BigZ

WD-40 has rapeseed oil in it, which is supposedly what the fish are attracted to. If F&G catches you spraying that stuff on your bait here, you're in BIG trouble. In the long run, the oil will cause your mold to dull, but it does work to bring back old molds. Hell, I still use RTV for some baits.

I like to use bluehighlight in a smoke worm with holo and black flake. Lately I have been using a LOT of lumina black in green pumpkin and watermelon baits. Pearls excel in light colors or translucents. A good recipe is as follows... ? cup plastic 12 drops watermelon brown 1/8 tsp LC pearl powder small red flake to taste. I pour this brown pearl as the top layer with a watermelon (no flake) base layer and it hammers the fish! :grin:

I agree with Bassnfool about acid etching the aluminum, there are a ton of products available for that on the net. If you are using bondo on ANY boat, and it's below the waterline, make sure you use either sealing primer or paint on any bondo spots to waterproof them. Etching before you bondo or using a coarse paper on the area to be filled first is also wise. Make sure you use enough bondo to get a finish sand on it in one shot; if you layer bondo, you will create a laminar void between the layers and your paint job will miraculously fall off. Nice kickboat though, makes me want to get rid of my water skeeter boats...I am going to make one this summer out of Burke tubes and fiberglass using an old pontoon boat frame. Premade tanks like that, I'd just camo it up and live with the dents! LoL!

For cost effectiveness when prototyping a bait, you should make a master from modeling clay (sculpey?) and make a test mold out of RTV or plaster of paris and make a few test pours before you move on to a more permanent, CNC milled aluminum mold. You could also make one out of fiberglass resin and get decent finish results. As far as the plastic goes, if you want it to truly float, you will need to add glass microspheres or (be afraid) aerate your plastic while it is at pouring temp. A good tip for floationg baits is to pour 2 colors, the top color with floatant added and the bottom clor with salt added to create bias in the buoyancy of the bait. Good Luck...

Reapers are what got me pouring my own baits. I use a mojo style weight from 1/8 to 1/2 oz pegged with a sinker stop about 24" above a 4" LC reaper on a 1/0 owner hook. Fish SLOW. Move the bait about a foot and give it at least a 3 count before you move it. If you aren't feeling structure, MOVE! You can flip the bigger ones with good results, I know guys here who flip the whole lake with a 6" reaper and they catch +size fish. You can never go TOO wrong with a reaper. This bait has produced when nothing else works (for me).I've caught fish on texas and dropshot with them consistently. This is definitely one of the most versatile styles of lure. Favorite reaper colors Green Pumpkin gold+red flake, Clear Lake Special (junebug/ blue highlight vein), SMOKE! :grin:

I saw that the main index page wasn't changed yet, but I did talk to him yesterday and he told me it was back online. His shop is up and running again in a new building.

Bob put the site back up. The Tackle Shack Is Back...

I made the crusher from an old herters reloading press cam,lever and shaft. The casting on the reloader frame stress cracked pressing 45-70 loads last year (know anyone that needs.45-70, 35 rem and .375 H&H belted mag herters dies?).I made a simple frame with a yoke and .5" t6 aluminum plates. Everything is put together with set screws....but I like fire too much to weld...LOL It works...and it was as cheap as free!

I made a tube slicer from #3 carpet blades and a can crusher. I put a chunk of aluminum on the bottom surface, it works damn good. fish tubes in springtime. LoL. I slit the wood face on the ram with a sheet metal blade, jammed the blades in and hit em with devcon 2 part... Pretty permanent unless something ugly happens. Tubes cut with a nice loud POP noise!

Bob got a new shop, but he had to move his equipment and recalibrate his stuff. Don't hold your breath right now, he has contracts to fill before the "fun work" begins again. Conservitavely, a couple months. I got a ton of prototype stuff wating right now! Off to dropshot the cliff faces at Berryessa in the AM!!! YEEEHaw~

Bob found a new shop, and will be moving in the next couple of weeks. It's still going to be a while for molds because he is gonna be "playing catch up" on the paying jobs for a while. Be patient, it's no fun to move a machine shop!

I'm sure yamamoto uses a number scheme solely for ordering purposes as a reference. If someone could devise a colorant numbering scheme, that would make it easy for us to swap recipes. If one of the NERDS reading this is an HTML king and could make an applet with a color wheel incorporating a standard set of colorants to mix the picked color on the chart, that would be KILLER! You would of course have to have a fixed volume and measuement for colorants, ie.. 1 cup plastic, drops to cup? I can theorize but I can't program web stuff worth mule fertility.

Damn, thanks for giving the breakdown Del. I think a lot of these guys don't realize that it can take ~2hrs of machine time to cut a mold. Not to mention design time and setup/fixturing and expendables(cutters/coolant..etc). The cheapest machining vendor I use at work is $65 an hour and I have to hold his hand to get things done right. I have to deal with prototype to production detail every day as an engineer for GM/Toyota (NUMMI), and I see price breakdowns all day every day. People need to realize that a custom mold is gonna cost a couple hundred bucks and their lead times are going to be superceded by the "paying jobs" that keep the lights on and the chips flying in the shop. I also know for a fact that the manufacturing world is driven by exacting deadlines and meeting them; secondly, there is not a big enough market to keep someone manufacturing worm molds 40 hrs a week. Del and Bob both do this because they love to bass fish, they are not profiteering business men. They are a serious asset to our sport and hobby.

It really sucks when bad stuff happens to good people. I can't say how much it sucks to see a friend go through this kind of crap. I have a flight booked for next week so we could cut some custom molds and some work related stuff (boring compression mold for EPDM compression molds), but that ain't happenin' now. I will still go down and help him move the equipment out of his shop if he needs me. His machines are OK (thank god), he just needs to find a new place to move to. I just lost my workspace because the neighbors griped about "machine noise" and zoning crap. Wait until later tonight when I fire up a ?" end mill doing 7500 rpm at 2:00 AM! Just got my mill dialed too. Let's all wish for some good luck for BTS Baits! :grin:

I am posting this to let people know that orders will be stopped for at least 3 weeks until he gets situated again. The building that housed Bob's machine shop in N. Phoenix had a structural fire this morning. His shop is in one of the end units, the two in the middle burned up bad, but the damage to his shop hasn't been assessed yet. It took 70+ firemen and 1? hours to put this damned thing out. Bob and his dad were at the shop working and got out of the building, no one was injured. That's the only good news. Here's a link to streaming TV coverage. You have to log in to see it. http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/KTVKLNews20060110_industrialfire.63cd1ad8.html