Painting Tungsten Ice Jigs

[Migrator Man]

Anyone ever painted their own tungsten ice jigs? You can buy unpainted ones on eBay but I see you need to be really careful if you powder coat them. Has anyone seen the frostbite jigs? Anyone know how they paint their jigs with those little nodules?

 

[Fly Carpin]

I'd be concerned about how the hook is affixed to the tungsten. If it's soldered, you're probably good to go heat-wise. But if it's epoxied, heating the tungsten to get the powder coat to stick may cause the epoxy to fail.

 

[DirtyMike]

I've airbrushed them in the past. Fairly easy to do but they're pretty small for getting detail.

 

[KDM]

I've done one batch and I used my daughters nail polish. They're so small it takes only a couple seconds to make them whatever color and then after the base coat dries it's about the same time to do whatever design you want. I used a pin, dipped in the design color to make the lines, dots, or whatever I wanted. Just make sure you have a secure clip to hold the jigs. If you don't they end up going places you REALLY don't want them to go......like bouncing along the hardwood floor to locations to be determined only by crawling on your hands and knees. Good Luck!!

 

[Migrator Man]

I've done one batch and I used my daughters nail polish. They're so small it takes only a couple seconds to make them whatever color and then after the base coat dries it's about the same time to do whatever design you want. I used a pin, dipped in the design color to make the lines, dots, or whatever I wanted. Just make sure you have a secure clip to hold the jigs. If you don't they end up going places you REALLY don't want them to go......like bouncing along the hardwood floor to locations to be determined only by crawling on your hands and knees. Good Luck!!

You have any pics of the results? Were you able to get the raised dot effect with the nail polish?

 

[KDM]

Didn't think about taking pics and yes. I used the head of the pin to put "eyes" on some of them. I did have to watch out for too much buildup of base layer paint though. I had to be delicate with the brush as the paint can "scrape" off into thick layers if you're not careful.

 

[NDwalleyes]

Never worked with tungsten before, put powder coated lead of plenty lead. Why not powder coat the base?

 

[KDM]

Tried the powder coat, but with the jigs being so small the paint essentially sealed up the hook eye and finding a clip to hold the hook while heating and dipping the jig was a chore so I went with nail polish. Maybe with the right equipment, powder coating would be the ticket.