Add Spouts to Your Gallon Jugs: More Control, Less Mess

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Why adding spouts is worth it

I love being a bait maker for a ton of reasons, but dealing with the mess that inherently comes with handling, storing, and working with plastisol is not one of them. If you haven’t noticed by now after reading some of my other journal posts, I try my best to keep a tiny workspace and clean-ish shop. That means I’m always looking for areas of my workflow where I can minimize mess, and with plastisol, there are A LOT of areas to look at.

One of those areas is clean and convenient storage. No one wants to be messing around with five-gallon buckets every time they want to do a simple test pour or have some fun with color formulation. For those cases, I keep at least three gallons (soft, medium, and hard) of plastic in my cabinet and ready to go. Even those smaller sizes can be cumbersome to pour and work with, and are definitely still prone to drips and making messes (especially if you’re working with a full gallon jug).

To solve those problems, I started adding simple and cheap spouts to all my gallon jugs. Here’s how I do it…

What you need

A gallon jug with a white screw-on cap, next to a white plastic spout with a threaded end, a hex nut, and two O-rings — The parts: a jug, a spout, a nut, and two O-rings.

A 1-gallon F-style jug. I get mine from LureWorks.
A spout. They come in two-packs on Amazon, and the kit has the O-rings and the nuts.

The tools laid out on a work table: a folding utility knife, scissors, a center punch, a step drill bit, and a cordless drill — The tools.

A drill.
A step drill bit that goes to 3/4 inch. This is the bit kit I use.
A center punch.
Sharp scissors. I have these super sharp and precise scissors that do the job perfectly.
A utility knife, to trim off any burr on the cap, and the seal if you don’t have good sharp scissors. I didn’t need it this time, because the burr on the cap came off clean and my scissors handled the seal.

How to add the spout

Drill the cap

Remove the safety ring from the cap. Take the cap off the jug and pull off the thin safety ring around its bottom edge. It’s unnecessary: it’s there if you want to seal a jug for resale, so the customer knows it hasn’t been tampered with. In this case, you are the customer, and it’ll just come off the first time you unscrew the lid again anyway.
Mark the spot for the pilot hole. Use the center punch on the top of the cap to mark the center.
Drill the pilot hole from the top. Start the step bit on your mark and drill to the 1/4-inch step.
Flip the cap over and drill the rest from the inside, up to 3/4 inch. Don’t go over that! The inside of the cap is lined with a seal that comes with the jug. Drilling this part from the inside keeps the seal from warping and shredding, so you can reuse it in the finished cap.

Pulling the thin safety ring off the bottom edge of the cap — Step 1: off with the safety ring.

Marking the center of the top of the cap with a center punch — Step 2: mark the center.

Drilling into the top of the cap with a step bit — Step 3: pilot hole from the top.

The top of the cap with a small pilot hole through the center — 1/4" pilot hole through the top makes it easier to drill through the seal on the bottom.

The inside of the cap, lined with its white seal — The seal lines the inside of the cap.

Drilling through the cap from the inside, through the seal, with the step bit — Step 4: finish from the inside.

The inside of the cap with the finished hole through the seal and plastic shavings around it — Minimal damage to the seal.

Clean up the seal

Pop the seal out of the cap. You may need to use the utility knife tip to pry it out along the edge.
Trim the burr. Drilling leaves a ragged burr around the hole in the seal. Trim it off with scissors until the hole is clean and smooth.
Check the cap for a burr, too. If there’s one around the hole, trim it off with the utility knife. Mine came off clean this time.
Clear the shavings out of the cap.

The seal out of the cap, with the drilled hole in its center — Remove the seal.

A close look at the ragged burr around the hole in the seal — The burr to trim.

Trimming the burr from the hole in the seal with scissors

The seal with a clean, smooth hole after trimming — Clean and smooth.

Install the spout

Add the outer O-ring. Slide one O-ring onto the spout’s threads, all the way up against the spout.
Twist the spout into the cap from the top until the O-ring sits flush against the top of the cap.
Put the seal back in the cap, over the spout’s threads.
Add the inner O-ring over the threads, on top of the seal.
Hand-tighten the nut onto the threads.

Sliding an O-ring onto the threaded end of the spout — Step 1: outer O-ring.

The spout with the O-ring seated against it — Silicone O-ring firmly in place.

Twisting the spout's threads into the hole in the top of the cap — Step 2: twist it in.

The spout in the cap, with the O-ring flush against the top — Flush.

The inside of the cap with the seal back in place around the spout's threads — Step 3: seal back in.

The inner O-ring on the spout's threads, on top of the seal — Step 4: inner O-ring.

The nut hand-tightened onto the spout's threads inside the cap — Step 5: hand-tighten the nut.

The finished cap from the side, with the spout installed — Installed.

Put it on the jug

Screw the cap onto the jug. If it goes on crooked, hand-tighten it and it straightens right out.

The spout cap sitting crooked on the jug — Crooked at first.

The spout cap hand-tightened and sitting straight on the jug — Hand-tightened and straight.

The finished jug lying on its side with the spout in its cap, and a thumbs-up — Build complete.

Filling your jug

Set up on a silicone mat. Put your bucket of plastisol and the empty jug on a silicone mat.
Pour it in through a funnel. Set a funnel in the jug’s mouth and pour the plastisol in from the bucket.
Screw on the cap with the spout.

I use this funnel, and it’s awesome and excellent for this job. It fits the wide-mouth jug securely and makes pouring from the five-gallon bucket (or using a cup or scoop) much cleaner and easier. It also comes with a plastic mesh filter to keep any unexpected macro impurities out.

A bucket of plastisol and an empty jug with a blue funnel in its mouth, both on a silicone mat on the floor — Ready to fill.

A close look at the blue funnel sitting in the jug's mouth — The funnel fits secure and snug.

Pouring plastisol from the bucket into the funnel on the jug — The funnel gives you a nice big target to pour plastic in so you minimize drips and spills.

Drips of plastisol on the silicone mat next to the bucket and the jug — Why the silicone mat: the inevitable drips land there instead of soaking into your floor.

The full jug standing on the mat with the spout cap screwed on — Step 3: cap on, nice and secure, ready to store and pour.

Mix it before you pour

If you’re new to bait making, this is your reminder that your plastic needs to be well stirred or mixed before use.

If the plastisol blend you’re using tends to separate significantly (some of the popular Bait Plastics blends tend to do this in my experience), you’ll want to remove the cap and use a stir stick of some kind for a minute before use. These days I personally either use long, 12” borosilicate glass stirring rods if the plastic is lightly separated, or a long paddle* and drill if there is more significant separation. Just be careful with your drill speed for a jug that’s on the full side, and know that the glass rods are super easy to clean while the paddle is a little more mess-prone.

I’ll probably take heat for this, but if your plastisol blend doesn’t separate much and/or the jug is less than half full, I’ve discovered it’s fine to just shake the jug vigorously for 10-15 seconds instead of stirring as long as you plan to put your plastic through a vacuum chamber session afterwards. The only reason anyone says “never shake the bottle!” is because it introduces air bubbles. The vac chamber takes care of that, and you should be vac’ing your plastic anyway. It’s a win-win.

*Paddle hack to fit the LureWorks jugs: I have yet to find a helix-style drill mixing attachment with both a 10+ inch shaft (to comfortably reach the bottom of a gallon jug) and a 2-inch-wide blade (to fit the wide-mouth spout) for the LureWorks jugs and others like them. I had an unused Edwards Tools paint mixer hanging out in our paint supplies drawer here in the garage that has a shaft long enough, so I took my heavy-duty shears (I love these things) and snipped about 1/4 inch off each blade tip so it fits the wide-mouth jugs. This little hack has proven to work really well.

Pouring from it

I store the filled jugs upright, cap up, in my cabinets under my workbench. When I need more plastic, I take the jug out, give it a stir or shake (see above), and place it on the cabinet on its side, spout down, so I can draw plastic from it.

I love the control the spout gives you. You can pour a little or a lot, fast or slow, and measure out exactly what you need. It takes what used to be a mess-prone chore and turns it into a simple, clean, drip-free job.

The full jug tipped on its side with the spout at the bottom — Test your spout and seal. No drips = good to go!

A jug of plastisol with a spout in its cap, lying on its side on the bench next to a glass measuring cup of plastisol, with a thumbs-up — Ready to rock, no mess.

Where to go next

The Crossbow My low-mess injector filling station. Beginners guide The gear and supplies to get started. Hook Book Exact recipes for every Crusher color.