Sonny.Barile

I was using an old pair of my wifes fish net stockings...........Ofcourse I called every one I made a sexy shad.........

Dont fret over this. There are plenty of environmentally safe plastics that can be compounded to replace plastisol. The reason PVC (vinyl) based plastisol is used for soft lures is because it is readily available and affordable. The reason it is so readily available is its wide spread use. The majority of it being used not for fishing lures, but for medical and industrial use. There is a world wide discussion going on about banning the use of all vinyl based products. When that starts to happen, it will cause another safer plastic to move up to a higher level of production which will make it cheaper and more readily available to us for our lures. BTW.....Right now you can achieve the same results with urethane rubber casting compounds with a fractional difference in cost.......and you dont need to heat them to pour...........(less fumes) Last year I got angry when I could no longer find lead egg weights locally. I learned to work around that and well.....I got over it........ Necessity is the mother of invention....

My experience with polyacrylic wasnt good. I use devcon on anything I want to last. I do make some bluefish baits which dont last very long anyway....on those I use a cheap polyurethane. Its Plaid brand and is sold at AC Moore. It is labeled for exterior use. If brushed on it dries in 30 minutes. I usually use two coats. I did an experiment and dipped a bait and it took about 10 hours to fully cure but it was very thick. I hung it up and kept flipping it every 3 minutes for the first half hour then I just left it hanging. Came out really nice......no airbubbles as is described with dipping other topcoats. ....At 5 bucks for a decent size bottle it is worth the experimentation.....

Astronomy.............Me and my daughter (15) spend many evenings in the yard with a telescope and some giant binoculars. It is a great hobby to share with budding young minds........

Husky What paint thinner did you use? Not being a chemist I would like to make sure I use the same stuff as you have already done it and youre still alive....LOL Was it Walmart brand?......right near the caulking shelf?.....about $4? BTW I have a master paddle tail swimbait made from hard plastic and I am going to build a polymer clay one peice mold tomorrow. This will be my hard mold for the silicone casting. The lure is designed with a flat top to facilitate one peice pour from the top construction......(just like youre worm molds) and the sides are tapered sort of acting like a draft angle for easy demolding. Sonny

My Walmart now has the Mainstays clear. $2.97 US I will be fishing on Saturday and cultivating ideas on Sunday. Sounds like a great weekend to me!!!!!!

The John Greere website listed a "silicone oil" thinner on the price list page.

Very nice!!!!!!!!! Husky...I have looked in Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes........Cant find Mainstays product. I see DAP brand but there are 20 diferent types. Most say they have phenol or some other crap in them. Is that the same stuff? or is it 100 percent silicone? Do you think brands sold for use in fishtank sealing are equivelent?

3 suggestions for swim baits..... If the stuff is to stiff to get a flapping tail, try putting two dowel pins in the mold as to create a groove on each side of the bait. You would esentially be making a "live hinge" in the area you want it to flex. (similar to plastic hinged lid boxes) "OR" you may be able to use a blade to manually add it to the cured bait. However, fatigue could be an issue if the remaining section is to thin........... Maybe make the bait hollow to get it to be more flexible. Try putting a solid protrusion down the center of the mold attached to the floor. This way the bait will still release. It would then have a pocket accessable from the bottom like some of those fancy ones you can buy at the store. It would be great for hiding the keel weight of a hook and also give more deflection to the material. and finally......make it a two section bait (jointed). Put the hook in the tail section with the eylette being one side of the hinge. Use a twisted wire for the head section........... I was going to try these myself but I just do not have the time or the work area to attempt another endeavour........

Mark How did they turn out?

Thanks for the headsup on brands. My local Walmart doesnt carry it and I was going to get try the GE.....Guess I will have to find an on-line source.

I have used the elmers filler in the past on wood lures to fix gouges and fill weight holes. It is just the traditional "white" elmers glue with wood flour in it as a filler. It sands like spackle. Acts like it too....when you overcast and hit the rocks.......say "bye bye" to your lure.......that stuff cracks out from the shock..... Keep in mind that elmers glue is not plastic...it is organic. The polyacrylic is plastic and has good adhesive properties when it comes to sticking to other plastics. Also, some slow curing epoxy will really lock itself in to the pvc nooks. I would use the epoxy...with the polyacrylic as a close second.......

Hazmail Am I seeing a reflection of the ceiling light fixture? Those are the best I have ever seen. They look better than the eyes I get on purchased premium lures.

Hey guys..............Put a drop of dish detergent into a 1/2 gallon of cool water. Shake it up and leave it uncovered until the bubbles disapear. Use this to thin out cheap water based paints like apple barrel and for cleaning your airbrush. The soap content does break surface tension as was mentioned earlier which allows for better flow. Dont use an ammonia based product in your paint as you are attomizing it and do not want to breath that up. It will destroy your respiratory system and can actually cause brain damage.

Well.....I got one done and it looks ok. Diemai.....I tried the wet cloth thing and it seemed to work ok. I did it once and let it dry for 24 hours. I then had to do it again but it wanst as much. I have since fished this lure in the salt for toothy critters (bluefish) and it caught it's share. The lure now has some small tooth marks in it which I think gives it character.........

Pizza.....I had one of those days recently...or I should say one of those weekends..... I wanted to make an Original Floating Rapala. (The 5 inch model). I used oak. I put a slat of 1/2 inch thick white oak on my band saw and my blade broke. I put a new blade in and my Royobi saw is a pain to get just right. I got the blank cut out and proceded to put it in the table vice. Thats when I found out my son had been in the garage earlier and got wd40 all over my soft jaws. Needless to say that no paint is going to adhere to that lure body. It was late.....so I gave up for the night. (That was Firday evening). Saturday morning I got an early start and cleaned my soft jaws good. I then cut out another blank and filed it into shape. Well....I got a little over zealous with a rasp and removed way to much material. I started over.....and this time it came out just perfect. I went to drill out the weight holes.....and the whole side blew out. Again I started over.....and this time all went well.....even the holes...and the lip slot are just right. I read a post the night before about using Kils primer as a filler/sealer/primer. I dipped the body and hung it up to drip/dry. Sunday afternoon it looked dry but it was really stinky. That stuff gives off quite an oder. I decided to sand it off. It literally peeled off like tape. I gave it a light sanding and there is not a molecule of paint left on it but it still stinks. Here it is Monday night and it is still stinky........Now Im afraid to finish it because we all know if it stinks...the fish wont bite it........but I just dont have the mental stamina to bang out another one...........sorry for the long post....but you started it....LOL

Thats a great lowcost way to build a prototype........recently spent quite a few bucks on files, a bandsaw, a tablevice, and an airbrush.....Im liking the idea of being able to dabble in the softplastics without having to really spend anything considerable.....BTW....the sand coloring looks awsome............

It tried Polyacrylic and found it to be to spongy.It doesnt get real hard which means your paints will crack ifthe surface flexes from impact...............

Just an interesting fact.......most of this new so called less toxic pressure treated lumber in the big stores is coming from China. That alone tells me it is probably more poisoness than the old stuff........

Is the cured silicone soft enough to get swim action on something like a flap tail shad bait........or is it stiff?

Husky Nice stuff.......is that silicone gummy enough to make swimbaits with?

Loctite 5 minute is not water proof. It is water resistant. It wont hold up to heavy use as it will get gummy. Also be carefull of which version of the 5 minute you get if you want to use it for eyelets. The one that is in yellow packaging is really for use as an adhesive for plastics and wont be verry strong. I have been successful using Loctite Marine epoxy for filling weight holes , misplaced gouges, and holding eyelets, but it takes an hour or longer to cure. It is very thick and gray in color.

This is just vacuum forming without the vacuum.............Probably can be done with ABS plastic. Try cutting peices from the flat areas of a large laundry detergent bottle. It takes less heat to form it as it starts to soften at about 170 f.and will completely melt at about 250 f. A paint stripper gun should provide enough heat to get the job done.....it will also get hot enough to melt cds. This is done in other craft hobbies commonly using polystyrene. I would use caution with heating up CD's or any plastic as they emit bad fumes................... Just an idea for the CD's breakage issue.......maybe paint the inside of the bait with silicone rubber before glueing the halves together. This will help to dampen the shock from impact loads....

When it comes to making a little 3 or 4 inch long lure body, it is not worth the risk. With little practice you can learn to cut a 4 inch long body with a bandsaw and rough shape it with a file in less than 10 minutes. Unless you are looking to do a production run it just isnt worth your fingers........................