Any Ideas On How To Draw Designs On The Inside Of An Aluminum Swimbait Injection Mold.

[milrtyme24]

I bought one of those plastic dispensing guns from lurecraft to make designs out of hot plastic on the inside of your molds. It came without any instructions so how do you use the thing...it looks like a glue gun but where do you get different colored plastic to put in the glue gun/ plastic dispenser. I have read a few posts and most people didnt have much luck with them. Does anybody have any other ideas on how to get hot plastic inside an aluminum mold that is for instance in a straight line or a round circle. My molds are side to side 2 piece injection molds. What i mean by side to side is one piece of the mold looks like a swimbait cut in half directly down the middle with the top of the fish at the bottom of the mold and the bottom at the top. Then you place the other side of the mold together with wingnuts and inject. Im trying to get some details like lines and maybe some spots with hot plastic, let it set for a few seconds put the mold together and inject with a different color. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Frank]

Didnt that thing come with a mold so you could make your own sticks.Basically pour the sticks then load them in the glue gun and put the dowel they supplied as a push rod. I have tried it but could not keep it from dripping. Not the LC one but one I had here at home. Frank

[FishAction]

I bought one a few years back and it came with the mold to make the sticks with. I'd check with them to see if it sill does and if not, purchase one to make the sticks with.

The stick mold is open face hand pour. Color is your choice. Once you make the sticks, you load it like a regular glue gun. Now the difference. It has a variable switch in the power cord which you use to control the heat applied to the plastic. It should have included a dowel rod to pressure the plastic making it come out the heated tip.

Spend some time experimenting with heat, pressure, and the stripes, dots, and patterns you want. Now a word of caution.

Always keep the tip downward because the hot plastic can be pressured around the dowel rod and come out on your hands if you don't. Do not extract the dowel rod quickly because the hot plastic sometimes sticks to it and is pulled out on the hand holding the gun. Trust me -- it's painful!!

These guns work well with open face hand pour but you may have problems with two piece injection molds. For instance, you have them open on a flat surface to put a dot or stripe in each side. Then they are handled, closed together and plastic is injected under pressure. This may cause the dots, etc.. to be dislodged by the injected plastic since it's now in a vertical position.

Get some practice in and let us know it it works.

Charlie

[milrtyme24]

I bought one a few years back and it came with the mold to make the sticks with. I'd check with them to see if it sill does and if not, purchase one to make the sticks with.

The stick mold is open face hand pour. Color is your choice. Once you make the sticks, you load it like a regular glue gun. Now the difference. It has a variable switch in the power cord which you use to control the heat applied to the plastic. It should have included a dowel rod to pressure the plastic making it come out the heated tip.

Spend some time experimenting with heat, pressure, and the stripes, dots, and patterns you want. Now a word of caution.

Always keep the tip downward because the hot plastic can be pressured around the dowel rod and come out on your hands if you don't. Do not extract the dowel rod quickly because the hot plastic sometimes sticks to it and is pulled out on the hand holding the gun. Trust me -- it's painful!!

These guns work well with open face hand pour but you may have problems with two piece injection molds. For instance, you have them open on a flat surface to put a dot or stripe in each side. Then they are handled, closed together and plastic is injected under pressure. This may cause the dots, etc.. to be dislodged by the injected plastic since it's now in a vertical position.

Get some practice in and let us know it it works.

Charlie

Thanks for the reply Frank and Charlie. I have ordered so much stuff from lurecraft in the past 2 months that I dont think I recieved everything to make it work. But after reading all the posts about it I dont think Im even going to try it. There has to be a way besides airbrushing to get great looking patterns on soft swimbaits, but I just have not figured it out yet. If worse comes to worse Im going to buy me or build me an outdoor building so I can start painting (working in the basement right now and those fumes are bad even if I open the garage doors and have a fan going). Thanks again for the info.