Jigs

[scyounggun]

I am wanting to start making my own jigs and wanted yalls opinion.  I found a guy about an hour away selling arkie style head for 25 cents a piece in 1/8,1/4,3/8,1/2 sizes.  I was wanting to use this style head for most of my jigs and thought this would be easier and about the same costs as pouring them myself.  My thinking was to buy the heads from him and them purchase my skirts and rattles and all from somewhere like fishingskirts.com.  Does this sound like a good way to get started and see if I like it?

[Munkin]

Short answer is yes but you will have to powder coat or paint them. If he is pouring them then see what hooks he is using as you may want something different?

 

Allen

[scyounggun]

Should have said in the first post that they are already painted and he has several different colors.  Ill have to check on the hooks.  Thanks for the input!

[Ozark_Basser]

I think that's a pretty good deal. You can powder coat them if you want, but you don't have to. Do the ones he is selling have weedguards?

[scyounggun]

They do have weedguards.

[Ozark_Basser]

Sounds like a go to me. It will cost you a little less than a dollar per jig. That's as good as it gets.

[scyounggun]

That's what I had calculated it to out as.  Sure beats 3 or more per jig!

[Ozark_Basser]

That's what I had calculated it to out as.  Sure beats 3 or more per jig!

That and the few hundred dollars for start up costs to make your own. I make my own and you've got me beat by 70-80 cents.

[Munkin]

_{I have two lead bottom pour pots and about 20 molds but still buy some pre-made jigheads. If you only need a few or can get a good price on them it isn't worth the trouble of making them.}

 

_Allen

[Bluebasser86]

What kind of hooks does he use? Good deal unless he uses cheap, bronze hooks.

 

Get some black powder paint from Harbor Freight and just paint all your heads black, goes with about any jig skirt color you'd want and will help keep price down even more since you can buy a pound for less than 2 ounces of other powder paints. 

[smalljaw67]

I'll tell you now that if he is selling Arky heads for $0.25 each it would almost have to be a bronze hook, unless he is spin casting and buying hooks in lots of 10K or more. Since these are already painted with weed guard you can easily buy some along with some skirt material and then tie. I think this is the best way to go about it as it will cost you a few hundred dollars to get set up to pour, paint, and tie you own, then you can see if you like tying them enough to go to the next step which would be painting them and then tying.

[Bruce424]

That's the way I do it

[Chad L]

Never look at the tackle making craft as a money saving endeavor, now that doesn't mean I have not used that excuse to the wife, but it is better to be looked at as a way to build stuff exactly the way you want it. Every money saving endeavor with tackle generally ends up costing me way more money than buying off the shelf, but I can tweak and tune and make things "Custom" to the conditions.

[Turtle135]

I think that is the best way to start with jigs. Purchase jig heads painted or unpainted, tie your own skirts, paint them yourself. After a while you will find head styles and hooks you really like. Then you can ponder if you want to invest in pouring lead.

 

That is what I do (purchase unpainted jig heads). My cost per jig is under a buck each and I get what I want in the skirt (which is almost always round rubber). If I break off a couple it is just a couple of bucks out of pocket (instead of $ 8.00 or $ 9.00). Good luck!

[scyounggun]

I am going to try and go look at all he has this week sometimes and I will ask him what kind of hooks he uses.  Thanks for all the replies.

[jesse1378]

post up some pics of them when you get them. Let eveyone here check them out so they can let you know if they see something wrong with them. I personally think that is a great deal . painted and weedguards. have fun spending hours on fishingskirts.com trying to put colors together in your head lol. i love it.

[scyounggun]

Going to take a look tomorrow.  He has some unpainted 3/8 heads with owner hooks.  He has lots of other sizes too with mostly eagle claw hooks.  He said he had a tackle company that went out of business and is selling the rest of the stuff off.   Sounds like a good way for me to get started.

[Ozark_Basser]

Going to take a look tomorrow.  He has some unpainted 3/8 heads with owner hooks.  He has lots of other sizes too with mostly eagle claw hooks.  He said he had a tackle company that went out of business and is selling the rest of the stuff off.   Sounds like a good way for me to get started.

If you get them unpainted with weedguards already molded in, you will have a hard time powder coating them yourself without really messing up the weedguard. You can buy (or make them yourselves) some sleeves to put over the weedguard so you can heat the head without the guard fraying out too bad, but you wont be able to heat cure the paint.

Either way I'm not completely convinced the fish care if they are painted. So if you want to leave them unpainted its okay. I do it all the time. It's just fun to paint them so they match up and look pretty lol.

[scyounggun]

I am not exactly sure if the unpainted heads have the weedguard in or not.  Will let yall know once I go look later.