Mold Making ?

[cardawg]

After searching on-line I have yet to find a Life Like Waterdog mold that I am happy with,So I thought I would try making one of my own,Never have made a mold before so its all new to me,was wanting to use a real Waterdog,dead of course,to make my master for hand pouring,any ideas would be great.Thanks in advance.

[Peterjay]

After searching on-line I have yet to find a Life Like Waterdog mold that I am happy with,So I thought I would try making one of my own,Never have made a mold before so its all new to me,was wanting to use a real Waterdog,dead of course,to make my master for hand pouring,any ideas would be great.Thanks in advance.

You can use the search feature to find all kinds of information on mold making - Husky has done some really informative tutorials, as have others. There's a wealth of info already on the site if you do some looking. Husky's thread on using cheapo Walmart silicone to make molds is particularly interesting.

[Fish Candy Bait Company]

Did you look at Basstackle's mold? It looks pretty good if you don't have any luck making one.

[nova]

You don't need to make the mold look exactly like the waterdog; it only has to appear to look like it. Trust me on this. I made a lizard with no legs and it fishes like crazy.

After all, the fish hit buzzbaits and spinnerbaits and they look like nothing else in the water.

That being said; if you are trying to make a bait that catches fish and fishermen then that's a different story.

www.novalures.com

[Vodkaman]

Not so sure that making a mold of a dead waterdog is going to help you much, as the main feature is the external gills.

Might be more successful to carve the simple body from an easy to work with timber, like balsa. Carve the gill plates and legs separately and pin and/or glue into position. The legs and gill plates are the hardest to carve, so if you screw up, you don't have to start again. Coat with epoxy when finished to get a good clean surface to mold.

This will have to be molded in RTV, because of the 'hard' master.

Alternatively, you could cast the gill plates separately and glue them on. Fiddly, but more realistic, which is what you are going for here with this project.

Another option, consider thinning out the rear third (tail end) and adding a plate to the tip of the tail, swimbait style, to get some action going. Just a few ideas.

Dave

[cardawg]

Thanks for the input everybody,We do real well in my area on live waterdogs,the bigger the better,all the molds i've found online are to small,seems like the 8-10 inch live dawgs work best,but they are hard to come buy,tackle shops always seem to get the small ones

[Vodkaman]

However you decide to make the mold, take lots of pics and post the results.

You have got me looking at the lizards on the walls inside my house again. every time a thread like this one gets posted, I start thinking of catching one, cooling in the fridge to imobilise and molding it. I even have a couple of bags of alginate for the job. Catching them without losing the tail is a problem, but I am an engineer. I feel another project comming on!

Dave

[tigerfire]

Great ideas. Definitely post pictures. I'd love to see what you create.

[tupong]

I was thinking of trying something the same but using a small 50-60mm redfin(your yellow perch or perch ?) ,was going to freeze it first, to give me more working time then try and make a mold similar to what taxidermists use ,with a bondo/resin type mix as the casting material ?

regards mick

[Vodkaman]

I was going to freeze it first, to give me more working time then try and make a mold similar to what taxidermists use ,with a bondo/resin type mix as the casting material ?

regards mick

This would work, but you would have to freeze the fish hanging vertically, in order for the that the mold will produce a symmetrical bait, otherwise the bait will be flat on one side. Doable though.

Dave

[mark poulson]

A good rule of thumb for what kind of casting material to use is something someone here posted earlier. Sorry, I don't remember who, but it's a great tip.

Soft master/hard casting material, like POP.

Hard master/soft casting material, like RTV.

[Peterjay]

Re making masters: if you have any experience working with clay, (or even if you don't) one method you could try is to get yourself a waterdog, put it in a bottle of alcohol to use as a reference, and fashion a copy out of Sculpey polymer clay or real oven bake clay. Once it's hard, you can sand it smooth and/or carve the details, and coat it with an acrylic spray until it's glossy. That's the method I use to make masters for my saltwater tins; there's no reason why it wouldn't work in your case. One of the things about Sculpey is that you could make the body, bake it hard, then make the legs, attach them to the body and rebake it. I haven't had any luck doing that with real clay, but I've had some success doing it with Sculpey. Working with dead critters can be tough - I was once in a physiology class where we were dissecting cats. It was OK until I started having nightmares about cats dissecting me. I quit the course and switched to physics, and I started sleeping a whole lot better.