Tony , you should have been a machinests
I think I'm blessed that I'm usually happy with good enough.
I have a bunch of plugs hanging in front of my lathe that inspire me for different reasons. A few are just skinny polaris style poppers I made the first time I used a lathe. These were made from birch dowels, with long screw eyes, belly swivels pinned in with cutoff stainless finish nails, no cupping in the head. Finish was rattle can, top coat was spray on varnish or nothing at all. And the only finish missing is from Blue fish teeth or hook swings.. I think I've had only 1 batch of epoxied plugs hold up as well as simple oil based spray cans with a simple poly urethane top coat. If it wasn't for the yellowing of the poly I'd probably go back to that.
Last year I messed around with hook hangers and fully sealing some plugs, and that seemed to make a difference. I'm going to try and do more of that this year..