Vodkaman

I think the vertical method will work, but you could try inserting wires into the bait, to stiffen up the appendages, maybe that is what you meant. Dave

No age limit. You just have to answer correctly, 5 questions based on the video and provide a medical certificate of fitness. Dave

Thanks ben. Not too many people stray into this forum. My next post here, will be titled 'free sex for lure builders' Dave

I have tried molding 3D eyes, but I never got the clarity that I wanted. Maybe you will have better molding technique. I think the best way is to use the natural doming of a thick epoxy or similar. It is fiddly and more time consuming than molding, but the results are clear and presentable. Consistency is also an issue with the dome method, you need to control how much epoxy is applied. Once you establish a system, it can be quite efficient and productive. I will need to get back to the project soon. Dave

Injection does not make a nicer bait, both methods make nice baits. The injection is mainly to pour more difficult baits, that hand pouring may struggle to fill and also speed. Dave

I build my swimbait joints, using the pin/eye method. Although commercial screw eyes are available, I prefer to make my own eyes, usually twisted soft stainless steel, but lately I have been using brass. The operation that I always dread when making swimbaits, is setting the hinge eyes. Things rarely go perfect. I always seem to get one joint with the gap too large, or one eye sticking out more than the other on one hinge and I never seem to get all the gaps even. What is worse is that there is no adjustment. At least with screw eyes, you can screw in and out until you get the gaps perfect. I have been toying with the idea of a jig for this operation for quite some time and after screwing up the tail section gap on my latest lure a couple of days ago, I decided that the jig needs to be built now. I have just glued my first set of hinges with the jig and it worked perfectly. This is what I came up with: Dave

I used a cake icing syringe to inject thicker mixes if MB's. The best I could get was a specifig gravity of around 0.65 with the consistency of thick mustard. This is still way heavier than basswood. The foam pellets might work, but forget about the fibreglass, they are heavier than water and their use would be counter productive. Some members have been experimenting with cork as a filler. Here is a link to a recent discussion: http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/21891-sealing-plastics-crankbaits/page__p__163082__hl__%2Bcork+%2Bballoons__fromsearch__1#entry163082 You might be better changing to a different casting material, such as 16Lb foam. It is very strong and at 16Lb/cuft (SG=0.25), it is lighter than basswood and just a bit heavier than balsa. It is a two part expanding foam. Dave

I got some brass collars made, as I use these items on a lot of projects. A very simple solution would be plastic pipe and two jubilee clips. Depends how pretty you want to make it. Dave

Thanks for the feedback Pete. Good to know, I will modify my plan some. Dave

Questions of safety are never tedious. It is a question of combining the airflow of the fan (cuft/min) and the cross section of the spray booth. Obviously a smaller booth will have a higher velocity for the same fan. But a larger booth gives more elbow room to work. You can get the bast of both, by fitting a clear plastic window across the upper half, thus restricting the area, increasing the inlet flow and removing any chance of fumes escaping. With this kind of arrangement, I don't think a mask would be necessary. Build the booth and do a smoke test, to see what is happening to the fumes. It may not need a screen. Dave

LOL, you are probably right, I have never seen hooks that large, apart from the butchers shop with half a pig hanging from it. I am more comfortable with size 22 spade ends with a single maggot. Dave

I have read on other sites of lure builders cutting the eye, twisting open to add a swivel, then twisting closed. With large size hooks, the loss of strength would not be significant. PM of link sent. Dave

My solution would be to hang the lure vertically by a thread, inside a split tube and pour the RTV in from the top. The liquid RTV will flow around the lure without disturbing it. It would be a good idea to attach another thread at the tail and weight it, to hold the lure straight and prevent it trying to float up in the RTV. Here is a link to slip molds tutorial, by Crawchuck. You can adapt this method to your purpose: http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/11512-slip-molds-for-hard-baits/ You can either use this mold to pour your baits or pour resin masters, which can then be used to create a multi cavity mold in the conventional way. Dave

No one is going to be able to answer that with any certainty. The best information available is the MSDS sheet for the product. If you are going into production, then you are coating a significant number and spending more time in the fumes. Why take the chance when the solution is so simple. Build a dipping cabinet with an extractor fan to continually pull the fumes away from you, same as a spray booth. Vent the fumes outside or you will just be circulating the problem and not removing it. I use my spray booth for applying coats of CA glue. That stuff is nasty and the spray booth solved the problem and gives me peace of mind. Good luck with the business. Dave

1.5mm is thicker than I had in my mind. Obviously it works, as those stensils are top notch. Are you using a serious vacuum for that? I was hoping to get away with the shop vacuum unit for the suction, so was planning on around 0.5 - 0.8mm thickness. Comments and opinions welcome. I found a plastics shop. They had just about everything imaginable in plastic, but the owned didn't know what PETG was. So back to the hunt for materials. Dave

What we don't know is who came up with the original idea and if it was Ken, why didn't he patent it? I guess we will never find out the truth on these issues. The fact is that the wagtail patent was filed in 2002 and the Hudd patent is the same idea. If I duplicated the wagtail on a lure and made a million, huddleston could take me to court and win with his patent. I am not a patent expert, but I can see that something is not right here. Dave

I just did a http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/18557-infringement-rights/page__hl__%2Bhuddleston+%2Bpatent__st__40 Here is a link to a patent issued in 2002 (wedgetail), which is basically the same thing: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6857220.pdf This is nonsense. Dave

Thanks for that Jonah. It is very disappointing that Ken Huddleston has been granted a patent on this tail, as it is using fluid dynamic principles that are in use by every soft bait paddle tail on the market. I remember reading this patent before. I see one glaring fault with the patent document that could make it contestable. In figure 6, the vortices have been drawn incorrectly, in the wrong direction. This indicates to me, a lack of understanding of the principles that he is employing for the patent. I think if you stick to the regular paddle tail design, you cannot be touched by this patent. Dave

I found 13 threads. Found 11 by searching SAPPHIRE and another 2 by searching SAPHIRE. It is one of those words that people spell wrong, always worth the extra search. Dave

It is a timing thing. The change of direction requires a significant movement from the tail, probably twice the normal movement. The time to the next movement is one cycle of this movement, approximately quarter to half a second (guessing). The fast slashing baits fit perfectly into this theory. There is nothing scientific here, I am just trying to interpret Darwinian nature. If a predator attacks, the prey has time to change direction and survive. The predator that waits for the change of direction is more likely to survive and reproduce, so this plan gets hard wired into the fish and becomes instinct. Everything you have written is correct. The fish are territorial and defensive. They feed when hungry, they attack when annoyed. A good example of this, is salmon. It is an established fact that salmon do not feed in fresh water, but we can still catch them by annoyance. Predators have more than one plan of attack. Sometimes they sit in a hole and wait for the prey to swim by and suck it in when it gets too close. If the fish are feeding in this manner, then surface poppers and walk the dog tactics are probably not going to work. A successful angler quickly figures out how the fish are feeding and arms himself accordingly. Dave

Action vs color is only ever going to be an opinion, as Bob stated, 'so many variables'. My personal opinion is that action is most important, but when I reach for a lure from the bag, I choose a color, to go with the action. Whittler, I was very interested in your experiment with the colors. If I understood you correctly, you tried all the color variations on each lure, but still only two of the lures caught the majority of the fish, thus indicating that subtle differences in action caught the fish and the colors cancelled out. That was a well thought out experiment, aimed to prove or disprove a particular conclusion. I build hunting lures and agree that altering the lip of a non-hunter is not likely. You may be able to tweak the tow eye to put it in the zone, but again not likely. Many people will argue that hunters make no difference, personally, I think they do. I think the change of direction is the trigger, after all, the experienced crank fisherman does not just reel the lure in, he varies the retrieve. We have all seen fish follow the lure back to the rod tip, interested but seemingly not convinced. I believe they are convinced, they are just waiting for the baitfish to do something. But this is only going to work when the predators are feeding in a particular way. Every lure has its moments, at least we can agree on that. Instinct tells the predator that once the baitfish changes direction, it cannot immediately change again, it is committed to the new direction and that is the time to attack. This is just opinion, not proven fact. Dave

Do you have the patent number, I would like to read it. Dave

You will need to build yourself a spray booth, to suck away those harmful particulates as you work. Createx is not poisonous, but breathing any kind of dust is harmful over time. If you are spraying solvents, then the fan has to be explosion proof. You should stick to createx. You can buy a spray booth, but they are so simple and cheap to make, it seems sacrilage to spend money of such an item for a do-it-yourself project. More than one airbrush is not essential, but very convenient. You will need some form of junction block, with quick release connectors works well. Strong lighting, preferrably adjustable, will make working small details much easier, especially useful when top coating. quality airbrushes arre rarely sold with the hose. You will need to buy the hose separate and pay attention to the connector types of the hose and the compressor, as you will probably need to buy adapters. You will need to build a rotating drying wheel, to prevent the slow drying top coat from running and promote an even, level surface. You will need some way to hold the lures while you paint, haemostats etc. Small clips for clamping the scale netting. Bucket of water for cleaning and back flushing. Dave

Looking forward to that one. Love seeing other peoples solutions. Mine looks like a crashed bicycle at the moment. I am in the process of finally motorizing it. Struggling with the control box at the moment. I am fitting micro switches to automatically stop when it reaches the end of its preset travel, so I don't have to stand over it to make sure it doesn't tear itself apart. Dave

I have tried a vacuum, but it only gets half if the dust. I will pay more attention to this problem when I build the next dup. Should be comming soon, as I am doing a lot of work with swimbaits and the current dup was only designed for small stuff. Dave