wchilton

I think you're on the right track. The pic looks like an adhesion problem onto the resin and not so much a paint or topcoat issue. I'd first try just the bulldog adhesion promoter on the resin bait and use the same primer/paint you already have. You might not need the more expensive primer. Amazon has bulldog adhesion promoter in 1-qt (non aerosol) cans for about $33.

If you can easily get Bald Cypress it will be one of the best for water resistance and I think a medium density/hardness. A lot of builders like Alaskan Yellow Cedar. I've tried AYC but not cypress. It's worthwhile to just test a screw-eye in a sample of wood you're thinking of using before building a bait or trying anything too complex to strengthen the holding power. A drop of epoxy or super glue in the pilot hole may be more than strong enough.

I've used the white trim board with SG of 0.75 for a couple of projects and I like the workability. It's like a hard wood but with no grain. You have to be careful when sanding or cutting with power tools because if it gets too hot it will melt. I have a little drum-type micro plane that I mount on a drill press and that lets you shape it pretty fast without ever melting. Would probably be easy to shape with a rasp as well but I haven't done that. It can be sanded to a very smooth surface that sheds water.

diemai, Just to add a bit more now that you mention where the wood came from. If that old chair was exposed to weather and sun then the wood may have weathered differently on the underside than on the top. Also, teak is a type of wood that people use outdoors and apply oil to for protection, so there could be more oil accumulation on one side than the other. What this all suggests to me is that when using recycled wood I just need to pay special attention to properties that may vary due to the way it has aged. Thanks for posting your experiences. The lessons learned help us all. Regards, Warren

Diemai, I notice that your blank has a sort of oval-shape wood-grain pattern on the top/left side which is the side trying to orient upward. It could either be a difference in density of different layers of wood, or with that much soaking time the propionate or solvent may have soaked deeper into one part of the wood than the other. Some makers (other forums) actually hydro-test their blanks to determine which side is heavier so they can mount hooks on the side that naturally rotates to the bottom. You could try adding some weight to the right side of the bait in the form of a small nail or wire. I would wrap a rubber band around the lure and use it to hold small weights against the blank to determine approximately how much weight will make the bait sit upright before permanently attaching them. You may even be able to test-swim the lure with weight temporarily held in place. I've done that before to determine amount and placement of weight that gives an action I want.

You could attach hooks using a snap (snap swivel snap) instead of a ring. I'd also take a couple of the hooks and bend the points in so they don't snag and if a fish hits it won't hook him.

UHMW would not be very rigid for such a thin piece. From the color it looks like delrin. I've also seen an epoxy paste/gel that has that look. Was the plastic rod glued in with another adhesive?

If it hasn't cured after 3 days (with heat) I think your only option is to either cover it over with another coat or remove what's there and use a different finish. It's hard to say if the epoxy you have is actually "bad" without more details on how you measured and mixed that first batch. You generally need to mix equal amounts of resin and hardener. How sure are you that you used equal amounts? Did you eyeball it or did you use a syringe to get the amounts as nearly exact as possible? On the mixing part I've had issues before on occasion when I didn't mix some sufficiently. Any more I'm really careful about mixing very well. You could try just being really careful measuring and mixing another small batch of epoxy and then see if it cures correctly without first applying to your bait. If it does, the epoxy is probably OK and you can just re-coat your lure with a well measured/mixed batch.

Did the 5-minute epoxy set up on you while you were trying to get internal wire, etc in the right place? If so, you might just try using a few spots of super glue to hold things in place and then use the 5-minute epoxy when you got the final assembly step down to something simple/quick.

I use the Aeromarine resin for replicating my master soft-bait patterns. Bubbles/foaming occur if it gets moisture in it. It's pretty dry where I am, so it took over a year for humidity to start causing problems. The oil/residue isn't an issue for me because I'm not painting it, however I have noticed that the cured parts get softer/flexible when heated.

You'll probably want to try a pourable urethane. That's going to be a lot tougher than heat/pour vinyl plastic material used for soft plastics. I found some on eBay that seems to meet all your criteria and is sold in a small enough size to try out. Just go to ebay and search for "RTV Urethane Molding Rubber Kit, 16 oz, 60 Hardness" Note: his "regular set" cures clear, "fast set" cures opaque. There are other pourable urethanes available from "smooth-on.com" and "makelure.com" but they don't look to be transparent in the harder durometers like the stuff on ebay. 60A hardness is about like a shoe sole, if you want a little bit harder material you could go with 80A. If you want to add more color I'd go with a powdered colorant or something specifically used for urethanes. You're going to need to make a silicone mold. There's a tutorial/post on this site about making a silicone mold using 100% silicone caulk with a few drops of water as catalyst. I haven't used pourable urethanes myself, but have worked with solid urethane (80A and harder) and shaping it on a lathe to make parts (non fishing).

From the Createx website... Createx Airbrush Colors and Wicked Colors cure best when paint is thoroughly dried prior to application of heat. Do not heat cure fresh paint before it air cures for a few minutes. Premature application of heat may skin-over paint creating a latex film which peels easily when taped and otherwise lacks proper adhesion. Createx Airbrush Colors are not cured after drying, heat is required. Wicked Colors air dry to a durable film without heat curing although use of heat does achieve optimum film strength. Heat Gun: apply heat at a low to mid-temperature setting no more than 300°F. Keep air moving to avoid blistering. Apply heat until paint is warm to the touch. Shirt Press: 325°F for 15 –20 seconds. Iron: With a protective cloth over paint, set on high/ cotton setting and iron for @ 2 minutes. A shirt press or iron is recommended for curing t-shirt artwork intended for washing. It says the heat gun should not be above 300 deg F, not that you need to heat the paint that high. Paint should be heated "warm to the touch" to heat cure. I think a hair dryer will do that job. The hair dryer I use reaches 185 deg F. That's actually VERY warm to the touch! They recommend letting the paint dry for a few minutes before "heat curing". Should be no harm in using lower temp air to speed up drying.

It's really difficult to sand flat with a dremel sanding drum. I'd only use it for taking out very large bumps and do the flattening with a sanding block. Glue or double sided tape on an appropriate board will do the job. You need that hard surface under the sandpaper to prevent excess sanding in softer spots if you're trying to flatten areas composed of different materials.

I've found it difficult to maintain temperature of small amounts of plastic when injecting. The injector absorbs heat at first so you need to account for that. Start with the smallest injector that will do the job for you. You might also want to pre-heat the injector to cut down on heat loss. I just place mine on an electric skillet that's keeping the plastic hot.

I've never tried red cedar but have used AYC. I ordered a bundle from cedar-4-sale.com. Don't know if it's the best price you'll find. Try a search for "cedar balusters" and you'll find other sources. It's really nice stuff to work with. Very even grained and sands really smooth. You wouldn't need rot resistant wood in Las Vegas! That's probably why nobody has what you're looking for locally. You'll notice if you do the search I suggested that Lowes and Home Depot come up. It might be worth a try to see if you can order through one of them and have them ship to your local store for pick-up. That could save you the shipping costs.

I start by drawing top and side profiles using a computer program. I print these and attach to wood block (using double-sided tape) to use as a template for cutting. Cut out the rough shape on a bandsaw, then round out the edges either on a belt sander or drill-mounted sanding drum. Belt sander often removes material too fast...you want to GO SLOW for everything so that any mistakes will be small/correctable. You could also use a dremel at this stage. Once I have the rounded-out shape, I'll use a detail sander to smooth out all bumps/grooves. Final sanding is by hand for best control. The last master I did took about 10 hrs, most of that was hand sanding. That was for a simple "fluke" shape, other's I've spent a lot more time on. After hand-sanding to about 400 grit, I'll "finish" the master using some sort of clear coat paint or future floor wax. Take your time and build up 2 or 3 coats of finish to get a nice gloss. You may have to sand lightly between coats and you will have to let each coat dry before you attempt sanding. Take your time with the finish. I've tried to accelerate the drying process with a hair dryer only to have bubbles form and then you have to strip the finish and start over. I usually carve masters from wood. It has to be smooth-grained...AYC is great, bass wood is easier to find and is also very good. Pine and others may be OK, but sometimes different rings in the grain pattern are harder/softer and it's difficult to get an even finish (softer wood sands down faster so you get ripples).

I've used a regular hair dryer to heat parts to 180 deg F. Might be easier to set up a "hot box" with a cardboard box and hair dryer blowing into it. For that matter, It shouldn't be too hard to set up a solar hot box with a couple of sheets of aluminum foil to reflect onto the box...will take longer but it's free. I've used the off-white aero-marine casting resin. It softens with heat so be careful to hang your baits in such a way that they don't bend when heated.

Can you tell if it's sweating water or oil? One resin I've played with sweats an oil that I assume is some sort of built-in release agent.

Either way. Uncured RTV is pretty gooey so I'd use a nitrile exam glove. Make sure you mix it really well and I'd put a little spot of the RTV on the mold but outside the cavity to test for it curing. Sometimes really thin RTV takes longer to cure so give it plenty of time. Putting it in a warm place helps too. What I've done it put it in the oven with just the light on overnight. Good Luck.

If you are using polymer clay (like sculpey) baking hardens it and then it can be sanded or painted. If you use modeling clay, baking will just melt it since it's basically a mixture of clay, parafin, and oil. I've actually been able to coat modeling clay masters with acrylic floor wax. You could probably just paint them with a water-based paint that dries to a gloss finish. Seems weird to paint something so soft, but the paint doesn't really have to "stick", only stay in place long enough to make the mold. If you want to try making your existing silicone mold smooth, I think your best bet is to use the same RTV silicone that you made the mold out of. Clean the mold cavity real well, make sure it's "dry" and then paint on a thin layer of the RTV after mixing in the appropriate amount of catalyst. Silicone sticks permanently to cured silicone so you should have no adhesion problems. I've actually used cut up pieces of "reject" silicone molds as filler material when making a new silicone mold. Works fine and reduces the amount of new RTV I have to use.

One casting resin I've played with seems to have an oil component mixed in that acts as a release agent. Did you clean the glue surfaces real well with acetone or alcohol? Ditto the above on the 30 minute cure epoxy, fast-cure epoxys don't bond quite as well. You might also try either PC7 or JBWeld.

Mold Star is a Platinum Cure silicone. Platinum cure silicones can be inhibited from curing by things containing sulfur, styrene, tin, other chemicals. The master was probably contaminated with something that inhibited the platinum cure. If you do a google search on "RTV silicone platinum cure vs tin cure" you'll find lots of info and may be able to narrow it down to exactly the cause.

I've made some silicone molds but never had a problem with them lasting. I haven't used them for casting resin, though. Just out of curiosity I did a google search on "Silicone tin cure vs platinum cure" and learned quite a bit. You might want to try a platinum cure silicone. Sounds like that type lasts longer, as long as you are careful about what your master and mold box are composed of. The available products from alumilite look to be kind of thick and you might have problems with bubbles. Smooth-on has some that mix up thinner. I would try a small amount before buying a lot of the stuff just to make sure I could work with it and I'd also test a very small batch on any surface I want to make a mold with to test compatibility before trying to make an actual mold.

Possibly use a hole saw (like used for doorknob cut-outs) mounted on a drill press. You'd want some kind of fixture to hold the lure or blank at the right angle.

I have a MyWeigh i1200 that's worked perfectly for 8 or 10 years now. Price is higher than I remember at about $100 from saveonscales.com. If you don't need super accuracy no reason to pay for it. This i1200 is rated to 1200 grams with 0.1 gram precision. It came with a 1 kg calibration weight. They have models with lower total rating that cost less. The i500 has a 500 gram capacity (1.1 pounds) and 0.1g precision for about $60. 0.1 grams is only a couple of drops of water so plenty of precision for lures and components. If you need to weigh small parts (hooks, swivels, etc.) you can weigh 10 or 20 at a time to get down to 0.01 gram accuracy. One thing I like is the large, flat top so you can easily weigh parts, etc. that stick out way past the edges. Think a lot about what you want to be able to use the scale for. I use mine to measure food items, lures and components, RTV/catalyst, even my POP/water mixtures up to a couple of pounds of POP. If you think you only need precision down to about 1gram, you can go with a postal scale. Those tend to be less expensive and have higher capacity. I've got one of those that's good to about 30 lbs. The ultra-precise scales used for reloading top out in the 100 gram range. That's only around 4 oz...not enough capacity for things like RTV or POP for lure making.