walkercope

What resins are you guys pouring your baits with? I've finished modeling a glide in CAD and planning to use smooth-on featherlite, but I did the math and found I needed to add a full ounce to the front half to get the overall density (weight/volume of water displaced) right, which feels a bit excessive. Planning on using finesse weights from BPS as the ballast since they're cheap. I want about a 3"/sec sink rate, but for the first attempt I'm going to make it neutrally buoyant without hooks and see what happens. I've been sitting/thinking on this project for too long now...at this point I just need to send it and see what happens.

Has anyone made brush tails for their baits before? Do you have any tips/know of any guides?

I'm sure you could but I want to have enough to do different sink rates, color schemes, and have enough for my friends to fish with too. I think if I get the mold process going well it won't be much time or effort to make another bait. I'll only have to sand the layer lines down once on the mold vs every time on the printed lures.

Casting restin - alumalite or similar

Has anyone here tried FDM printing lure molds? Seems like all the ones I see online are resin printed but I already own an FDM printer... My winter project is to make my own glide baits for next year's striper season. My plan is develop a process that's easy to cast the parts and gives repeatable results out straight out of the mold. To start with I'm going to 3d scan a lure I already have that I like the swim of and try to replicate it at a larger scale, just to limit the number of variables. So for now I can just focus on the molding and weighting. In the future if I wanted to sell them I'd model my own. My main motivation for this was to keep from paying 150-200$ for the commercially available resin glides this size that swim like I want so I don't want to pay someone else to make the molds for me.

You're going for a higher frequency vibration then? I've never put any thought to slow vs fast.

Do larger blades exist? these are the biggest I've seen. I drilled a hole on the blade further down from the factory holes and fished it a bit tonight, blade vibrates well even at a slow retrieve so I'm happy with it. Only issue is the fibers squish down a bit so it doesn't keep quite as good of a profile but I'm happy with it

I actually just posted asking about drilling holes into chatterbait blades - mind sharing what you're working on? did you just guess for the location of the hole you drilled?

Anyone making their own blades for bladed jigs (chatterbaits)? I've been playing with mixing fly tying techniques into conventional lures and an issue I've found is that big trailers with a lot of drag will keep the blade from vibrating because the force of the water pressure on the blade isn't enough to counteract the drag force on the trailer and the blade just stays in the forward position. So It's got me wondering how do manufacturers decide where to drill the holes on the blade to attach the clip? I haven't thrown my latest one yet (see below) so not sure if I'll have to modify the blade but I'm expecting I'll have to drill another hole in the blade closer to the jig head to get it to vibrate. This one's 12.5in total length, tied onto a 2oz picasso shock blade. I know the hook situation isn't good but I can fix that later once I get the swim I want.

I have one if you still want this info

Little late seeing this thread but I highly recommend "XSelect Marabou" from Hareline. I do a lot of fly tying and this is the only marabou I buy now. Lure looks awesome.

Really appreciate the response. Can you go into any detail about how you hold the harness in position inside the mold while you pour the resin?

I'm planning to 3d print it just because I already have some printing experience and a printer...and I have zero carving experience so printing the master seems easier to me... A big question on my mind is if I should 1) pour the body and then add in all the weight and hardware or 2) make some kind of harness and have it in the mold when I pour the resin...your way seems like the way to go but it sounds tricky to get right? Do you put the eyelets and swivels in before you pour too? How do you hold the foam and weights in place in the mold?

Yeah I'm using Fusion 360 already for my design and some 3d prints I've been doing...but I'm using the free version. I think it has flow analysis capability but it requires a license which is like 400$ a year which is not worth it to me.

I don't remember what it was called - I haven't used it in 8 years now anyways. I'll see if I can find a good free option once I've got a model finished and report back.