Lead Melting Equipment For Making Tackle at Home

Lead melting equipment is a great invesment if your like me. I absolutly love making jigs for fishing at home. It is a great hobby, it is fun to build them and experiment with your own paints and hooks. Not to mention that it can save you money. LOTS OF MONEY.

First things first. Jigs are made of lead, in order to build a jig, you must melt lead, lead melts at about 650 degrees. Thats a dangerous tempurature, always have the right equipment, keep flamables and children away from molding process.

There is some basic equipment that you require for making jigs.
The equipment you require is as follows;
Leather Gloves
Lead Melting Equipment
Saftey Glasses or Face Shield
Supply of Lead
Jig Mold or Molds

Types of Lead

There are two types of lead that concern hobby tackle makers hard lead and soft lead.

Soft lead; Identifiable by some easily recognizable characteristics. First if you can scratch a dent in it with your fingernail, is probably soft lead, also if you can bend it (not a whole ingot) it is likely soft lead. Soft lead can be bought at many hobby stores or sporting goods sores that sell jig supplies or reloading supplies. If they don't sell lead hey may be able to direct you to a place that will sell lead. Soft lead is the most desirable for making jigs, spinner bodies, and split shot because it melts easily and molds well. 95% lead composition is the soft lead that the sporting goods in my area sell.

Hard Lead; Most lead alloys are hard lead, the most common type of hard lead is wheel weights. Hard lead is not recomended by most mold makers and hobby tackle makers. The reason for this is that it melts at different tempuratures and often hardens much faster in the mold than soft lead. People tell me that they have alo of trouble getting smooth finishes on there jigs with hard lead.

Before I ever trid making jigs I molded bullets. The manufacturers of bullets use hard lead, I was told by many experts in the field that wheel weight were there lead of choice.

When melting wheel weights you will notice alot of other "substances" floating in your melted lead. There is an easy way to solve this problem. Simply shave some pure beeswax into your melted lead. The beeswax melts and all the contaminants will coagulate. Simply use a small dipper to remove he contaminants. Do this until no more substances are showing up. I have never had a problem with molding with hard lead in this way.

Sometimes I do run into some lead that will not melt no matter how hot I get it. Don't worry, everybody loses sometimes.

The tire shops in town will often give me a 5 gallon pail of wheel weights for free. So it is an great cheap source of lead for the hobby jig builder. I am sure if you do have problems with the lead, with a little trial and error you will have no problems getting perfect molds.

Lead Melting Equipment

Some books tell you to use a ho plate and a pot, I is not easy to melt lead this way, I have had a melter for many years now and tried the hot plate method a couple of times, just for kicks. The heat is uneven, the lead ends up melting slowly and unevenly, more fumes seem to be produced due to the lenght of time it takes to melt he lead.

There are a number of syles out there;

Hand Held Side Pour Units: This type of unit is pretty well a giant electric spoon. They are good for pouring large downrigger weights and that is all I have ever used one for. They are clumsy to use when pouring anything small like jigs and spinner bodies.

Dip Out Units: These melters are probably the bes all around melter. They are great for casting small to large items. My dip out melter holds 5 1/2 pounds of melted lead. I have 5 different ladles that I use with this melter. Each ladle is a different size allowing me to select a small ladle for small jigs and a larger ladle for big sinkers and spinner bodies.

Down Pour Melter: The melter that I use most often. These melers are great for pouring any jig from 1 ounce down o the smallest jigs and split shots. It is the fastest and the safest method that I know of for molding smaller lead tackle.

When you first start lead melting for your tackle you will probably run into some problems.
Comon Problems include;
Lead not hot enough
Pouring to slowly into the mold
Build up on surfaces preventing mold from closing tightly
Mold not preheated causing lead to cool to fast
Wrong hooks being used with the molds
To much contamination in the lead
Air pockets trapped inside of the mold