Inshore Soft Plastics and Jigs

[JasonGotaProblem]

Assuming an equivalent level of ventilation and protection: What's worse? (Over)heating soft plastics or melting and pouring your own lead?

[El Pescador]

OVERSIZED?

Dave!!  They look like a BEAT'N STICK!!!!

Are you in Loreto now???

Wayne

[Jighead]

Assuming an equivalent level of ventilation and protection: What's worse? (Over)heating soft plastics or melting and pouring your own lead?

From what I've read, lead is. If lead gets over 800 degrees, it starts releasing fumes, which is no good of course.

[Jighead]

Cooked up some grubs on my lunch break.



Both of these are a lot more opaque than I wanted. Too much chartreuse in the emerald grub and too much junebug in the purple grub. I used three different brands of colorants and the junebug is a lot more concentrated than the other two brands.

I'm also getting a bunch of air bubbles in each grub, not sure what's causing it. Going to look into it more after I get off work.

Edit: Not enough glitter in both baits, too. I'm taking notes on each recipe so I should be able to tweak them to get them how I want with the more baits I pour.

[Jighead]

Now maybe back to making soft plastics.

Nice looking pours.  Are you making anything besides the grubs?  I really got into oversized swimbaits for awhile and enjoyed the process.





-J

Nice swimbait, it's big as hell hah.

I bought a cheap open pour swimbait mold on Etsy that I've used but I don't like how they're coming out.



I also ordered a 7" fluke mold that should be arriving tomorrow. I eventually want to add to my mold collection but I'm starting with grubs and flukes. I'll also be pouring lead to make flair hawks soon.

[JasonGotaProblem]

So we need to get them to 350 to melt. Right? And obviously a water based double boiler won't do that on account of boiling temp being 212.

So what about a double boiler rigged up with a small fryer with some cheap oil? You can dial that in a lot tighter.

Because why not add more risk of burning ourselves... In the name of safety?

[Rancanfish]

Why? Just nook em slow in real tempered measuring cups.

[Jighead]

Yeah I microwave the plastic in bursts. It usually goes something like 1 minute, 1 minute, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds, etc.I use an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature.

*I'm using a 700 watt microwave.

[jurelometer]

Assuming an equivalent level of ventilation and protection: What's worse? (Over)heating soft plastics or melting and pouring your own lead?

As a said before,  I am not qualified to offer safety advice, so this is just something to get you started.

Different protection methods.  Different risks.  Is it worse for you to destroy your liver/get cancer (dioxin), or damage the brain development of your kid (lead)?   

On protection: unlike melting plastisol (PVC),  Lead fumes and dust need a particulate filter.   Lead dust will aslso land on surfaces, get transferred to you hands, and then to your mouth.  It is hard to clean up lead dust, so melting, filing or sanding lead indoors is also not a great idea, especially with kids in the house. and then you have to figure out how to safely clean your contaminated clothing. You also ingest some lead just by handing a sinker when out fishing and then eating your sandwich without washing your hands.


In terms of risk:  The Mayo Clinic has a good overview on lead poisoning but GoDaddy doesn't trust their website at the moment  so I can't post the link (I suspect that the problem is with GoDaddy as usual)

Kids are are big concern.  From the Mayo Clinic:

"Children younger than age 6 are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can severely affect how a child's body grows and brain develops. At very high levels, lead poisoning can be fatal."


If you are fishing with kids, maybe look into using non-lead weights?  I would also consider powder coating sinkers in cases where you need larger weight sizes than is  practical with tungsten or whatever.

From the Mayo advice, it sounds like no exposure is good for adults, but it takes a significant exposure or long periods of lower exposure for the really bad stuff to start happening.  We all grew up chewing on lead split shot and handling lead weights without hand washing.  Not to mention stripping lead paint, etc.  Not dead yet, but maybe not as bright as we could have been

We live in  toxic world that we have created. It does not make sense to be paralyzed with fear, but the more we educate ourselves from reliable sources, the better tradeoffs we can make.

-J

[jurelometer]

Nice swimbait, it's big as hell hah.

I bought a cheap open pour swimbait mold on Etsy that I've used but I don't like how they're coming out.

Your grub pours look good!

The air bubbles are introduced whenever you mix or pour.  Some folk use a vacuum chamber to degas the mixture, but I found it was sufficient to rest the plastisol after shaking it up, and then mixing and pouring more gently while it is hot. The bubbles  will eventually rise out as long as the mixture is not too viscous.  A bit of rest before the pour helps, but then you have to heat the plastic a little extra to compensate, which is risky. As long as you don't get a ton of bubbles, it won't affect the integrity, and the fish won't care.  100% bubble free is mostly for impressing other fishermen.

Most of  the commercial swimbait molds make a chunky lure that is easy to pour, but I don't  think they swim as well.  What size are you interested in?  I might have something small enough.  It would be a silicone mold- one of my own swimbait designs that I am pretty happy with.  I don't sell molds, but I do expect getting feedback on the pouring and fishing.  PM me if interested.

So we need to get them to 350 to melt. Right? And obviously a water based double boiler won't do that on account of boiling temp being 212.

So what about a double boiler rigged up with a small fryer with some cheap oil? You can dial that in a lot tighter.

Because why not add more risk of burning ourselves... In the name of safety?

Same problem- the plastisol won't heat evenly.  In this case, it will be hotter closer to the sided and base.

I tried a bunch of techniques.  A popular one is to put a spigot on the bottom of a specific model of a round home deep fryer, and build or buy a motorized paddle contraption that slowing moves the plastisol as it melts.  If you attach this to a PID temperature controller ( a really useful device- I built one of these), you can regulate the temperature pretty accurately for the spot where the probe is.  Blech.  I used this melter twice. You need to be pouring a lot before it works well.

The best (least worst) for me was a pyrex measuring cup (with a tray on another rack  underneath) in  my powder coating toaster oven, managed by my PID controller.  It was guaranteed that the plastic was not going to get hotter than the oven setting.    All of it was too much of a PIA.

Why? Just nook em slow in real tempered measuring cups.

As noted before- the plastisol does not heat evenly in the microwave.  nuke 30 seconds, mix, nuke, mix, and so on can help, but you are going to have to get some of the plastisol hotter than 350 so that when you mix it with the colder parts, you hit your target temp.   And just about every guy that nukes his plastisol is going to screw up at least one time and turn their garage into a superfund site.

Not saying that a microwave is not doable, but it is far from ideal. It seems to be the most poplar method by far.

OVERSIZED?

Dave!!  They look like a BEAT'N STICK!!!!

Are you in Loreto now???

Wayne

Nine inches of jurel catching magic.

I only took soft plastics to Loreto once. Too many triggerfish.  They love the soft plastics.  The moment you are not winding super fast, they will catch up to it and rip it to shreds.

Back home now.  I am posting away on AT site so I can avoid tackling the weed jungle that built up in the yard.

-J

[Jighead]

I'd eventually pour 3-4 inch swimbaits. You poured that swimbait? How do you get the top so clean? I thought it was injected.

[Jighead]

[jurelometer]

I'd eventually pour 3-4 inch swimbaits. You poured that swimbait? How do you get the top so clean? I thought it was injected.

Once you do it for a while, you will dial in how much you need to overfill a given open pour mold, so that it is flush when it shrinks and cools.  And only post photos for the ones that come out nice   I have a whole bag of tails that only the lingcod are going to see.

Multicolor laminations are a pain.  You have to heat up all the colors separately at the same time and pour quickly so that the bottom layer doesn't cool to much leading to delamination.  Or you can toss the filled mold into your non-food oven and heat the whole thing up for awhile. This works best, but then you are taking 20 minutes or more to cast, heat and then cool a single pour. For people who are trying to make the best looking (to humans) baits, this can be worth it.  Me?  They get chewed up or fed to the rocks too fast for this.

I'll take a look at my molds, but I don't think I ever got down that small in size.

-J

[Jighead]

I bought the dual injection kit from Do-It molds to eventually do multicolor laminations but it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. Pearl, junebug, root beer/amber, pink, and chartreuse are the only colors I need. I may change my mind once I figure things out but multicolor does seem like a hassle.

[jurelometer]

The dual injectors don't work for the open pour paddletails.   You gotta do it the old fashioned way. I never went the injector route with any of my designs.  Vacuum actually sounds like a more interesting technique to me instead of messing with pressurized melted plastic.

I was never one of the guys that got into making the prettiest baits. The fish really don't care.   Their visual acuity is not that high and most saltwater species have limited color vision.  Nothing wrong with getting into the artistry of it, as long as you remember that you are doing it for the humans. 

-J