Elkins45

The comments about the shaft being dirty are on the money.i had used these wires to hold some bodies when I painted them and didn’t clean them off when I used them to make baits. They have now been scraped clean and will be tried again. The one with the skirt definitely needs to be trimmed, I just didn’t want to ruin a skirt if the bait was bad for some reason...and now it may be that the I trimmed skirt is the reason it is bad I’ll report results after retesting.

Here's a bigger version of the photo in case it helps.

I made a batch of inline spinners and these two just simply refuse to spin. Is there some obvious mistake I made? Can I modify them to make them work without cutting the wire and starting over, like maybe bending the blades or something?

I cast more bullets than lures and have a lot of experience. If you can get your hands on an alloy with even a small percentage of antimony then you can get significant hardness just by water dropping. I cast almost everything from an alloy that is 96% lead, 2% tin and 2% antimony. Just dropping it from the mold into a bucket of water will cause the hardness to double. I have some bullet designs that perform very poorly when allowed to air cool but the groups tighten up considerably when water quenched. Clip on wheel weights do very well when water dropped, if you can still find any. Be extremely careful to keep water out of your molten lead or you will get a most unpleasant visit from the tinsel fairy!

This is the BPS product that inspired it:

BPS has a nice rod and box storage rack but it isn’t designed for outdoor exposure. I wanted to make one for the boat so I used some scrap 3/8” plywood and a couple of 2x2s to make my own version. I added a sliding front door because I didn’t have any hinges. It needs some finish but I will probably wait until warmer weather to do that. The rod clips are from Amazon.

The mice got into the rod locker of my boat and had a little snack. The good news is that they picked the cheapest rod in it to eat. The bad news is that it's really not usable like this. How do I fix this?

From what I understand the carbohydrates in cedar or pine donate electrons to reduce the lead. Cheap hydrogenated shortening will do the same thing and smells a little bit like French fries. The only downside to using a surface layer is that you can’t drop your bad casts or cutoff sprues back into the pot because the stuff floating on top will get dragged down into the melt. If you decide to use a topper you just have to pour until empty and then refill the pot.

Each piece of yarn is actually four strands. I tied them on first and then unraveled them. This 12 strand version is about as dense as I would make one. I may make a couple of 8 strand versions to see if they give enough volume to the skirt. I can tell you a 24 strand version is really heavy when it gets wet. Cheapest skirt ever!

On a whim I tied up a jig using some short strands of acrylic yarn, the kind that you buy at the sewing store to know sweaters. I used too much, but the result was quite interesting. It gave the jig a lot of bulk and once you got it wet it added quite a bit of extra weight for greater casting distance. I’m going to tie up a couple of variations with lighter heads and fewer strands to see how they behave. I think tying them like the old “spider legs” spinnerbait skirts might be ideal. Anyone else try this?

Those snap connectors are a great idea, and I have a bunch of them from the straps that came off of my last worn out boat cover.

The only downside is that it doesn’t keep the rain out of the boxes.

I put handles and a top strap on the canvas bag. I'm pretty well fixed for bags now.

That’s a better idea than mine. I guess it’s time for version 3nkw.

I added a handle. The "real bag has a dual so it isn't tippy, but I think a single will do OK, especially since it wraps all the way around.