robbor

but I have been looking and for plastic worms(low temp) almost any should work. I found some that cost about $20 for 1 pound. Contenti has rtv and check smooth-on, or call them and ask for your application

I have never posted here in hardbaits but was wondering how its done. Once you have your mold, do you just pour a lure that is full of plastic? Of do you inject plastic and swirl the mold around so the lure ends up hollow. I was thinking about making some floats or bobbers that were one piece in a mold.

http://www.calfishing.com/reviews/bluegill/316_bluegill/index.html

on ebay taking crappie tubes and putting a dot of plastic on as eyes. Just buy some black lizards and dot the tittle buggers. There is paint but I dont know the stuff, someone posted about it a week or 2 ago.

Ok, the castaic lure company used to make a bluegill, more realistic than any other bluegill(not super huge though). You take that then you cut off the tail and glue on the tail to an optima or osprey swimbait and you got your lure of the gods. There are tons of thoer trout immitations that are close enough to a shad also. If you trim the sides of the tail down super thin you could probable get it to flap with very little current and you can almost limb line the thing. Its all about getting the lure in front of a cat and as you know they like to burry up, and often are not very aggressive. Make a 2 part plaster mold, they are very easy and cheap

OK flatheads huh. First from what I have heard they prefer live bait. Secondly almost every big cat fisherman I know of bends the rules, espicall on bait. Call it what you want, live bait, cut bait,bluegill, crappie,shad, drum you name it and legal or not it works and that is what they use. Catfish are supposed to have the best sense of smell and you dont hear of guys catching cats often on plastics. I would say if you had really good catfishing spots you will only have marginal luck at best with plastics on cats. You will have better luck with crawdads or anything else you can legally use. And bigger is almost always better when it comes to cats. If you are set on plastics get your self some mold making rtv and mold a real bluegill then when you mix your plastic try putting some bait in a blender and adding it to the plastic.

they are all alloys. You can look them up on the web. 18-8 is grey and slightly magnetic and may rust 400 series is about the same as 18-8 for rust 316 and im shure all the 300 series are supposed to not be magnetic and not very easy at all to rust. Sorry but I am not shure about hardness but you should be able to look that up online. If you have a choice you should get the 300 series ss I am shure that is what most use. SS can be made VERY hard. but the tempering process is quite tricky. like heat to ??? say 1200 deg for 10 min then down to 800 for so many min not just a simple heat up and quench. You could make your own forms that are as hard as the titanium they sell . I have talked to a friend who has a forge and makes knives. I also bought a aircraft ss part that was hardened. It was a tube sealed on both end. I killed a lathe bit, sawzall blade and grinding did almost nothing so ss can be made very hard.

and the top of the skirts dont look so hot.. And they are a buck a piece so why bother, you can buy terminators for the same or less, but that is still to much. If you were making spinnerbaits and components cost a buck a piece you would be out of business.

Like myself never seeing and actual spincasting machine and wanting to build one can me tough. Someone finally sent me a pic and I am posting it for future ref and others. If you are all mechanically inclined you can look at the pic and see how its done. There is a cast outer collar bolted to the frame, then they would have 2 roller bearings to mount the next shaft which is hollow and threaded on the bottem to attach the pulley to. then inside the hollow portion should be 2 bushings which support the last shaft which the mold sits on. Im still working on matrials premade to see what I can do. I am looking into an auto motive hub and seeing what other surplus hollow hubs I can find to make this project happen. Hey svepop, I did a bunch of searches a while back and found your posts. their materal is kind of expensive and worse not really a demensoin I would look for to make my fluid bed 2 X 16 without a seam in the middle. I will try a small cup fluid bed first with a coffee filter menbrane to see it work first. It can only cost a few dollars to make. Then Later I will look for a another source for micron filter type material. I was thinking of an automotive filter but they have that V pattern. I looked in Mcmaster but found nothing. Thanks, Rob Oops forgot to resize and no photo shop on my computer, I will post later

But at $3 for a hundered is it worth your time and eyes and back to make them??? Can you by hand in one hour get set up heat dip and cool 100 tubes then cut all the tales. If you can then you just got a $2-5 dollar an hour new job, waahoo!!! we are all rich!!! Lil hustler maks well over 100 colored tubes $3.16 for 100 and $21 for 1000 that is .02 and .o3 cents a piece http://drifterfishingsupplies.netstorekeeper.com/

One of the big skirt companies. I along with many other have called and talked to them. They eill not sell them, they have an exclusive contract. The skirts are silicone but the centers are a special cast part with a flare on the bottem I. they ore obviously glued togather. they center pieces do not dry out like surgical tubing. If you had someone who really knew plastics they could probably tell you what type of plastic and glue. There is a guy on ebay that sells some under "silicone skirts" but he only auctions and will not sell direct. I contacted him for some white skirts and would buy for fair price, he said he did not have any, and would contact me. the next week he had some on ebay but not a peep and would not outright see them.

Yes I am going to make a spincaster, but it looks like Because of $$$ I wont be able to start for a few months. I got all the details worked out. By big problem was vulcanizing the mold. I found large 9 or 12" ss and steel companion flanges for a cooling tower on ebay that I will put a piece of obout 3/4 steel on either side and drill them throught for the flange bolts and then tighten them down and place in oven. Im no worying about the lead pot right now. I will have to come up with a big one. As for the spincaster I am still trying to get more detail or a pic if the pneumatic assembly, but will probable make on from scratch unless another drill press falls in my lap. The drill press idea is great. I have learned alot and talked to some very nice people. I am planning on building my own fluid bed also. I will probable build a small 3" pvc one first with dual coffe filters as the membrane but will end up building a one about 2" x 16" or so when I get closer. Hopefully I will get all my lur ideas created during the summer and do some testing and then start producing and be selling intime for next spring. small scale, crappie jig heads, spinner baits , buzzbaits, and maybe large worms. I played witha new design spinnerbait in the pool yesterday and it was promising but still needs adjusting.

I am posting some info that I have found and other have shared. This is the simplest homemade spincaster I have ran across so far: (posted by someone else on a casting board) A spin caster can be made from a cheap drill press turned upside down. Mount the head upside down on the post below the upside down table. mount a platen in the chuck. a mold is then placed on the platen and a plate with a center hole is placed on top of the mold. Place a timken bearing on top of the top plate. The quill is then extended to press the timken against the upside down table with the bearing hole centered under the table hole- to pour through. Lock the quill when the platens are all tight in position and turn on the spindle at the slowest speed. Use some kind of a splash guard to contain any hot metal that may spin out of the mold. Let the thing spin for about 30 seconds after pouring to let the metal harden, turn off the spindle and take everything loose. As far as molds go the normal mold silicone used(from contenti) is their white series 500 and is pretty inexpensive. For small non spin cast molds you could try 1 or 2 jewelry mold frames stacked for desirable thisckness then vulcanize in an oven. If you bought (1) 12" disk set for like $40 you could easily make 4-8 small molds. Another very nice member on the board sent me a mold picture really opening my eyes to going the extra mile in making a mold. His mold starts off with a normal silicone mold disk. the jigs were layed on the disk and then small squares of silicone were placed over the the hook at the base of the jig and then they added metal pins for each hook eye. They used some normal antistick agent and then the top silicone disk and vulcanized it. When done the hook is permanently attached to the lower half of the mold you then make a cut straight down to the hook to remove and you end up with a kink on pop in hook holder and a tight seal to reduce lead flow. It was very nice. Alot of small spincasters are made with anything that will spin a mold and they make the mold from liquid rtv in a round frame and them put a weight on top or clamp. more links to follow Link to the making of whirly cast caster: http://www.granthams.com/Spincast/

I think you have to be more specific. bending wire for spinnerbaits (R bend) or bendintg for spinners? There are cheap benders out there like the little blue bender ($25) and there are manual benders that will cost 200 for the r bender then another 200 for the spinner bender. I think as much preformed as possible is prefered.

I have some glass syringes anyone know where I can get tips for them. They are just tapered glass tips

Ther are 2 black looking washers, (forgot what there called) They only will go on one way and them almost have to be broken to remove them. I think they are called spring clips?

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dtrs5kprs/detail?.dir=7cac&.dnm=e3f4.jpg

as I recall people state that you want to get round razor wheel from fabric or craft store. You end up with like a pizza cutter but small and has about 5+ cutter wheels on it. not shure about the tool itself but if they make the wheels then they should make a handle and you can space the blades apart if needed with washers or shims. do some searching here and you will find a pic somewhere. I saw it along time ago

a couple of years huh and only a few thousand dollars huh? Never doing anything on drawing a did a quick sketch that is darn good(to me)(no demensions) I was just thinking that in cad if you had dimensions that you could input the weight of lead and the computer would calc the volume and tell the rough weight. oh well. Easier to make a mold with 10 sizes and just use the one that is closest to the weight i want. I can come close to the weight I want because i took a piece of wood and milled a few holes, poured the lead in and then measured and weighed and I also had jigheads to compare.

Ok im think about desigining some jig heads and want to be able to compute weight of finished project and have real drawing to give to machineist. Can autocad do this??? Also are there any free autocad downloads?

It is not cheaper to make your own lures unless you go through alot of lures and even then iffy. If you dont use that many lures and you just want to copy something you can already buy for 3.99, you will not be saving anything. mold $20 (hame made) plastic and pyrex and shipping $35+(scent salt glitter color,$$$$) time???? trial and error??? learning something new -$$$$$ ___________________________________ initial cost atleast $55 divided by buying lures at 3.99 a pack _________________________________ You need to use over 14 packs of worms before you would break even at .40 each(stated by you) so if say you could pour 75 packs of worms for the initial cost then they would cost 55 divided by 75 packs they would cost .74 cents a pack but that is never the real cost. time, electicity, really using the equipment longterm??? its a catch .22 Now, alot of people are pouring for a lure they CANT get or buy or a special color or size. Ive seen 16" worm that sell for like $4-5 each. I had a mold made for a lure that is no longer avail.

when looking at jigheads I notices that some heads when put on a 1/32 oz thill float ran the float to low so I got out the scale and weighed the lot. An example: all weights in grains. 1/32=13.67 grains 1/16=27.34 grains and 3/32=41.01 grains Bluefox 1/32 heads were pretty accurate at 14 grains custon heads ran 14.5 at the lowest and normally in the 15.5 range which is why they did not work well on a float. now this is a very sensitive float. Custom 1/16 oz heads ran 30.5 to 32 and custom 3/32 oz ran 41.3 to 43.5 If you want some weighed you can send them to me with a 1$ for return shipping. go_rob_go@yahoo.com

what page and what does bass pro call it???

I am working that way but have not gotten their yet. I am still trying to find materials to make a vulcanizing frame and vulcanize in oven or ? I was talking to others and they said the mold is pressurized when pouring and I was thinking of just having a large weight on top. Send me a pic of what you made go_rob_go at yahoo.com

small to medium quantities up to 1#