Anglinarcher

Dale, will a Structural Engineer work for you? A fishing rod is a class 3 lever. Class 3 has the effort between the load and the fulcrum, with the effort the fisherman and the load the fish and the fulcrum the but of the rod. This is the least efficient system and indeed it gives the fish a substantial advantage. You might call a class 3 lever a reverse lever. To test this, take your rod (or a broom stick) and get a 1 pound weight and some cord or line. Tie the cord to the weight and lift it straight line by hand......pretty easy. Now, connect the cord to the rod or broom stick and lift it like you were fishing and you will see it feels much harder. The longer the rod the harder it is. So, why do we use rods? As mentioned by BobP, it builds shock absorption into the system. It also provides line speed for casting because the longer rod travels a longer arc and the greater the distance from the center of the circle the faster the line (lure) is traveling when it is released. Additionally, it provides reach. The entire Tenkara fishing system is an example of the reach concept. Did you know that IFGA actually has a minimum rod length for records? Long line fisherman can haul in Giant Tuna much easier by hand then sport fishermen with rods. How much of an advantage depends on the rod. A long butt with the butt planted in the body or a gimbal, hand above the reel, shorter rod all shift the disadvantage in favor of the angler, but the fish still has the edge. I hope this helps some.

When I am fishing tough fish, the night time 1 to 3 days before or 1 to 3 days after the full or new moon seem to turn on some monsters. Case in point is some winter/early spring Walleye in Washington State up to 15 pounds. But, for me, the best time to go fishing is when I can get off and my wife lets me. LOL The worst thing that can happen is to NOT go fishing and find myself watching TV or working instead.

Looks like fusion 360 IS a 30 day trial, but the others look promising. Funny, the fusion, by Autodesk, is closest to what I already know, so of course it is only a trial. LOL

Great offer, but the real cost is the CAD program to draw the design in and then code it into the printer. I found an inexpensive 3D printer locally that would have been great, but few of us have CAD experience or a suitable CAD program. I have extensive CAD experience, but still cannot afford my own program for the limited amount I would use the printer for.

I would for sure.

Yes, and it is not easy to get it right. Usually if I make my own water slide decals I use only enough acrylic clear to protect the ink and then I can stretch the decal to get it right. Go slow and use very warm water, and good luck.

I would fish with any of those today, and the 2nd one appeals to me because I don't remember ever seeing it. But, value is a tough call. In the right market, there might be some value to the first, 2nd, third and last, expecially if they are wood. Some of the early synthetics are also valuable, but new plastic styles are pretty much just fishing memories. Do not clean them up until you get then checked out.

Cold will slow down epoxy some, but not a lot. Warmer temps will speed it up, so you will be going backwards by going to a warmer environment. Thinning with alcohol makes it easier to apply a thin coat, but then it won't hold the edges as well. Mix it as fast as possible while not mixing any more air in then is necessary. Thin only if you don't need to cover edges well. If you do thin, do one small batch and hit the edges only first. Follow up on a total bait coat. Etex is an epoxy so instructions work for both. I hope this helps, but working with any clear coat is a matter of developing your own procedure and a bit of trial and error. I think you mixed too long and it flashed on you. Thinning with alcohol slows the cure a little, as does cooler temperatures, but in the end, well trial and error.

I think 3D prototyping is the way of the future. It has come very far very fast, but the cost is prohibitive for most of us small guys. If you already have access to it, then it can be a great time saver.

I used a coat hanger, cut off and straightened, with a right angle bent in the end. I attached it to a drill and fed the hanger into the gallon jug and stirred the devil out of it. It worked. The first jug I had do that I went to Home Depot and they put it on the paint shaker for me. The second time, the time above, the department manager nixed it. LOL Last time I had two gallons that I did not keep mixed. Might have been less trouble to toss them out and buy new. Note to all newbies. Keep your plastic well mixed. If it settles you will get more softener and less PVC and your baits may be nice and soft, at first, but in the end, you will have a mess.

what is the mold material?

Actually I go to Hobby Lobby to their model section and get the stuff for making decals. It comes as a kit, I believe by Mattel. As mentioned above by MonteSS it comes in different types for different printer inks. As a kit it comes with the varnish to protect it from the water as well as instructions. I use Microsoft paint as my edit program and take whatever picture I want and resize it as necessary. I print on plain paper to test it and then print on the transfer paper. It is designed to slide onto any slick surface so plastic, lead, coated wood, etc., are all fine. I usually put a few drops of DAWN dish detergent in the water to make it slicker and to make it easier to rub out the bubbles. Once it is placed I let it set to dry. Once it is dry, I air brush as I desire to work the back and belly in better, and then I usually clear coat with my favorite clear coat. As an alternate, you don't actually need to use decal transfer paper. You can use thin white tissue paper. You can do all of the above except that you can apply thin glue to the lure and apply the tissue paper with printed pattern on it to the lure. The tissue paper disappears and leaves the printer pattern. Again, clear coat as normal. Lots and lots of ways, and there are instructions in the history of this site on all of them.

http://www.makelure.com/store/pg/54-How-To-Videos.aspx#prettyPhoto/5/ http://www.makelure.com/store/pg/54-How-To-Videos.aspx#prettyPhoto/39/ http://www.makelure.com/store/pg/54-How-To-Videos.aspx#prettyPhoto/59/ http://www.makelure.com/store/pg/54-How-To-Videos.aspx#prettyPhoto/123/ As for working with Silicone, it is easy. The above will provide you pretty much all you know to get your home brews up and in production.

I'll give you a link to a video that might help shorten the learning curve. I think I got this link from another person on this site.

Just remember that a single blade of the extreme large sizes will create torque causing the underhung portion to rotate to the side. You can see that by setting up a large 2 blade on a small body. The super large blade will also cause the bade to track hard to one side or the other. Making it a double spin, one ccw and one cw rotating takes care of that. You get all of the advantages, but few disadvantages. Still, having a bait that tracks left or right is NOT a bad thing at times, so if you still want the super large size to try, then canuck is absolutely right. And once you get the "master" done, you could mold it and make them with resin.

Gliders, this is another one I almost don't want to get involved in, but I can't help myself. Sorry. As an engineer, and an avid archer, this question has haunted me for a long time. A ballistic rocket, like and arrow, is not a bad analogy to the glider issue, except that you have a boundary layer, water/air, to deal with that arrows and rockets don't have. That boundary layer would determine how you orient your fin depending on if your bait is yawing, rolling, or pitching. The problem is that the answer to your question is "it depends". OUCH, I know that is a bad answer and I am sorry for it. There is no 'one' answer to all glide bait designs. Lures like the Suick use the tail fin as a control surface, not as a stabilizer. The adjustability is nice but the use is different. The Suick tail fin is designed to stop the dived lure from backing up on a dive but to rise head first and glide forward. For giggles, I am going to give you a link to a friend's video and how he determined he need a stabilizer for his glide bait and how he determined how to do it. It might give you some insights, but it does not tells us why he also chose the 'rounded manatee style fin' instead of another style. http://www.makelure.com/store/pg/54-How-To-Videos.aspx#prettyPhoto/7/ Now, back to theory only. Rounded shapes, like circular styles, actually give more surface area per drag imposed. Getting rid of sharp edges at the ends and corners reduces drag turbulence that, in arrows, causes noise and slows down the arrow some. IN THEORY, it would do the same to gliders, "for the same amount of material". Smaller or larger fins of another style can be used to compensate. Theory only again, the traditional view of a rocket fin or an arrow fletch, that of a right triangle shaped piece, increases drag and pushes the center of pressure to the rear. For an arrow, or a ballistic rocket, that higher friction or drag can increase stability but marginally increases drag (like having a mini parachute on the back). In air, that drag is minimal and is a function of the square of the velocity and the coefficient of friction. In water, because water is what, about 800 times denser then air (should have looked it up), the drag would be increased by 800 times, but......... the coefficient of friction is so low that at the low velocities of a glider it almost is not a concern. If I wanted to create a low drag design that provided good stability, I might consider putting something on with a round shape that extended back, kind of like a lolly pop in 2D. Yuk, but, it should glide really well, and if the lure starts to wobble or shake the profile would be exposed to more water flow as the fin rotates of the center of glide, pushing it back to true center of glide. Still, depending on the cause of the instability, the interactions with the boundary layer, the specific design of your glider, or to go back to the rocket/arrow analogy the purpose of the projectile, different designs will give different results. Not all rockets use right triangle fins, not all arrows use that shape fletch (most don't now), and I expect not all glide baits will either. I hope this helps some. Good luck.

There is some very nice work there.

Sometimes. LOL

Thanks guys, I am a wealth of USELESS information.

OK, a little lesson on UV light, and this is going to get me in trouble for sure. Light ranges from cosmic rays, to gamma rays to x rays to microwaves to visible waves ......... but I will refer to only the ones that we deal with. The light spectrum is as follows, and this time in order; infrared, red, yellow, green, blue, indigo, Ultra Violet. Infrared is the longest wave, and we as humans feel it as heat, but mostly ( more species are being identified as being able to see it) only carp and some minnows can see that "color range". Humans cannot actually see infrared. Long waves are filtered out by water very quickly and as a result red disappears first, next yellow, next..... you get the point. The shorter the wave length the longer it will penetrate into water, the clearer the water the deeper it will penetrate as well. I don't care, and neither should you, what the fish see, the waves themselves simply do not exist because they are absorbed by the water. (note: we take the cells in the eye of the test specimens and expose it to the light bands. An electrical and/or chemical reactions takes place indicating that the cells see this band width. Most cells can detect most strongly in one band width, but they react to varying degrees with adjacent band widths. For example, walleye cones, the component that detects color, are mostly for red and green, so go figure that a deep water fish sees colors that disappear in shallower water.) All of the other colors we see are a mixture of the colors I mentioned, mixed by our brain, and assumed mixed by their pea sized brain, except for some special conditions I will get into later.* As we go through the spectrum, we come to blue, then indigo (which some people can't see) then to UV which no human, and extremely few fish, can see. We do know that Trout/Salmon can see the lowest of the UV range, known as UVa, to some degree. We do know that Bass, LGM and SMB, cannot see UVa. Yet, you, and a lot of other fishermen say that it works for them. Is it a case of angler confidence or is something going on here????? By the way, UVa and UVb comprise most of all of the Ultra Violet light we get from the sun. Most UVb and almost all UVc is absorbed by the ozone layer. (We don't even have a clue on what colors most fish species see, too many fish, too little time and money to test. LOL. Now, UV issues. UVa does penetrate a pretty good distance in clear water, and in salt water deep water corals depend on it. UVb happens to be absorbed much much faster if any impurities are present, like salt and a hundred thousand other natural chemicals. But, even UVa does not penetrate very far in muddy water. Studies I have seen in the past showed that in muddy water UVa was lost before red was. That shocked me. So, what does this book I seem to be writing tell us? First, UVa is going to depend on the clarity of the water to even be there, and second, it is usually not even detected by fresh water fish. So how in the world can it help us to catch fish? First, I am not sure it does. On many trips I have emptied the contents from my spray bottle of UV spray and filled it with water. I have told my unsuspecting co-angler that it was the UV spray (no, I am not going to talk brands, etc., that is not my point) and they were so fired up that every fish they caught was caught by it. I would then change lures on them, same color, same everything, and they caught nothing or fewer fish. I am quite sure that spraying water on the lure did not help, but, maybe I should be bottling it and selling it as a fish attractant. ROFLOL Still, on the other hand, I have had days when using brand A, water, verses brand B, the UV spray, did help. Go figure! Here is what I see is going on. It is not the UV light that is being seen. It is the fluorescent colors on the lure that are absorbing the UV light and then retransmitting that light as visible colors. *I promised that I would discuss this a little. Fish, or Humans, or anything that sees colors ** still only sees the colors I mentioned above, but we should still discuss phosphorescent light and fluorescent light. Fluorescent light is created by absorbing available light, whatever is available, and then retransmitting it back at a specific wave length. Take your paints into a dark room at night and shine a blue light on them. The blue paints will be easily visible, as will the white (but will look like blue), and all Fluorescent paints. Only the Fluorescent paints will show up as the colors you expect to see. Now, do the same with a red light, only the paints with red will show up, plus white which looks like red, and again the fluorescent paints looking as you expected them. Glow in the dark lures use phosphorescent light. Essentially they absorb light, then reemit it back at specific wavelengths (a blue-green range) over time. If the source of the light is radiation, then the material is always glowing because it has a constant source of light (radiation radiates light, in this case x rays, etc.). Most of us are more familiar with the paint we change with a light source and it glows for a specific amount of time. So, how do we get phosphorescent paint to glow other colors? We add fluorescent pigments to the phosphorescent pigments. The phosphorescent pigments glow blue-green, absorbed by the fluorescent pigments, then retransmitted as the desired fluorescent color. OK, I could go on for hours, but I have created enough trouble with this one. So, let's answer your question. Do UV paints help with LMB? Yes, in as much as there is UV light and enough fluorescent pigments in the paint job. Because most paints have some white in them (which reflects all visible colors) and because most dyes/paints have at least some pigments that can fluoresce to some degree, the effect is to "brighten" the lure some. Will UV paints help with SMB, or any other species? Yes, for the same reason that it works for LMB above. It should be noted that Artist, Laundry Soap makers, cloth makers, etc., have known that adding UV enhancers can make color appear brighter, 'more colorful' for a long time. This is why, in my opinion, that any UV product can, at times, make any lure more appealing. The only question I really have is how much it actually makes it more appealing to fish, not just humans. LOL

Yes, pretty much. Most of, if not all of, the specialty plastisols are standard plastisol with hardeners, softeners, or density control agents added. Each start with the same basic material and adjust as per their specs.

I have no idea that it will catch fish.

This is my method.

Do the test pot. I suspect that once the Etex is fully cured, and cleaned, it will be fine, but ..............clean the master with Etex with alcohol very well.

Yes, I have several. I don't know why they are not more popular. The pony head style underspin had bee good for ice fishing, bottom bouncing walleye, and even shaky head jigs styles. I don't fish with them in every case, but when I find the right conditions, they come right out of my boxes and on to my line.