Vodkaman

Jerry - Much better, thanks. Dave

Very impressive work. Could you make a 4 cavity injection version. A video of the injection flows would be very informative Dave

The avatar upload facility has been removed, so now you can only use TU's pre-installed avatars. Signatures are a club member privilage. The avatars and signatures that you see some members displaying were created before the changes. It sucks and we are all waiting for Jerry to fix this problem. There have been several threads posted about the avatar thing. I am bored with mine, but the option of a smiley or cartoon character is not acceptable. Dave

My version of PS is quite old, but the method should still work: SELECT > ALL the image will be framed with pickable tags. Pick a tag with your mouse and slide it around. Repeat until you have the result that you want. SELECT > DESELECT Done. If you need to increase the size from the original, you will first need to increase the canvas size: IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE enter the length and width extension numbers and select OK. I am sure there are other possibly easier methods, but this works for me. Dave

Your plan seems pretty good, but you did not mention locators, so that when you close the empty mold prior to pouring, the two halves will line up correctly. If you are hand pouring, you may not need any vents. If a vent becomes necessary, I cut a VEE with a sharp razor. Keep the vents small, their purpose is to allow air to be pushed out, NOT the plastic. If you make the vent too big, like you mentioned, the plastic will just flow out and you'll have trouble filling the mold. If you are injecting, a single vent at the tail will probably suffice. Try to find some pictures of molds and see how others did the venting. The pour spout needs to be big enough to allow you to pour the plastic in and allow air to escape ant the same time. Again, check what diameter pour spout others use. Dave

I would say no, because it will take forever for the acetone to evapourate and you will still be left with the water content. Pour what you have off the sludge into a new jar and use it. Add fresh acetone onto the sludge. For the sake of an ounce of pellets that you used, try the dried Epsom salt thing. Google acetone epsom salts there are a lot of articles on the subject of drying acetone. Dave

The whole start up of a business thing has been discussed many times, so it is worth doing some selective TU searches. Try searching BUSINESS or SALES or tax related search words, as all such threads usually end up talking about tax liabilities. You should be able to filter out relevant threads from the thread titles. If you go for a production setup straight out of the starting gate, yes, it is going to cost BIG bucks. You cannot pour efficiently with one mold, you may need four or more of each pattern that you intend to market. Frank has some great video’s of a production setup in action, well worth a viewing. As a business, you will not get away with just a single worm product, you will need a range of products to satisfy and generate a return customer base. So you are definitely into four figure $ numbers. You have not poured before, so it would make sense to start off small and economically. There is a lot to learn, different color mixes, laminates, glitters, salt, temperatures, different plastics, injection etc. Once you ‘learn the trade’ and demand for your product starts to mass, you can easily ramp up with the purchase of aluminium molds as required, but from the start, you really need to watch the purse strings, until you can justify the expense. The best way to minimize the costs, is to make your own molds. Start off with plaster of Paris (PoP). This is as cheap as it gets and you will learn the molding process and make the mistakes at little cost. You can then progress to RTV rubber molds, the technique is virtually the same, only RTV does not need to be sealed. RTV is more expensive, but still a lot cheaper than ally molds. With PoP and RTV, the baits are still good and marketable, it is all down to how good your masters are. Going this route, your initial outlay is virtually all consumables. Additional costs are: a second hand microwave, a few Pyrex jugs (or alternatives) etc. Even if you only produce for yourself, at this level of production, you should be close to even, possibly even ahead financially. If you limit yourself to only use sales money to purchase future equipment, then you win and your partner will have nothing to complain about, your hobby will be self sufficient. Even at this level, you are liable for tax. Ignore this aspect at your peril. Enter the market place, selling baits, competing with others who are trying to earn a living, they will report you. This is a ‘dog eat dog’ world that we live in, sad but true. Once sales come in, the next stage is presto pots, stirrers, heating griddles, injectors and aluminium molds. If you really want to get ahead of the competition, you need an original fish catching bait, otherwise, you are just turning the same stuff out as everyone else, except the competition has more experience than you. Originality is the key to success and marketing skills of course. Pay the tax, you will sleep better, you do not need the stress. Dave

It could be any of three things that I can think of: 1 - something wrong with your acetone. You probably left the top off for a length of time. Acetone readily absorbs water from the atmosphere. This would probably slow down the dissolving ability of the acetone and is the most likely cause of your problem. 2 - your ambient temperature is very low. This will probably slow down the dissolve rate. I am only guessing here, as I live in a warm climate. Move the mix to your warmest room. DO NOT HEAT THE MIX 3 - your mix quantities were incorrect and the mix has reached saturation. Unlikely, but it can happen. Solutions - other than moving the mix to a warm room, not much you can do. What you have so far is probably still usable, so decant both batches into a jar and use it. Do not dispose of the undissolved pellet sludge, this can be used again in your next batch. Buy some fresh acetone. You may be able to rescue your acetone, by adding 10 grams of dried Epsom salts to one litre of wet acetone and shake well. The salts will absorb the moisture and sink to the bottom, leaving dry acetone. To dry the Epsom salt, spread on a tray thinly and heat in an oven for 2 hours at 400 degrees. I picked up this information off the web. I guess it could be possible to dry the mix that you currently have problems with, as a shot to nothing. Dave

Top right of Dick's front page, there is a link to 'fishermun's lure coat'. Dave

That is exactly it, but I did not know how to explain it without getting techy. Dave

The lexan will have more strength and last longer, if you use a heat method. It is a bit like annealing metal, it removes all the stresses. It is a molecule thing. Check out the link posted by Lincoya, of Pete's method. If you are just making a few for yourself then what you have done is fine. Dave

I am not sure what you mean by reverse jointed. Can you post a pic. A vid would be very nice. Dave

I used to make my own paint brushes Dave

I agree with John, all the information is here on TU. The big problem is that it is fragmented. There are very few TU threads that deal with a construction from start to finish. I am a member of ten lure building forums and what I have noticed is that some of those forums build lures in a different style. One particular forum is almost exclusively lathe turned bodies. It is nice to be a member of a community like TU, but don't limit yourselves. If you are starting off building lures Lure building 101 is an excelent place to start. A Dutch web site, also presented in English, which offers up 'start to finish' instructions for many different types of lure, not just crankbaits. Use this information as a starting point and develope your own style. Lurebuilding 101 has been mentioned several times on TU and is well worth a visit and it is free. Dave

Magnesium is very light, but still heavier than water. It may have been tungsten, as this is supplied as a powder. Dave

It has now been 4 weeks since the Clinton meet. Are the tutorial videos going to be posted? Dave

My comments were kind of tongue in cheek, just jerking your chain but you were right to withhold the builders name. Maybe he will post here and add more insight to his technique. Once you put a bait on the market, you have released the knowledge for all to discover. If a builder wanted to protect an idea, he would have to apply for a patent, otherwise the idea is available to all. It is fairly common practice to perform bait autopsies and there are a number of threads on TU with xray pics of popular baits. No one even mentioned the subject of ethics on those posts. Dave

Vince - you have 308 pics in your gallery or are you referring to regular forum pics. All my posted uploads are deleted, four years of posts ruined. I guess partially my fault, but it should never have been allowed to happen: When I relinquished my club membership, the disc space allocated to me for pics was drastically reduced and was all used up by my previous posts. I noticed that I had the facility to delete pics from my allocation. It did not seem right, to be able to delete posted info, after all, you cannot delete posts, in fact you cannot even edit posts after 15 minutes. I assumed that the deletion was just a reference in my file, but the pic would remain as property of TU, so I did a test deletion of an old pic, for which I still had the original. I then pulled up the post and the pic was still there. "Success" I thought and deleted all my pics, opening up space for more posts. A few days later, all the pics were gone. Jerry did offer me edit privilages, to allow me to rebuild the posts, but nothing happened about that. Besides, the thought of spending hundreds of hours, rebuilding 3000 old posts that nobody reads, was a bit daunting. If anyone wants to see pics from my old posts, just pm me, as I probably still have most of them on my computer. Now I only post links to photobucket. But even this is not safe. My previous photo hosting site was bought out by another company and they wanted to move all the pics to a new location, so I lost all those links too. This is all very frustrating, after investing so much time and effort. Make sure you keep backups of pics and text that you do not want to lose, because TU will not helpt you. Jerry - I hope you plug this gaping hole, as posts are rendered useless without the pics. Dave

John - the well known swimbait maker might not be too happy about you revealing his secret. Dave

You need to read up on Strouhal number. Here is a link to get you started, but there is a ton of info on the web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strouhal_number In the simple equation, the length is the width of the lip in meters, so a 1" wide lip would be 0.0254 meters. I found that for lipped lures a Strouhal number of around 0.12 was close. By re-arranging the formula, you can predict what frequency of wobble you will get by changing the lip width, without having to build it. I have a simple spread sheet that you can have a play with, if you pm me your email, I will send it to you or anyone else interested. I tried to upload it, but TU would not allow. Dave

I could not say for certain. It has very little to do with fishing or making money. I like building stuff. I am an amateur inventor and like to explore how things work and use that knowledge to build and test new designs. I like designing and building jigs and machines. Basically, I am addicted. Sorry about the vortex thing. Vortices mess with your mind. Dave

Well that was a waste of effort, the question was about setting the paint not top coats. Dave

I do not use heat lamps, but I live in a fairly warm climate. The temperature in my house varies between 75F and 85F all year round. Most top coats work by a chemical reaction, either by two parts mixed together or reaction with moisture in the atmosphere. They are designed to work at specific temperatures, details of which you can find out by reading the label or looking up the information on the manufacturers web site. If your room is much less than 70F then a low Wattage bulb may be beneficial, to raise the cabinet temperature to the recommended range, but other than that, heating is not necessary. Monitor the temperature and it would help to shield the bodies from direct light or you will get hot spots. If you raise the temperature to 90F and beyond, true, you will speed up the curing process, as chemical reactions are more vigorous with temperature, but you are likely to cause more problems than you solve. For example, a wooden bait contains a lot of air and this air will expand when heated and build up pressure inside the lure. If you have a strong, air tight seal coat, you may get away with it, but if the seal coat has a flaw or is breached, you will end up with bubbles. If you get too warm, the seal coat may soften and the air pressure will cause blisters. If your cabinet temperature is significantly higher than room temperature, it would help reduce the air expansion problem, if you keep the bodies in the cabinet for a few hours before top coating. To sum up, try to stick to the recommended temperatures, they are recommended for a reason. Dave

That works really well. I even feel sorry for the trees in your neighborhood. It makes my duplicator seem silly at about 50 seconds an inch for non-concentric bodies. I have designed a concentric mode for the machine this time, but still won't be much better than 15 seconds per inch. Great achievement, congrats. Dave