Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/09/2021 in all areas

  1. I'm far from an 'expert' but have some anecdotal advice I'd like to give you: There's a fine balance between stability and instability in a glide and I think you did a great job showing this in your experiments. An 'unstable' lure will have a tendency to roll. This roll is also what causes the lure to have an 'S' swimming pattern when straight retrieved. Instability is increased the higher the center of gravity is. A ballast close to the center line will cause it to roll and the further away from the center line the more stable it will be. A stable lure will have no roll, and therefore no swimming action on a straight retrieve BUT will often have a really good gliding action when given a hard twitch. It's because this hard twitch/jerk forces a point of momentary instability, and when the lure stabilizes itself it then glides like a torpedo in a straight line either left or right. You need something that is stable enough to glide, but unstable enough that it has a small amount of belly roll. From your experiments, I think you found both "extremes." My advice would be to find something in the middle. Two things I would try: 1. Start with the most stable gliding bait, drill out your weight holes and add the weights. Test it. If it's a torpedo on the straight retrieve, remove the weights, drill the holes deeper (closer to the center line), put them back and test again. Keep doing this to see what happens. My thought is the closer the weights are to the center line, the more it will roll, but the less it will glide. 2. Start with the better swimming lure. Remove a small amount of weight from the largest ballast and take that little bit you removed and add it back to the bait so that it remains level when sinking. Test it. Keep doing this until you achieve a glide that's far enough with a bit of belly roll and you should be able to also have it swim on the straight retrieve. The last thing you could do would be to change the shape of your lure... This sounds like it would be the most difficult but it would be interesting to see what your lure looks like to get a better idea of what's happening.
    1 point
  2. You can preheat your injector with a propane torch or a griddle. After you heat the plastisol, set the Pyrex on the griddle to keep it hot. Shoot your molds and evacuate the unused plastic back in your Pyrex cup and put your injector nozzle right in the cup with the hot plastic. This should keep your injector from freezing up and allow you to demold, draw plastic and shoot again. Put the griddle thermostat to high. 400+. Eventually, the plastic will cool enough to allow the injector to freeze and you’ll have to clean it out, reheat the plastic in the microwave and start over.
    1 point
  3. You can fill it and wait a couple of seconds and shoot it all back into the cup and then fill it again. This will heat up the injector a bit so you can get an extra mold or 2 if you move quickly. When using manual injectors it's really more towards the hobby side, though some use it who sell. The automated side of soft plastics is the more heavy duty mass production end of things. I'm just d......ing around for fun myself. Enjoy!
    1 point
  4. If your using a pyrex/microwave to heat plastic and shoot - what's happening is pretty much par for the course when using this method. You MAY be able to use a hotplate or something of the sort to keep the injector hot between shots - but you'll have to figure out a way to make sure it's completely empty of what's left or it will solidify or burn. When I was using my microwave and pyrex - I basically popped the cap off - pushed out the plug each time - then just reheat the plugs after a few cycles. Most people looking to speed up and shoot more molds use presto pots with stirring/electronics to keep the temp right - in this case - you can just leave the injector inside the pot down in the plastic - the injector stays hot and you don't have to keep opening it to empty the cold plug. J.
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...
Top