has been specially formulated for baits such as ringworms and other plastic baits that have small appendages or real tight cavities. From what I understand, this is a thinner formula, you can give Lureworks a call and they can give you more details about it. This is also something else that you folks need to keep in mind, that if needed, Lureworks can produce a plastisol for a specific bait. I've been talking to them, now for a little while about handpour folks and you would be amazed at the things they're wanting to bring on the market. There's a great table top machine in the works right now, I know for sure. Several different colors of highlights, that aren't available to handpour folks and not to mention so many other things that right now I just can't talk about. The more profitable it is for these folks, the more stuff they're going to willing to bring out. You know it's funny, you think you've seen it all and then you come to realize that you haven't even seen half of it yet. I can't wait to see what these folks have in store.

Delw, the staining of the mold is what you want. I know this sounds strange, but take my word for it, it helps on this bait. I discovered this purely by accident and I can't really explain why it works. I don't know if it's the patina that the greased lightning makes or what but it actually makes the cavity of the mold release the bait better. I'm not a chemist so I don't exactly understand why this works, but it does. Maybe Vodkaman can give us a little more insight. If you'll remember awhile back, I told about a thermocoupling malfunctioning in the heat exchanger reaching over 600 degrees. When this happened without knowing any better, I purged the heat exchanger out with air, which discharged this burnt material into a box that I had placed in the press. Being that the fumes were so dangerous (filled with acid), I made sure the exhaust fan was on and immediately evacuated the building. After I gave it time to cool down, when I cleaned the plastic off of the mold, the burnt plastic had severly and I mean severly stained the bottom of the mold. After a good washdown, I decided to make some baits. Now the bottom 6 cavities on a 48 cavity mold were really stained bad. Before this happened, these bottom cavities which are the first to be injected, had a severe sticking problem and with the design of this bait, there is some moving parts. If the worm sticks to the moving side of the mold, then it actually tears the tail off of this worm. This is a very large heavy ringed worm. It's the one that I mentioned that it takes 2 1/2 lbs of platic to fill the mold. Well, lo and behold, when I started up production again, these 6 caviites perform better than any of the other cavities in the mold. No mold release or anything was needed, which I have to use occaisionally, which can cause problems in itself. Well after so much use, and these molds being made in such a way that they draw so much heat from the plastic, the molds become naturally stained just because of the high volume of production that they go through. It's always just the cavities that stains and it almost always blue. So after about 50,000 baits or so, you have to clean the molds. I usually use denatured alcohol or something like this, but I happened to remember that greased lightning would cause aluminum to stain, so I took the mold out filled each cavity with a little bit of greased lightning. After about 10-15 minutes of soak time, I scrubbed the cavities out real good with a brush and immediately rinsed them thoroughly with a pressure washer. Delw we were having to produce up to 5000 pieces just to fill a 3000 piece order with quality baits. Since I treated the mold, our throw away is maybe 200-300 pieces now, out of 3000. Like I said, I don't know what it does with the mold, but on this style of worm, it has definetly made an improvement in production and quality of the product. All of the larger ringed worms that we produce, I've had to do the molds this way. The 4 inch worms, the rings aren't quite as deep, so we don't have the problem with it., but the 5,6,and 8 were nightmares before we did this. I don't know maybe it makes them slicker.

Dave, Delw is absolutley right. I've probably made over a million ring worms last year and you DO NOT want to heat your mold. Ring worm molds, when you get to looking at them, are giant heat sinks. With the aluminum being cut in the way that it is for a ring worm, it naturally draws heat quickly from the bait. Your mold will heat up quick enough by just producing worms. If a ring worm mold gets too hot, the first thing that will happen is you usually start getting a blue tint to the mold, which means the heat is affecting the color of the plastic. Then after a few shots, you'll notice that the rings are starting to stick in the mold. To hand inject a ring worm, it is going to take practice. I'm shooting anywhere from 48 to 64 ring worms at one time and I still have trouble at times getting the rings to form. It's just kind of the nature of the beast and the way the worm itself was designed. One of the tricks is to have your plastic pretty hot, but not so hot that it discolors. Your first couple of worms are probably going to have incomplete rings due to the mold being cool. But once it warms up a little, not too much, then inject the bait slow and steady. This will take practice. Most of the time you will have a little smoke from the plastic, but that can actually help in the production of this bait. Watch the vent hole, when the smoke stops, the cavity is filled. Lay the pressure to it and hold it. You want to go slow enough at first to slowly push the air out of the cavities. 9 out of 10 times the problem with these baits is that there is air that gets encapsulated in the ring part of the mold. So Delw may have to run you some extra venting. Ring worm molds have to have a lot of venting. You're trying to replace air in a small cavity with plastic. I've been waiting for someone to put one of these out as a hand injected, cause I knew sooner or later this was going to come up. Again if you've got adequate enough venting, it's just going to take practice. The trick is when you do get it to make a satisfactory bait, is repeating the same process exactly the same as you did the first time. If you do get some discoloring on the mold, you can spray a little Greased Lightning and use a small brush such as a toothbrush, to clean it. If you let the Greased Lightning stay on too long before you rinse it off, the mold could discolor a little. I have found this to be beneficial when making the ring worm. For some reason, the molds that are stained from where I've cleaned them with Greased Lightning, work better, I'm not sure exactly why this is, maybe Delw can explain this more. But after so many cycles, I even have to take the big molds outside and spray them down and scrub them good and I usually use a pressure washer to clean them. But we're talking about molds here that weigh well over 100 lbs. The big worm mold is about 36 inches wide, 30 inches tall with only 48 cavities. It requires 2 1/2 lbs of plastic to fill the mold. So imagine the heating problems I have to put up with. Don't worry, you'll get it. It may take a little time but you'll get there. Hope this helps you some too.

I saw this morning that Spike-It (Lureworks) has added some new formulas to their website. I called and done some inquiries about it, they now produce Gel-A-Lure, Pourasol for hand pours, Injectasol for hand injection, and Ultrasol. From what I understand, Ultrasol is a formula that has no settling. Also they're going to be offering an optical brightener, which will help take the yellow tint out of white baits. It's been a while since the hand pours have seen new products made available to them. I think that if this goes well for Lureworks, that you'll see a lot of new and different products put out for hand production.

Smallie, I'm not talking about the dip-n-glo paint. I'm talking about the Lureworks plastic paint. This is the paint that almost all major companies use to paint their plastics. Color Tech, Spike-it and Lureworks are all the same folks. This link should get you to the plastic paints. http://www.ispikeit.com/Store/c-72-soft-plastic-paint.aspx

Spike-It paint is definetly what you want. No clear coating needed, just make sure your bait is clean and oil free before you paint it. The paint will not rub off. This is the same stuff that about all the big companies use. If you need more information, give them a call Monday and they will help you out.

Spike-It is definitely the place for worm paint. Spike-It and Lureworks are new to the hand pour part of the plastic industry, but they've been around a long, long time and are major suppliers for the big plastic companies in the industry. As far as whether it being worm paint or chunk paint, it's plastic paint period. It can be used on worms, chunks, lizards, swim baits, I guess it all depends on your airbrush skills.

Powerworm, silver can be achieved easliy with pearl plastic and a little black pigment. If you laminate black on top of pearl then with the lighting effect you usually get a silver look. That's the easiest way to make silver and you probably have everything on hand.

Basscandy, I've used almost every plastic on the market and the Spike-It plastic is as high in quality and clarity as all the other plastics. It's not a low quality formula, the reason it is cheaper is because Spike-It buys the components to produce plastisol by the tanker, and produce their own brand of plastisol. Unlike other companies, that buy it by the drum and redistibute it, they produce it by the drum. But if you make any amount of plastic and do this for any amount of time, you'll be like everybody else on the forum, the best will just end up being your favorite because you will have tried all the brands you can get your hands on. It wasn't too long ago that it was being said that Calhoun's was the "BEST" out there, but it won't take long for you to figure out that it's mainly personal perference.

Jim, what colors are you looking for? Pigments and dyes are absolutely no problem for this company. As a matter of fact it's one of their specialties. I did look at their list, I did notice that one of the main colors missing is watermelon. They know this already. One of the problems with the colorants and not a lot of people know it, take watermelon for instance, is that there are 2 or 3 different shades of watermelon. Same way with a lot of different colors. The oranges, reds and yellows have a lot of different variations too. If you have a particular color you are trying to match, they can help you with that too. But if they mix a color special for you, they're probably going to require you to purchase a minimum. I haven't really paid much attention to their prices. Spike-It and Lureworks folks have been around a long time. They've been major players in the plastic industry for years. It's just always been kept on an industrial level, so I'm sure their prices will be competitive. I was using their pigments 8 years ago doing hand pours. You probably have too and just didn't know it. I know it means new competition for some guys, but to see them take interest in hand pour fellows is going to be exciting. They just have so much more they can bring to the table, being that they're such a large corporation.

Troy, plastic softener and plasticizer are the same thing. Plasticizer is one of the components that makes up plastisol. Right now plasticizer is in such high demand that it's created a shortage. China is the main culprit on this one, so finding a cheap plastic softener is going to be hard to do right now and from the way things are looking prices aren't heading down anytime soon. I know if the baits sit for a while bulk packaged, after some time instead of soaking in it will start leeching back out. I imagine with things like they are right now that all companies are being very careful to only use the amount of plasticizer needed. Hope things are going well for you. Are you catching any fish yet?

Yes ttrapper they sure do. It's called paint. Contact Spike-It, they sell all different colors of plastic paints. People do some really nice stuff with swimbaits and an airbrush.

Guys I'm allowed to give a little more information. This machine will be put out by Spike-It and is being specially designed to extrude the stretchy plastic. Bob, this is exactly one reason for them coming out with this. This is a plastic that only they have. From what I understand this machine can be used with regular plastic with some modifications. The plastic end of this company has been around for a long time. Take my word for it, there is a lot of experience going into this machine. And again, it's probably not going to be as cheap as a Presto Pot, but nowhere near the cost of a Zorn machine neither. The guys are trying to keep it as economical as possible. Keep in mind, that this material is very different from plastisol. You'll actually have to use pigments made for this material. I think things like this are great for the hobbyist. I remember the days when all we had was a Fry Daddy or a Lee pot. Just in the past couple of years things have really started to change. Can't wait to see this technology blossom.

I was talking with one of the guys with one of the bigger companies and it seems like that the home plastic bait maker and hand pour market is starting to grab some attention. I found out that there will soon be a new toy available. This piece of equipment will give you the opportunity to make baits using the stretchy plastic. From what I understand this is going to be a quality piece of equipment with as reasonable as possible pricing. Wish I could tell you more, but I really can't because that's about all I know about it truthfully and I'm not wanting to get too nosy right now. Just gives you guys something new to look forward to.

Ice45, the stretchy plastic like Z man uses has to be handled in a different way as far as production goes. This plastic is more of an extruded plastic than a poured plastic or injected plastic. There was something else that came up in one of the other posts in this thread that got me asking questions, so I made a phone call. I found out that a new piece of equipment is fixing to come out on the market for the hobbyist or at home bait maker. From what I understand it should be able to produce the stretchy plastic that you want.

David, which button are you talking about? The only button I have at the right hand corner of my page scrolls the page up and down. Where's the button to scroll the page right or left? I can zoom in or out by changing the resolution.

Hey Jerry, I noticed in previewing the new website there's no bar at the bottom to move the screen right and left. I can change the resolution on my computer but it makes the print small and difficult to read. I was just wondering is this going to be part of the permanent change?

If you're talking about settling on the bottom of the container, yes there is a little. But it incorporates very easily. It's clear and not strong smelling. We just recently done some saltwater baits for one of our customers using one of the plastisols on the market that says there is no settling. We shot 10 gallons, the fumes were terrible, it took me and the wife a couple of days to get over it, and even with the big exhaust fan running, it was all we could do to complete the order. I know for sure this plastisol has no strong fumes. It's just as good as any plastisol on the market, if not better. But keep in mind, everybody has their different preferences.

Yes the Lureworks plastisol by Spike It is good stuff. It's been around a long time. Spike It has decided to get into the hand pouring/hand injection component market. They are a major supplier that's the reason the price is cheaper. It just gives you another choice. Bear, Delw, Lurecraft, MF all sell plastisol. Everybody has a different preference. The Gel-a-Lure is different stuff, you can heat it like regular plastisol, I guess if you want to, but it also gives you a lot of choices of multicolored baits. If you want to know more about it, you can always give them a call. They'll be glad to answer any questions.

Guys let me give you some first hand advice about plastic injection machines. I really don't know anybody that has one, be it Zorn or anyone elses, that does not have to do some kind of modifications to make the machine perform like they want it to perform. My first machine, I'm really just now, after two years, satisfied with what I can get it to do. #2 is still a work in progress. Understand, this is not badmouthing the equipment, it's just an undertaking getting it to perform the way I want it to perform. Anyone thinking about buying an injection machine, take into consideration, you will have to do a lot of learning. Even if everything on the machine is built exactly the same using the exact same parts(heat cartridges, etc.) they're still going to perform differently in some way or another. Delw, I agree with you 100%. If you've got a large amount of production to do, you're better off to wait until you can afford to do it professionally. People just have no idea of the amount of baits that can be produced with a plastic machine. If you've got 3 or 4 stores that you're supplying and you can't keep up with hand pours, then a smaller machine like Bear's might be the thing that you need. But you will have to have enough molds or enough bait cavities to keep up with production. Delw as far as the liability goes on these machines, be it Zorn or Bear, I'm not sure exactly how that will work. Has anybody ever sued Lee over a plastic or lead pouring pot? I understand that it's not under pressure, but wouldn't the liabilities be about the same? But for those of you that are doing hand pours and hand injections, and have started a business out of it, be very careful what you wish for. The further up you get into this business, the heavier the pressure, the headaches, and the expenses become.

Moonlightn', Spike It plastic is good stuff. Several people have sold it before under their own names,so you might have used it unknowingly. I use a different formula than the hand pour but I've never had any troubles personally with it. There's nothing this company produces that I can complain about. Also it's funny how the Gel A Lure is kind of being pushed as a kid's product. With the introduction of the hand injection, I figured this would bring back the one sided molds. With this product you ought to be able to make some really unique stuff. Seems like as long as there is room in the cavity of the mold, there's no limit to the different colors that could be used.