NorthernAbGuy

Here's a few more pictures from my setup.

The molds turn out pretty smooth, Smooth enough for me anyways, I am just making stuff with Gel a lure anyways, and playing with some of my own designs. Packing the sand really tight helps get a good finish.

I pretty much got started by reading the kind of stuff I could find on the Internet, and going from there. I read some of the foundry books that are out there, I did some silver smithing and casting pewter a while ago. I've melted aluminum on the table top with MAP gas in a coffee can furnace plenty of times for small stuff. I always wear welding gloves, long pants, steel toes, long sleeves and safety glasses. I'm also doing this outside, other than preparing the molds. I will try & get pics next time I fire up the furnace. It looks pretty cool at night with a foot of flame coming out of the furnace, red hot crucible, and shiny quicksilver aluminum being poured into molds.

Hey All. I am making extremely low numbers of lures, only for myself. It started because I wanted to try out Gel-A-Lure to do some of my favorite shapes in some different color combinations. After making some plaster molds, I found out I needed aluminum molds for Gel-A-lure. So basically, I just took my PoP molds out to the garage and reproduced them into aluminum using casting sand. Anyone else doing this? I don't have any experience creating molds with a milling machine or CNC stuff, and basically all I need is my foundry sand, some wooden frames and my little propane fired furnace. I use recycled aluminum, good stuff that I have saved up from having worked in the motorcycle industry. It really is a low cost way of making things, I made almost every component myself, from the furnace, crucible, and the cope and drag mold frames. Anyone else out there CASTING their own aluminum molds? So far I am only making one peice/open face molds. I am about to try some of my own designs, and may progress to 2 peice molds using lost foam in the near future.

Has anyone used Gel-a-lure in a plaster mold? Thanx in Advance. NorthernAbGuy