Am I the only person that HATES White Powder paint?

Picked some up Wednesday at Bass Pro and did just like I always do. Heated the jig up using my gas stove, quick dip in the paint, set it in my rack to cool and painted another one. Once I got it done, stuck them in the over at 325 for 25 minutes to cure. I thought things were going great until I pulled them out. Almost every one of them had a Horn on them. Guess there was to much powder paint on them and when I heated them up, gravity took over and made horns on them. Wouldn't have been to bad cept I painted about 50 jigs. SOme of the horns are just knots but I had one or 2 that had 2 inch long horns LOL

White is one of the colors that do that bad. Orange is another. You need to figure a way to cure your heads with the heads up and that will stop the "conehead" problem. One way to do that is to hang your jig head with a "C" shaped piece of wire like a cut paper clip. Hang one end in the eye of the hook and the other end on the rack of the oven. Hang an egg sinker on the point of the hook and you can cure the jig head "heads up". Any extra paint will run down the hook and you can peel that off.

Overall I found the easiest way for me to deal with the special problems with powder paint was to use an air gun. I heat with an adjustable temp heat gun and use forceps to hold jig. The gun I use is made by Badger and it was made to actually be a mini sand blaster. Works with a less than 10 psi compressor.

This method is extremely messy unless you set up a cardboard booth with vac attached. The problem with dipping jigs in powder paint is that you almost always get too much paint on it. I never had any luck even with the fluidizing beds. Spray painting with powder paint is NOT the fastest way to paint but it allows you the most creativity.

Most important to me is that when curing I do not have to take any special pains to hang them. All the jigs come out looking just like when they went in. No runs no drips and no errors..

Spray painting with powder paint does require patience. Depending on color the gun will clog easily. I hold my finger over the opening and back pressure into jar and it clear 90% of time. Other 10% of time I have to remove jar that holding paint and run a small wire up through the line to the trigger. This method would not be advantageous for a commercial operation. Although they do make systems that would be. But the investment would be a back breaker for the hobby guys like most of us are.

One other piece of advice if you decide to try spray method . Get plenty of extra jars. I label the color on side of jar and can change colors in a matter of seconds.

Welcome to TJ's Tackle

The link above has a tutorial on using this method. I use his gun that he sells but do not care for his compessors.

Thanks for the help. Got to try something. I've been making my own Orange with Red and char. Just mix the paint in a seperate dish and then hear and dip jigs.

As a last resort, use white fingernail polish. It may take a couple of coats to cover good and then top them with Hard As Nails clear polish. It holds up well. You can also use vinyl jig and lure paint in white.

I use an alcohol burner and have been for almost 5 years now. When I first started I had trouble with no fluid bed and black was the one that kept dripping in the oven. Thank goodness I had foil under them.

Since the first few months and have had no horns, LOL! I never had any trouble with orange or white or any color getting too much. I do have to make sure I keep the head in the flame long enough to get enough paint and a few colors I have to makes sure they get enough.

Had my share of horns at first, but really have not had even one in over 4 years. I just got me another alcohol burner just to make sure since I didn't have a spare wick and this time got a few extra wicks. My old one will still keep going for a good while though. I don't like any other method of heating the jig heads and maybe that is just because I know my counts of each and the flame is consistent so the heat is consistent.

Skip

I've been looking at the alcohol burners myself. Right now I use a small propane camp stove and it does ok but they burn a lot of fuel when you don't need but a small flame.

Scott, you can just use my green cup next time. Nuff alcohol in it to burn for a month LOL Think I'll try leaving it on the burner less time, maybe it won;t pick up as much paint that way

Haven't had them in years. It's all about heat control. Get your jig hot enough the paint melts and sticks but doesn't gloss, then hold it over your burner/candle for a few seconds after you dip to let it gloss over and poof, perfect painted head.

I'm by no means an expert on how to paint/cure jig heads, but I've had a good bit of success with white. It's my # 1 color on the lakes in the area during the winter months through March. I usually just cure my heads for 7-8 minutes on 250. Haven't had any of them chip as of yet doing it that way and probably gone through over 500 jigs, may try to lower the amount of time your curing them or the amount of heat.

Thanks, I'll try that

I cure most colors for 17 minutes in a toaster oven and just short of 400 degrees and I do mean just short as I try to get some place on the dial that would be 392-395. Pearl I do 15 (I actually set timer for 17 minutes since it's cold start) minutes at 325 since that is what the Mfg. says.

Almost all color I do at the near 400 though!

Skip

I've had good luck using a heat gun and running the jig under it for about 6 seconds before swishing it thru powder paint. Dripping can happen with too much powder. You may have to experiment with your times and temps but generally if you get too a coat of white that's too thick you can expect drips.

When my fluid bed was working correctly, I never had any trouble with my white (now nothing works)...ever, but it wasn't pro-tec, came from harbor freights. I have 16 ozs of the stuff, if you wanna give it a go I can send half of it to you as long as I don't get trouble for shipping white powder.

Adam

Cheap heat gun and fluid bed and if you don't get 2 much powder its never an issue. Also started using the cheap $4 a pound white from Harbor Freights and it does not run as bad also.
When I was dipping jigs without a fluid bed I had cone heads all the time.

I have been trying to powder paint some large spinnerbaits and I can not use my fluid bed because the hook is on one end and the wire on the other. I have learned that WHERE you get your powder paint is important!!!

Here is the story: I thought that airbrushing might be the best way to go for these baits so I bought a Badger Sandblaster from TJ's. I had a mess of powder paint on hand that I had bought from either Bass Pro or Cabela's in Kansas City. I also had some good advice on airbrushing that I had gotten from TJ's videos and a buddy on a tackle site. Anyway, I tried using the airbrush just as I had heard from these folks. It was a pain in the butt - the flow was only intermittent. I had to keep shaking and unclogging the lines. To be honest, I didn't really understand how these guys were doing it. In any case, I was busy with work and I kind of gave up for a while. In the meantime I tried tapping the paint on with a brush and I was getting better at that, but results were not great. last weekend I tried Powder Water (or something like that) that resuspends the powder in a liquid. I tried spraying that but it also looked like crap. I did remember that one jar of powder paint that I had gotten from Bass Pro was really caked - it was one large cake of black. Anyway, I thought I would try some Columbia powder that I had stored in my basement where it is cool and dry. That worked like a charm in the airbrush!! I then wondered if it was something with the Pro-Tec powder. I tried another batch of Pro-Tec that I had bought from Cabela's - that also worked great. I also tried several jars of paint that I bought from TJ's - they were also fine in the airbrush. The problem was that I kept trying to use some black paint that I had bought at Bass Pro (cabela's was out of black) and it was crap. I will note that the batch that I used LOOKED fine - but it wasn't. It may have been fine for a fluid bed or for tapping with a brush, but not for the airbrush.

Bottom Line - Even though the stuff from cabela's was fine, I will go with TJ's. His prices are competitive with Cabela's and I am sure that he knows how to store his paint. I don't have ANY faith in paint that I get from the large chains. They may look OK, but they may not work if you are trying to airbrush powder.

Pete