I threw out my thermometer.

[frogger]

First and for most grab the gloves, eye where, and keep water far away. I found myself after about 200 molds my thermometer was siting aside not doing anything. As long as I had a viscosity some where between water and syrup I'm good. Stir out the bubbles, suck and shoot. Ive reheated my plastics to a point where i probably have remnants of plastic from a 1000 shoots ago. I keep adding new with heat stabilizer almost every time I heat. 90 percent of the time my color is dark most of witch is black. ON the rare occasion I shoot a light color and so what if its off color from being burnt, so far the fish haven't been apposed to the bait being over cooked. I live in delaware with mostly dark sometimes muddy waters. black is the fail proof color. my buddies turned me on to the soft bait frog a couple years ago. each one of them probably goes through 1000 stanley ribbit frogs black, each year and that is probably an understatement. I got into this hobby to try and sell them my croakers they tried them caught bass just as easily. and still won't go away from the stanley rabbit. I was almost cutting there cost in half considering they are spending about 500 a year per person.wtf I'm going to try the bigfoot toad. I can only hope it will be something they will want. and they won't get not even one. We are a group of hard core kayak fisherman throwing the black frog 99.9 percent of the time, garanteed to crush the bass. fyi for anyone wanting to get into kayak fishing. there is no better kayak than jackson kayak they really taylor to the fisherman. Some people think I'm crazy for spending 1200 dollars on a kayak. then i show them what some of the top of the line bass boats cost. and i can get into places they can't.

[efishnc]

For the most part, I'm like you watching the viscosity over the probe when working with the microwave... (I want it to pour like heavy whipping cream)... even with light colors, which is over half of what I shoot.  This is something experience will show us, but I don't recommend it for beginners until they get a true feel for things. 

On occasion, I will go with my hot plate and pot for certain batches and there I religiously use a thermometer (even though I marked my dial as to where I get the correct temps are) because of the slow response time when adding more (cold) plastic and trying to maintain temps where I want them.   It is just too easy to overheat, especially if the slightest bit distracted, because it doesn't shut off like the microwave.