Delw

one way to find out is change the pouring routine just for test. like if he poured right to left pour from left to right or pour center first. pouring center first would allow the air to escape form the both sides. would be nice to know what cavity gets a bad one which way he pours. also remember once you pour one worm you made a seal on that cavity. on some pretty big molds I have made just a cut in betwen each cavity in the length of the mold not touching any cavities. this allows it so once you pour one side and its sealed via the plastic the other cavity and the side next to the worm you poured has a place for air to go. chasing dents is a pain in the butt as it seems there is no constant even with the same molds same plastic just differnet people pouring.

I read his post wrong then. I would love to do clear molds, and we looked into it last year for a customer to pour multicolor pours and to know when the color is at the right height. the areas you cut wouldn't be clear either due to tool paths( the would look etched) and to make them clear you would have to add 2-4 times as many lines in the program plus some polishing. driving the cost up even more. oh and then that cutting plastic mess nasty.

I might be able to answer that. if you look at a hand poured alum mold you will see that the 2 halves are not perfectly flat so there is really no seal. pouring one worm could be pushing gas/air into the other worm while your pouring it from the side. They are flat enough so plastic wont ooze out of the side where the 2 molds meet and in fact let air escape from the sides so they pour easier. in the first 2 years I made molds perfectly flat as I lapped them in, there were more problems with dents and filling and mainly on molds with heavy ribs like the diamond tails and some others. most dents don't occour were the molds meet the usually occour on one half or the other were there is no seams. however sometimes dents will occour at the seams on the inside worms and not on the outside worm. does that dent occour in the same spot on the same cavity every time? if it does drill a very small hole 1/32 in the middle of the spot that has the dent and chances are it will go away. The diamond tail worm is pretty much a round for each segment , if you hold it straight up like your going to pour you will see that the liquid goes in then out then in each segment ie small big small. if the plastic cools on the small section before the big section(which it normally does) and steam/smoke is still coming from the big section it will produce a bubble. I know it doesnt make much sence, but if you look at one half long enough it will.

Dave, no problem however now you through something else info the mix. Vacumm forming. Hand pouring dents will be different than injection dents and so will vacumm dents. just like dents in alum silicon and pop throwing another varible into something will cause something different. Injection will get dents via having the fill runner in the wrong spot and you can get dents in different spots via differnt PSI pressures. vacumm forming dents can be caused by pulling plastic away from a certain area. for example if there is no seal at a certain spot and your using vaccum you would be pulling the plastic away from that spot causeing a dent. there are way to many varibles in every type of mold to link them all together or call them the same. I am assuming we were still talking about hand pouring dents, if you were talking about dents in a vaccum type mold then my post was not correct as I thought we were talking about hand pours.

Dents are most commonly cause by gas pockets, 152 street baits is caused by gas pockets,10 inch trick worm stick baits are both gas pockets or the salt haing air pockets in it or both. Shanes case I believe he is talking about the 2 piece superfluke, that is caused by the top of the mold having a very smooth finish and nothing to hold it when it cools. I can go on and on about dents but 90% of the time its due to gas/steam rising smoke(smoke is a gas) etc etc if you use salt in the baits 70% of the its caused by the salt having air pockets in it the rest of the time its due to gas, then theres the mold too cold and poring hot plastic into it which creates steam causeing a air pocket/dent. its most noticeable in alum molds. silicon is least and pop is in between every style of mold is different. it sticks trick worms flukes swimbaits etc etc.

Jim look for he post I made a while back when I listed the motor to use and had the pics up also. just get some scrap angle iron or alum and mash it down ith a hammer. then rivet bolt or weld it to something round to connect to the motor. you could even brase it using one of those hot cheap propane tourchs and a coat hanger or brasing rod.

it works pretty good on some tubes you will have to experiment as some have differnt additives and the plastic won't adhear correctly. I used yamamoto and reaction inovation tubes and they worked fine. I dip them in and count to 5-15 depending on how hot my plastic is. I dip them up to the skirt. I usually dip red ones in white and white ones in red, sometimes black in floresant yellow and chart in black. gives a 2 tone tube thats really cool.

http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/soft-plastics/15349-dels-chunks.html here you go

Jeff April hasnt pulled any glitters off the website so I am sure it is still there. do you remember the name of it? I don't remember one called canadian blue so it may have not been from us.

you can also goto an office supply store and buy paper clamps, they make then in a very large size

Dramone air vents on the bottom of the mold will not work if and only if the bottom of the mold is perfectly flat( key word) and the surface in which it is standing on is perfectly flat. even a .002 gap (a hair thickness) between bottom of the mold and the surface in which it is sitting on will allow air to escape

When I was fishing tournys alot, like every weekend and prefishing 2-4 times a week, I changed my line once a month. SInce I am always at the shop and didnt have a linewinder I always used my machines. I used a hand mill with old rod seat clamped in a vice and a t handle allen wrench in the chuck to turn the reel. I used a 12" chuck on a manual lathe to take the line off the reels, what every I got I've used it. Hell when I am in a hurry and need to Multitask, I feed the line under the bathroom door, run the spool of line to the desk drawer with a pencil. I have driven and spooled up line who ever is not driving holds the spool of line. once I had to change line on the boat while waiting to launch for a tourny, I stripped the line using the prop on my 109lb TM, then cut it off with a knife and had my fishing partner spool it back on while I was driving the boat. Anythng will work you just have to use your Imagination. a varible speed handdrill will help big time if you have multiple reels to do. Beisdes if you home and have kids that what kids are for. they will wind it on tight if you show them how to do it and give them a pair of glooves so the line doesnt burn there fingers.

I think I have some plans still drawn up they are from the 90's and they are basically copies of the berkley ones every single part.it was one of those projects I wanted to make but never finished. I used a sewing machine motor and foot pedal. I made the base out of Alum and pretty much everything else as well. basically all you need is a square boxs with a shaft that runs through it and bearing housings on each side and a shaft that goes through, then of coarse all the attachments. in all honesty its far cheaper to buy one than to build on even one of the 2000 dollar ones, I have seen them on ebay for 300-600 bucks. the other way to do it is get a battery operated drill mount it in a vise horizontally then make something to hold the spool to a shaft mounted on the drill

On the curl tail they used a 1/16th dia. hole right at the tip. On the long 16" diamond tails They come vented. the diamond tails will hand pour with no problem unless you use a super hard plastic as the flow is thicker.

Some of the guys on this board have used that way with some success. I know 7-10 curl tail worms and 12-16" diamond tail worms. Mainly cause the majority of the plastic is pretty warm as there is alot, you will still have prolems if your mold is to cold or your wit to long. a empty syring just shooting air is safer than one filled with plastic.

Making a swimbait mold out of RTV /pop you can pretty much make it a one piece mold( if you have a open top) as RTV bends and will pull out a finished bait nicely with out ripping a fin or 2 off. plus with that amount of plastic there is alot of elasticity. I would make the swimbaits out of one piece of alum. if it was do able. as a machine can only do certain things with certain tools. it gets really costly when adding 4th and 5th axis attachments and very long small dia tools to do the job. For example that Chub "E" mold I have I can make out of one piece however it would end up costing about 3k per mold, on a production level an easy 700-1000 bucks per mold ( just a guess but its a close guess) to make a 2 piece as close to center line as possible I would get a piece of sheet metal like .040-050 thick. cut 2 holes in it opposite to hold someone round like marbles so the mold will seat together. cut out a space for the sample to fit in also. then pour the RTV/POP in it complete, let it sure and take off the sheet metal( with the 2 marbles attached) you will only loose .040-.050 thickness of the bait. then pop a marble back in each socket and glue it in place, you then have a 2 piece mold with flat and even faces that ling up correctly using the marbles.

Yes it is.The best non bleeding glitter is metal. I been selling it since the begining. You can cook metal in a microwave alll day long and it wont spark. the spark is caused my reflection, one even some craft glitters you will get arcing. Myth Busters 101 LOL there was a really cool show about 2-3 years ago on microwaves. I posted the show name and info on here. its well worth watching for anyone thats uses a microwave for any craft project. it also in detail explains how things actually cook (Moisture) if there isnt any moisture a micro wave will not work at all even to heat something. Believe it or not almost everything has moisture in it.

I been thinking the same thing thats why I was wanting a picture. The mold could have some junk on the faces keeping it from closing, or it could have been dropped and has a kicked edge.

can you post a pic of that line? Something tells me your mold is very cold when your pouring, and that line is plastic just cooling off fast. where are you pouring and how cold is it. Molds should be at room temp when you pour so should your supplies when you get ready too cook them.

wow time flies anymore doesnt it. there were 2 trout worm guys. Both were really cool the one I can't remember that well had the success, the other one lived in tennesse/virgina? if I remember correctly he had a 2001 stratos brand spanking new he bought at a repo place for a smoking deal I think his name was Greg. he was a hell of a nice guy he worked for the hiway dept and took care of his mom and dad. I talked to him about 2-3 years ago and that was the last I have heard from him.

2 things will cause this, if your plastic is not hot enough( yeah yeah I know 350

theres a few ways to use the hand injectors like what Janns sells and they can be safe as long as you have common sence. I mean your not going to goto the overn and pull out a turkey with your bare hands so why use your bare hands on a plastic injectpr ( I've done it and paid the price cause I was stupid at the time) A tool is only as safe as the person using it, kinda like a gun it cant hurt anyone by itself but in the hands of someone that is careless someone can get hurt. on the grubs and curltail molds that you are talking about you can pour them with hot plastic then shoot air from the injector in the, and refill those are the easy ones. I know for a fact it works as customers tell me so. if you have shakey hands you can use a pot (lees presto, sta warm etc) or you can rest your wrist on a phone book or 2 and pour that works really good and its about the right height. moveing the spuce to the middle or anywere else wouldnt do much. other than cause air to be trapped in every groove on the top, which them you would have to drill holes in every groove for vents(more cost)wouldnt fill the tail and you would have the problem of triming a glob of plastic from the side of a bait which would make the bait look funny. the shop vaccum deal would work on those above molds due to the amount of plastic and the heat it will generate. Obvisouly the molds would have to be modified to accept a fitting to hook up to the vaccum ie more cost.

1. Unless your set up for it injection is a waste of time and money for a little guy. for example lets take a stil bait, you can pour them faster than you can inject the same mold. you will still need a multiple amount of molds wether injection or hand pour so why ad the cost of a injection machine( speaking hand injection not a zorn type machine.) an injection machine will allow you to shoot curl tails and very thin molds were as pouring would be impossible. 2, yes they can and are but only certain type of baits are worth injecting again curtails stuff and very thin stuff. Injection will allow you to shoot different colors using a slide bar, ( you will obviously need to injection machines.) all the baits I have online are pretty much hand pour there are molds that would benifit using a injector if and only if you are trying for production. if its for yourself and you want to throw a few grand into it then it thats different 3. the injection doesnt make the process easier, it actually complicates it more. remember as your baits are cooling the plastic tends to settle so how do you keep them filled? unless your set up for it its worth it. lets say for example you want to shoot 10" curl tail 2 piece wrom molds one color, hand pouring you have to pour the tails first. with injection you can do it all in one shot. so it takes a second or 2 to shoot the bait, and depdnign on how hot the mold is up to a few mins before demold. so now you need more molds to shoot other wise you would be sitting around doing nothing and your plastic would be just sitting there hot. Not much sence in getting a injection machine. to make the process work efficiently you would need to fabricate the injection pot to the table. then make the base of the table under the nozzle to accept a spring system. so you slide the molds under the nozzle pushing down and then let it go and it seats into the nozzle( keeping your hands free) open the valve and then close valve push mold down and slide in new mold. YOU NEVER HOLD THE MOLD UP AGAINST THE NOZZLE EVEN UNDER 1-2 LBS OF PSI that would be suicide and just plain dumb. I all honesty a homemade injection machine for 99% of the people is usless just a waste of money. you would have a few thousand dollars in molds and the machine to make it efficient. You have to figure out is it worth the thousands to make a worm that you can buy for 5 bucks a bag for? example being the 10" curl tail berkley worm if you have molds specifically made for a home made injection machine then your talking more cost than a standard off the shelf mold so figure that into the picture as well.

2-5 lbs runs most molds just fine, with a anything over 7 lbs is Dangerous on a homemade pot. For example using a all american pressure pot it has a 7 or 10lb pop off valve.

Dave I learned a long time ago if someone thinks of something cool or unique than its more than liekly been done, However what you fail to realize is that in bringing such a subject up brings it back to attention and maybe people try things again finding a better way with new technology and all. Thats a great thing. I honestly forgot about ohio mikes post, he wasnt the guy I was thinking of this guy lived in the south. so back to the thread on alum vs vaccum. theres a few reasons why they wouldnt work/be justifiable or worth it. First like I said the small very thin segments will cool before they run through. A vacumm does have alot more sucking force then a vacumm pump we only played witht he vacumm pump, but the problem with a shop vac is that its too darn loud, I dont think there are very many people who would sit pouring with a shopvac running next to them all day.