Make your own jigs...Video

[TubeDude]

Well, limited selection on WHAT I can do, but what I CAN do often works just out fine.  It'll sound like a brag, but I know I'm not the only one out there like this.  You with your lures and PVC work are a man after my own heart, I would think.  Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do it right, but I'm driving a $2000.00 car.  And, I have SOME tools and supplies, of course, but the idea is, what can I do in a way nobody has done it before, so I can do it with less.  I'm married, and I turned fifty this year, so you know where the money goes.

For instance, I can buy small tube jig heads, flatten them side to side with a hammer, and make pretty good minnow-imitating jigs.  I can make great wobble-jigs like yours by flattening them out laterally, using a bolt I have with a hole in the tip.  Just pound them out and paint them with dollar store nail polish. Not the best, I know, but I generally lose things before I use them up.  Beads, those little plastic stick-on gems for eyes, colored feathers, etc. all very cheap.  I buy fishing gear, of course, but I'm not buying anything I can make or modify. 

Since you asked, I do make very nice replicas of Paleo-European, African, and Native American bows, and sometimes kill an elk or deer with one. Usually costs me a trip to a vacant lot to cut a young elm sapling.  My alcohol-burning back-packing stove SMOKES anything on the market for boil times, cheapness, light weight, and efficiency.  I cast my own muzzleloader bullets and shotgun slugs in a home-made mold made from an all-tread connector.  I designed and make rattling spoons using cheap craft beads.  My version of "fligs" cost $2.00 worth of dollar store supplies for a lifetime.  I made an underwater camera for @ $15.00.  I designed several rod-holders, esp. some self-jigging versions that are simple, collapsible, and super-functional, mae from scraps. Several arrowheads. A wiggly fishing lure that uses balloons as a body.  A full-sized axe that takes down and fits in your pocket.  A belt knife that takes down, mounts to a branch, and doubles as a machete.
My backpacking tent is home-made, and I just made a collapsible wood stove that weighs 6 lbs for the larger tee-pee style tent I bought for snow camping.

I'm not saying it's the BEST way, but if the journey IS the destination, then even constantly looking for the nearly-impossible is fun, right?  My youngest has cerebral palsy, her sister is autistic, and they are the easiest of the four daughters I have.  So they get my money, but I have my fun.

Didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.  Believe me, I have made a loooooong journey myself.  First flies were tied out of my aunt's chicken feathers...with my mom's sewing thread.  First jigs were just split shot hammered onto a hook, etc.  Been there done that.  And before I got a wobble jig mold I hammered several different kinds of jigs flat...laterally and vertically.  I know what it's like to have to make do with less than I really want. 

I am properly grateful for the things I have achieved and the possessions I have accumulated over  a long life of often doing without.  Hang in there.

[Springbuck1]

Oh, I ain't ruffled, Pat. Don' t think that for a moment. You've never been anything but helpful and kind to me, AND ABOUT on this forum, I just took the chance to talk about me a little, I guess. Purposely avoided all the stuff that never worked.

I, too, tied chicken feather flies when I was eight, in a bench vise, but my neighbor kept guinea fowl and peacocks, so some were fancy. Sewing thread, kite string, Christmas tinsel. Everybody used to do it like that a hunnert years ago. I don't need a LOT more stuff, honestly, but maybe more time off, knowing more of the right people, knowing a few more things. We can't all shoot the big elk, geese, and catch lakers and walleye, but my needs are relatively simple. As I once said to my dad, " Some men aspire to panfish, and some men have panfish thrust upon them......"

On top of that, I was serious, in a kidding way, about what I said in my first post. I really do get a kick out of finding a better way, or another way, to do something, that is simpler, takes less money, engineering, resources, etc. and actually works. It's a hobby.

[TubeDude]

Oh, I ain't ruffled, Pat.  Don' t think that for a moment.  You've never been anything but helpful and kind to me, AND ABOUT on this forum, I just took the chance to talk about me a little, I guess.    Purposely avoided all the stuff that never worked.

I, too, tied chicken feather flies when I was eight, in a bench vise, but my neighbor kept guinea fowl and peacocks, so some were fancy.  Sewing thread, kite string, Christmas tinsel.  Everybody used to do it like that a hunnert years ago.  I don't need a LOT more stuff, honestly, but maybe more time off, knowing more of the right people, knowing a few more things.  We can't all shoot the big elk, geese, and catch lakers and walleye, but my needs are relatively simple.  As I once said to my dad, " Some men aspire to panfish, and some men have panfish thrust upon them......"

On top of that, I was serious, in a kidding way, about what I said in my first post.  I really do get a kick out of finding a better way, or another way, to do something, that is simpler, takes less money, engineering, resources, etc. and actually works.  It's a hobby.

Ha.  My first fly-tying "vise" was a clothes pin...held in my left hand while I wrapped thread with my right hand. 

I have always been a member of the "finding a better way, or another way, to do something, that is simpler, takes less money, engineering, resources, etc. and actually works" school.  And, like Thomas Edison and the light bulb, I have sometimes found a 1000 ways something would not work before finding something that would.  I fully agree that the journey is its own reward...and usually better than the destination.  We must have gone to different schools together.

[MSM1970]

Oh, I ain't ruffled, Pat.  Don' t think that for a moment.  You've never been anything but helpful and kind to me, AND ABOUT on this forum, I just took the chance to talk about me a little, I guess.    Purposely avoided all the stuff that never worked.

I, too, tied chicken feather flies when I was eight, in a bench vise, but my neighbor kept guinea fowl and peacocks, so some were fancy.  Sewing thread, kite string, Christmas tinsel.  Everybody used to do it like that a hunnert years ago.  I don't need a LOT more stuff, honestly, but maybe more time off, knowing more of the right people, knowing a few more things.  We can't all shoot the big elk, geese, and catch lakers and walleye, but my needs are relatively simple.  As I once said to my dad, " Some men aspire to panfish, and some men have panfish thrust upon them......"

On top of that, I was serious, in a kidding way, about what I said in my first post.  I really do get a kick out of finding a better way, or another way, to do something, that is simpler, takes less money, engineering, resources, etc. and actually works.  It's a hobby.

Ha.  My first fly-tying "vise" was a clothes pin...held in my left hand while I wrapped thread with my right hand. 

I have always been a member of the "finding a better way, or another way, to do something, that is simpler, takes less money, engineering, resources, etc. and actually works" school.  And, like Thomas Edison and the light bulb, I have sometimes found a 1000 ways something would not work before finding something that would.  I fully agree that the journey is its own reward...and usually better than the destination.  We must have gone to different schools together.

I think the technical term is "NEATTERIZING"   to make better to suit ones needs,  cuz you cant aford it or they made it wrong.

[Springbuck1]

"they made it wrong..."

That sums up a lot of stuff.

---

"like Thomas Edison and the light bulb, I have sometimes found a 1000 ways something would not work before finding something that would."

THAT's the real problem!  Fit and finish. Machining tolerances.  Reproducibility.  Not having the right scraps in your garage. That thing where you gotta make the tool, to make the tool, to make the thing....... and ultimately not having enough time in a lifetime to try everything.

[meancuznalfy]

Lol, after I got into it I figured out it can be done with whatever you have on hand. It can be costly with melters, paints and such, I've spent alot over the years, but I like being able to come home and make something I might need the next morning cause I lost all I had made. I make 50-100 jigs at a time in various sizes, can color them real fast if I have to.