MRichardson

If they have a molding machine your plan may work. The machine will have platens to clamp your mold too; those platens are what will withstand the injection pressure. You’ll need a lip or some slots on your mold for these clamps to hold them onto the platens with. You should have an ejection system (some pins to push your part out when done), but if you’re just going to make a few you might be able to pry them out. Put in some water lines to cool your mold. Use lots of release spray. I use ABS plastic on my baits; there are a lot of plastics that will work. Polystyrene is a cheap one that a lot use. Stay away from polypropylene or polyethylene. You’ll have a hard time getting paint to stick to those. You have some more studying to do

Thanks for the compliments. OK, here’s my standard joke on the Molly lip: The Molly Bait has Curved Lip Integrated Technology or CLIT for short – ha ha. The idea behind the curved lip has to do with the intended action of the bait. It is a jerk bait or twitch bait. The curved lip allows the bait to have a more horizontal diving attitude. What that does then is when you tap, jerk, or twitch your rod the bait will “kick out” sideways to the retrieve instead of a nose down dive. It’s pretty easy to get the bait to kick our 90 degrees or more. Following muskies seem to like that and the overall erratic action. Not sure how that works on other fish. Bait weighting helps with this action equally, but I just thought a curved lip would look cool also

Thanks for the welcoming. The other site I sometimes participate in is a sub forum called “basement builders” at the muskiefirst.com website. Actually that’s how I found this place; someone had posted a link to one of the great tutorials here. That forum is all about building musky lures and there are some awesome builders there. But after hearing good reports from charter captains in Florida and striper fisherman out east I guess maybe there are other fish besides musky lol. Are there many saltwater, musky, or big game builders here? I could use some tips on a good dorado pattern. The photo below is kind of my lure building resume’. From top to bottom the baits are: 10” Molly Bait, Triple D, MDR Chopper, Danny Bait, Baby Wabull (plastic), 7.5” Molly Bait, and Hell Hound. Some I completely developed from concept to finished product, others started with a wood prototype and I did the CAD design making it feasible in plastic, then did the mold design, and develped the molding process. The only baits that are still mine are the Molly Baits and the MDR Chopper. The rest are either from old partnerships or projects for other people.

Howdy all, newbie on the site here, I can’t believe I’ve been making lures all these years and just now discovered it. I’ve been looking around a bit and there’s lots of great discussions here, I’m glad I found another place to hang out with some fellow bait makers! I’m a design engineer for my day job, but I also have a hobby business where I make musky/big game lures. I just launched a new jerkbait last year and I have also designed and developed several other lures. See ya around Mike