Faux Chrome heads

[papaperch]

Look almost as good as chrome plated. Using 100% lead and fluxing it with candle wax. Pour and coat with clear coat powder paint to preserve the shine. Then cure head in your heat source.

Using some temple dog along with wingflash. And tying in some satin strands also.

The perchy looking one did while waiting on heads to cure. Testing in tank looked pretty good. If rain ever leaves northeast Ohio will field test these on night trip.

 

[Fatman]

Look good - if they ever let me go back to work one of the guards does chrome plating and I traded him some turkey wings to do a bunch of heads for me

 

[Bucho]

Nice work! I tried the same 3 years ago before I could get my hands on decent PP. Long before I fixed myself a liquid bed... It was somewhat silverish, but nowhere close to the effect you have achieved. :icon14:

Unfortunately, the shine won´t last forever. A litte crack and it will dull as the oxygen finds its way under the surface. At least thats what hapenned to my 1 oz saltwater bucktails. A skillfully applied coat on a small head used in freshwater might last far longer.

I wonder if it made sense to use a rather hard alloy with some tin in it to strengthen the surface and further hampen chipping.

 

[CrappieHappy]

nice.

 

[AtticaFish]

Those did turn out nice and shiny! Excellent ties as well. Love the wing n' flash material and will be getting more soon...... not the easiest to get used to tying with but it sure reflects light and color good.

 

[Jig Man]

Yes they did and the thread bodies are great too...

 

[redman]

Papa if you can ever try and find line-o-type lead that lead will stay shinie for a long time. That type of lead has a large amount of antimony in it . This inhibits the oxidation of the lead. Have ten pounds of it left to try what you have done. My mentor always use line-o-type lead and never painted a head he claimed that the flash of the head attracted the fish. That was in the days that there were still line-o-type machines. Today there aren't any. Mark Twain financed the project for the first line-o-type machines. He wanted a cheap way to produce books want more profit from what he had written.

Redman

 

[Bucho]

That type of lead has a large amount of antimony in it . This inhibits the oxidation of the lead.

Have a few pounds, too, but never used it. Heard it was superior with respect to both details and hardness. The guys on the junk yard spoke of it with a lot of respect: Antimony fumes are even more toxic than lead itself. I rather go with tin and bismuth for the smaller sizes.

 

[Hawnjigs]

Papa, those look max shiny for any hand pour cast metal. IMO the Do-it mold surface texture is more lifelike than a mirror smooth chrome plate which does not exist biologically. Pure tin castings look a bit shinier, but that may be due to a slight goldish tinge rather than the blue gray of lead.

Main advantage of linotype is extreme hardness, which is also its disadvantage for jig head casting. I gave up on it after failing to find a clean & efficient way to remove the sprues, particularly on larger castings. Due to the abrasive hardness break scars or seam flash would be best filed off. The surface appearance is matte with the high antimony component setting into the surface finish with a grainy texture, & the significant tin component appearing to promote a settling effect. Like Redman says, the cast surface is more resistant to oxidation tarnishing than softer lead if left unpainted. RotoMetals version of linotype is Pb84 Sb12 Sn4 where Pb=lead, Sb=antimony, Sn=tin, and the original might have had a higher Sb of 16(%).

 

[redman]

That is what I used to fish the rock bars in northern lakes. The heads were hard and didn't dent easy and didn't snag as bad ether. I remember as a kid going to a print shop and the line-o-type machine and it's heat and fumes right in the front. Maybe that is one of the reasons that there are very few old printers or newspaper people. They all had to breath in the toxic fumes of the line-o-type machine. Keith we snapped the gates off the jigs then ran a sharp edge over to smooth them out.

Redman

 

[StumpHunter]

Those are nice! The work you put into making them shows

 

[Pup]

Those look very good.

Does anyone wrap jig heads with thin tinfoil and then apply an epoxy topcoat? I may start to.