Senkosam

If you're going to use salt water plastic, I advise to add a bit of softener to it. You don't want too big a difference in softeness to super soft because the bait might not have the same action. It's easy with stick molds. I fill the mold; cut off the top I want to be harder, close the mold and pour salt water plastic heated to a little over 300 degrees. There's no point doing it for large frogs and swimbaits would be a challenge. Dipping does nothing for toughening up plastic except making a bulkier lure head. Frank

I used to do the same thing but decided it was easier to cut the different colored tail off a swimbait from Lurecraft and attach it after holding both ends over a candle flame. Works a lot better than glue.

I have Bears sw.b. mold and it produces perfect sw.b's every time! All my molds from Bear are quality and I only sent back one because the size of the cavity was less than I expected. Instant refund, no questions asked and credit was put towards another excellent jerk worm (Twitch) which I received before he even got the returned mold. Bear's sw.b. mold can be used to make solid or hollow sw.b.s. Take out the blade for solid lures. I've even put a hook slot in by laying down a width of aluminum foil (over mold cavity, baits top or bottom surface) ,closing the mold and injecting. Dip the center blade in color, put in the mold and you have a core shot after the blade is removed. Since I prefer soft plastic for most designs, I find it's a must for solid sw.b's. and insures solid hooksets. The difference in action for hollow or solid is minimal and you have more plastic to hold the hook in place for solid lures. Bear's service, like Bob's, is the best and he always responds if there is a problem. Any questions from users of his molds, go to his forum. The gallery speaks volumes! Get information first hand. Frank Manuele

The other way is to mix 50/50 the firm plastic with supersoft plastic.

Always my pleasure to compare notes! I'll tell you how it works out. Glad I don't have a closed mind and can adapt when ideas present themselves. Frank

Note the deeper sprue in Bear molds. Note the long air bubble in the stick that had a shallow sprue and no vent; and the stick that benefited from the deep sprue and vent. The deep sprue/ vented mold pours perfect every time with no dents or air cavities. Even laminates were easier too pour. The thimble may work like the deep sprue and save time having to repour the top quarter after I cut off the bubble cavity. I will drill a vent hole into one cavity and see if it helps. Bob's molds suffers from the same problem and I think he will be open to modifying his design.

To emphasize what Zbass said, always pay attention to heating plastic, whether in the nuker or on the hot plate. Burning plastic fumes will burn your lungs and eyes, cause your throat to close up and swell, possibly resulting in DEATH!! You must use a vent to the outside because no one knows the carcinogens in the plastic.Preheated plastic takes less time to liquifyOvercooking plastic results in glitter shrinkage, color bleed and pale to a gray color flakes. The more times plastic is reheated at high temps, the greater the glitter loss in size and colorThe more you heat metal molds, the hotter they are to handle. I use a heavy spring clamp, even for the first pour, and keep my hand away from the mold. My hand is steadier.By all means use more softener as a rule if adding salt. Salt firms a bait and some manufacture's plastic has more hardener in it to start with. Test the cured plastic for softness after 24 hours and then, one week after pouring to see if the final softness is maintained. A hard plastic has less action.The more translucent the color, the less glitter needed.A mix of glitter sizes gives different effects. Observe Zoom's color 54 which a mix of .015 and .040 red and black flakes. Look at other attractive baits by other large companies. No one has a patent on glitter use.Original Fish Formula oil sold by Bass Pro is the cheapest worm oil out there and the baitfish formula smells nice, counteracting the stink of plastic.

The pictures show a long thin attachment attached to a thin body of two of the same style shads. Unless the plastic is heated to 375 and the mold is pre-heated and the tail is vented, you won't get enough flow through a POP mold to fill the tail. Maybe aluminum, but not POP. Both shads are different than the shad shown in the previous post. They are even different than the Mr. Twister Sassy Shad. I like the idea of hacksawing a vent. Think I'll do it for Del's molds which always have bubbles at the top of every lure and will need to drill a hole into a thimble and hold it with pliars over the pour spout while pouring to kill the upper plastic contraction. Vent and thimble -- thanks for the ideas! Save yourself some time, get LC's silicone shad molds for less than 20 bucks.

A vent won't help if you have a two part mold that has a thin tail attached to the club tail end. The plastic cools and clots the cavity. Pop mold suck for shads because the thin part rips when trying to lift out the clubtail from the much deeper and wider cavity. A one pc. silicone mold like the one LC sells is your best bet. You can open the mold to spread the cavity by bending the sides away from the cavity and finish pouring the club. Do the same to release the lure. I still coat my cavities with oil for better release and a shinier lure surface. A 2-pc POP swimbait mold with club tail is never a problem because the connection is thicker and everything fills in good. The vent idea is a good one for this mold. My first aluminum mold from Bear (a Wacky Worm design) is the first mold I've ever used with a tail vent and deep sprue. Never a bubble near the pour hole and a perfect bait every time. That tells me what I've been doing wrong when making long bait 2-part POP molds and that aluminum molds without the deep sprue and vent no longer cut it!

Too bad RTV is so expensive in comparison to POP. Unfortunately POP and aluminum cannot correctly mold certain deep plastic designs and allow the lure to be withdrawn without ripping but RTV will allow some designs only injection was once capable of.

Been a while since I visited Lurecraft's site, but I noticed aluminum molds for the first time and a two sided senko mold for 75 bucks. Wonder who their distributor is? They will be adding new molds this year. LC has come up in the world! I wish them the best. They deserve success for continued good service and fair prices.

Most of us enjoy the hobby and/ or enterprise and have few secrets. Sharing discoveries has helped avoid mistakes and wasting plastic or wasting money on bad plastic. Your Welcome, from everyone.

Temp makes a big difference when it comes to fading or tinting the plastic. I know many who pour at over 240 and have few problems with most colors, but I typically pour at 180-200 and have little tinting, flake shrinkage or color fade. I have to agree, the more you reheat, the more fading and shrinking and it's worse the hotter the plastic. (I never need to reheat a plastic for as long or as hot as the original plastic from the jug.) I proved my point with photos on TU four years ago when a customer had problems with my gold flake. The pictures showed a progression of reheats with the plastic starting to tint by the third. The other two has clear plastic. Violet and Maroon are the worst tinters if temps exceed 220. Of course the tint in watermelon is cool!

I did one hand pour segment for Lunkerville that included fishing on my local lake using only hand made baits. (One flashabou jig caught five species). On that show I intro'd my idea of a hard nose bait the year before Mann came out with his hard nose soft plastics. The other Lunkerville segment done ealier was made by Craig of Micro Munch Baits, which included some bass fishing on his local lake with the camera running. I recently passed on doing another show. Too stressful even though Mike is a great host!

Thicker or less soft? Thicker has been answered. To firm the plastic, I use clear flakes (sugar) and for me it make the plastic firmer than using hardener. Not much is needed.

Monkey I think what you're after is image sharpness, contrast and brightness control. The other thing you might consider are natural versus white background, over head light wattage versus flash and whether a macro lense attachment would give a clearer close-up. Taking the last thing first - I bought a macro lens kit for my Cannon A560 a few years ago on Amazon for $30 bucks. I has three different power lenses for magnifying the object for super detail. The attachment for the lenses was cheap and fits most digitals. Macro lenses focus light and allow for more contrast of even tiny objects. When I can see .008 black flakes in a poured bait, I know the resolution is good! Flash or no flash. Proper lighting allows you to shut the flash off and allow the aperture/ shutter speed to adjust just fine. Agree completely using a tripod and camera timer. Held held is okay for distance shots, but for super resolution, they go hand in hand. I prefer sunlight and natural backgrounds (wood, stone, rock, pebbles, underwater). Halogens come in natural light or white light and light sources can be one or more. Shadows can be regulated with light source direction(s) and I've never needed to use a light tent. I use white light/ white background when taking pics of hybrid designs for my archive of lure ideas. (see picture and note the felt tip ink print) I am not a camera buff, so Photo Shop is out of my league. I've always used much simpler Programs - one called Arc Soft that came with my camera and another from Microsoft that allows every option you can think of to modify your shot. Adobe also has a simple photo program.

Agree! Release agents (such as Original Fish Formula) not only insure release from fine / deep cavities, but give a nice glassy surface appearence to the lure. As long as the sealer was dry/ cured completely, sealer won't stick to the lure if release is used. Even brushed on Canola or veg oil works in a pinch and is polyunsaturated .

Rather than pay for those empties, an idea that might work is to go to Walmart or a pharmacy and look for empty dropper syringes (like that which comes in a child's vitamin bottle) - one for each color. Try one to see if the dye chemistry eats through the plastic. If the syringe is glass, so much the better; you just have to worry about the rubber bulb.

The tighter the strike zone and the more scattered the fish, the more importance color, size, speed, texture, and style of bait have; size and design affects speed, vibration, action, appearance and maybe presentation); color/texture promotes visual cues alongside lure size and action. For me there are few lures or colors that I need to get consistent panfish bites. My primary choice is a flash jig (flashabou tied to a 1/32 or 1/16 oz jighead. Color - not important; a little vs a lot of flash hair - super important! A little flash goes a long way; too much gets rejected. Finesse action and flash makes the flash jig the most subtle lure ever fished (other than a 1" grub or tube). Are bass that more intelligent than panfish or trout? Can one or just a few colors catch all species? If so, having a hundred shades is nice, but not important or predictable on any given day. Many lure details can be equally important and so can other factors such as line diameter, line type and rod action. All affect lure presentation and action, with color being just one (equal?) part of what bassfool posted. As Jim (Ghostbaits) posted back in the beginning of this thread, light, dark and in between colors are simple options that everyone should consider, hue being limited to experience and confidence.

Amazing how the color/ lure confidence factor goes sky high after the first few fish and drops like a rock after an hour of no bites and your partner is catching a few on something else. If color matters, then do other lure factors matter just as much positively or negatively? Maybe it’s just a matter of, how much is too much and how much is just enough? First, I believe that a fish's curiosity is the pivot between a fish hitting a lure or ignoring it. You have to provoke it's curiousity if you're going to get it tracking your lure. If you look at color from the perspective of fish vision and bite stimulus, the hue or the color brightness/contrast or both seem to be important attractants. Are there times when florescent colors (too much of one thing) are a negative (i.e.super bright finesse dropshot baits). There are bright white and off white. Can either be the better choice at times based on activity level and the lure chosen? Maybe a color brighter than black or green pumpkin might be too much in a jig that you’re slowly dragging the bottom with. When fish are at a peak in activity (i.e. prespawn and feeding frenzies), the curiosity factor is easier to trigger, irritability and aggressiveness are higher and therefore high contrast and noisy colors seem to get clobbered as often as muted colors, at least in my experience. But there are times when fish are less active yet still irritable and high contrast (color or noise) get them swimming from a spot to hit my lure. Maybe subtle color differences can be the key, but why and is there a predictive guideline to follow? For me it makes more sense to experiment until I find where on the sliding scale of too much of a good thing to just enough of a good thing, the fish react to. A blasting boom box gets on my nerves and repels me (too much) and a punk gets in my face for no reason (aggresive irritability makes want to wack him). I'm in a good mood and somewhere nearby good country rock played at a decent level gets me tapping my foot (just enough stimulation); I'm hung over, any music is too much - don't bother me! (negative irritability) Maybe relate that to a fish's mood and which irritability it has - aggressive or negative. (BTW, fish do act like they're hung over after a cold front sets in! )

The oils mentioned are not water based. All can be added to hot plastic and all can be used to lubricate plastics in the bag. An oil that has scent added is still an oil. $29.50 / gal. (.23/ oz) from Del is the best price.

Fish Formula Fish Attractant $5.69 for 8oz. LC fish scent (oil) : 2 oz cost $5.75 ; a gal. goes for $166 M-F : 2oz $4.10; 1 gal $51.85 (consider shipping wt.) Where do you get oil for $41 shipped?

Original Fish Formula is much cheaper and does a nice job scenting if needed. The have shad, craw and Original gamefish scents as well as catfish scent. I use the Original Gamefish because it's clear and has a nice anise odor, plus it's great for greasing silicone molds for a shiney bait surface. Like most oils, the oil will dry up in the bag or tackle box within a year and must be reapplied.

Nice baits!! Good to see quality at half the price!

Only for super soft sticks with a lot of salt. Otherwise no.