I've been lurking a short period. And I find this site very informative. Also, it seems pretty tight knit with some serious lure makers. So I felt the courtesy of an intro was in order before I started freely posting.
I live in one of the most depraven places to fish in the country. The Motor Racing capitol of the world, Indianapolis. Lucky for me I have a great house directly on the White river. River of t WHich is one of the best small mouth rivers around. Even luckier my shoreline is considered one of the best places on the river. OR not so lucky since it sees a lot of pressure. Wed nights when the tourney a few miles down stream starts I run down and start fishing. lol Every one flocks right here, but if I have a line in they move on a little.
I work in the racing business, of course why I'm in Indy, and have a few direct cross over skills. One is cnc skills. With my degree in engineering I've got a lot of experience with cad/ cam and the actual machining. Also, I've done a lot of carbon fiber fabrication. Which on the surface doesn't seem of much use, except it's made me pretty good at the science of epoxies and resins. Seemingly always a popular topic in hardbaits. lol
So I've always fished and loved to tinker and build things, even models when bored. A good frind of mine has been tournament fishing for a few years. Recently, he said hey you use a cnc , wanna make some molds. I was like for what? lol It's been all down hill since then. I love fishing, I love making stuff and have a few skills that seem right up the alley. Boom, birth of an addict.
So as one to not wait I went straight and quickly hand programed very simple molds to start learning. Then after reading here I had to try and make some pop molds. INcluded are some pics. Hopefully my intro thread isn't a problem with showing "some of my work". The large single "worm" mold was my first. It's sort of comically large and my first lesson learned. My particular machine doesn't use tool comp for the mold cycle. I named it the lady killer. The smaller single mold was more what I was trying to get. THen my next problem was I didn't actually achieve a true half round. THey turned out more like leeches. lol
So then I needed a two piece mold of course. Worked really well except I didn't program a sprue hole and decided to drill it later. NOt knowing my first sprue was too small and drilled slightly off center, suck. THen when plastic wouldn't flow at home I hand drilled it larger. Just a practice mold.
My pop molding has a long way to go. The first was the worm I made from hand rolled pieces of clay. Had issues with it filling fully with plastic. The other is a mold of a yum craw. No worries I just wanted to practice. Of course, it was my best mold so far and filled prefectly the first time. Of course my porosity is off the chart but I learn fast. Especially with the wealth of knowledge available here. I plan to very very quickly in the near future be easily capable of producing quality dsmr sd commercially avaiable AL molds, I hope better.
Thanks for reading and look forward to learning this incredible craft.
http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x462/supertuner1/P2070101-1.jpg
http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x462/supertuner1/P2070102.jpg