Jig Powder Painting

[Tnbigdaddy1]

I am just getting started tying jigs, and for the time being are buying unpainted jig heads and powder coating them myself. I occasionally I will get spots/pot holes/unpainted areas that will not take the powder paint even after several reheat and dip attempts.

I am using a fluid bed, heat the jigs to 350 in a toaster oven before dipping, and have tried several different brands and colors of paint. Wire brushing them with a dremmel seems to help a lot but sometimes I will still have areas that won’t take paint. The areas paint won’t take are usually on the bottom corners of football jigs, the underside of swim jigs, and around the hook eye on all of them. Again it’s not on every jig, but it happens often enough to notice.

I have talked with others that have had the same issue with different jig head brands. So it seems there is no specific “cause” that can be attributed to the paint or jig manufacturer. Any idea what causes this? Different or too much trace metals in the lead? Left over release agent from the mold?

I realize that a few spots or unpainted areas on a jig head won’t make a difference in catching fish, but if I spend the time and effort to paint and tie the jig I sure would like it to look nice and somewhat professional, at least until the first cast…...

[Siebert Outdoors]

Bump up the heat a little more.  I had that same issue at 350.  I bumped it to 400 and the problem went away.   Some tight crevices will always be real hard to coat.

[cadman]

First of all, if any of your jigs have pinholes in the raw lead or actually holes from pulling sprues or from not filling fully, it is pretty hard to cover these up. I used to break off sprues back in the day off of just poured jigs. When you do that many times you will get holes in the head behind the sprues. Now I cut the sprues and file them. With that said, unless you can control your own pouring of jigs, any imperfection in a poured jig only makes it worse by painting over it. So this is my advice and you can try this. Before you paint your jigs take a look at all the heads by looking for imperfections in it. If there are any, then try to file it smooth with a metal file. Now many of you may think that this is a bit too anal, but I can honestly say that my finished jigs are flawless. I'm not here to toot my own horn, but if you are going to paint jigs do it right or don't do it at all. And yes I know the fish don't care, but when you spend so much time in something it should look good really good. Just my two cents on this.

   One other thing, if you want to remedy the problem that you are having, paint your jig, bake them, and come back and repaint it. The second thin coat will usually take care of all the bad spots. Just remember not to burn the paint the second time around. If you need more help PM me and I will give you step by step help, or I'll call you to let you know how to hopefully solve your problem.

[Tnbigdaddy1]

Thanks for the replies! I tried lowering the heat at different temps down to 250 thinking that maybe the jigs were too hot for paint, but I will try heating them to 400.

 

All the jigs appeared to be smooth - until the wire wheel was used. The wire wheel took off the outer layer which did conceal little pin hole imperfections, but typically the tiny holes took paint.  The imperfections I was getting were larger pot holes or clusters of them.  Almost as if there was oil, grease, or some additional metal in the lead that wouldn’t take the paint.

 

The wire wheel did significantly decrease the occurrence of imperfections, I was hoping to not have to take that extra step but since Cadman and I are on the same page about doing it right or not doing it at all I will keep polishing them before painting.  Hopefully that combined with the extra heat before painting will take care of it.

 

Thanks again for the quick and very helpful responses!