CNC Molds N Stuff

Seems I recall somebody once telling me they had racks like that for storing dynamite. Kept the nitro from settling out to one side and becoming unstable. I don't think anybody even uses dynamite anymore. Last time I saw a rock outfit blast the face off a mountain they used fertilizer and diesel charges with a blasting cap to set them off.

Caught on the Speckled Hog. Click on Image for Large View Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Didn't think I needed a picture of the 7 last night since I weighed it in a tournament in front of a dozen other anglers. I'll post a pic of the 8.5 if the guy I took fishing that day ever gets around to e-mailing it to me. I saved the actual bait I caught it on. LOL. The 8.5 LM is not my biggest, but its the biggest I have put on a scale. This year I have caught a couple over five, a 6.5, a 7.78 and now a 7.03 in tournaments. I have not done as much fun fishing this year as in past years so my not tournament count of big fish is only a little more than that, but hey do bite better during the middle of the week. Oh, yeah. The day I caught the 8.5 (last week in the middle of the week) I had about a 3-4 pound carp roll on a senko, and the next cast the head of what looked to be about a 15-20 pound flathead came out of the water about 2 feet behind the senko as I burned it across the surface. This is a weird year. I caught a 4 pound channel a months or so ago on one too. As to carp. We get some big ones around here. I think I'll pass on fishing for those. The last thing I want is giant slimy carp thrashing around in my boat. A guy could get hurt. "So, how did you break your leg Bob?" "A carp hit me." Nah, I don't think so. Here is a picture of the dual spindle mount I have been busy making the last few days in my spare time.

Methiolate & Chartreuse. not just settled out, but hard caked. I checked the green pumkin with a stick and it semed ok. Now I guess I need to check my other colors.

How do you guys get them stirred up. I got a couple bottles from Bears with about 2 inches oif pigmented settled out and caked in the bottom of the bottle. Shaking does nothing. I had to pour some out of the jar and spend several minutes attacking it with a long screw driver to break it up, and then it still didn't all come up. Suggestions? It will make getting consistent colors difficult.

Send me a picture. bob (at) yumabassman (dot) com. I was going to work on it myself, but I had some buddies talk me into making some flipping craw molds, and while I was at it I made some seperate claw molds... and you know how it goes. Then I decided I liked my Speckled Hog so much (caught an 8.5 on it the other day) that I wanted to make some more molds so I could shoot a bag at a time. I'm still cogitating on my Mr Potato Head version, and I'll get around to it sooner or later.... Of course my machine has been busy the last couple days modifying itself. I am building adjustable brackets so I can mount and level two spindles on it and cut two mold plates at once. Set two plates the same size. Then I can adjust one spindle up or down so they both zero to the plates together. And then there is fishing... I caught a 7.03 in the Working Man this evening. Hardly leaves any time for my day job.

The winner. My goal was to find out about people who are doing something to promote the recruitment of future anglers to the sport. They are the ones who will stand up and preserve our way of life. I had several good worthy people contact me about this free mold. One does work with disabled vets making tackle. Another is a professional guide who gives away baits to kids. Everybody who submitted a story was worthy. This however was the one that most closely matched the terms of my original offer. PM me your mailing address and its on the way.

Freshwater stripper rod? They call it a pole. Oh you meant striper.

Maybe he's trying to tell you something dad. Those jigs are big fish baits. LOL.

You've never watch bass anglers circling the aisles in a tackle store? If that''s not hunting...

Maybe not fast enough for you, but you might ask around classic car circles for space in a container if worse comes to worse. The reason I mention it is that back in about 2004 I sold a Harley to a guy in New Zealand. He had a buddy who was buying American Muscle cars from the 60s and early 70s and loading them in a container to ship back. He palletized the Harley and bought some space in one of his buddy's containers to ship the Harley back to New Zealand. A 55 gallon drum of plastisol would take up a lot less space than a palletized Harley V-Rod. Yeah it takes money to buy that much plastic, and it takes some legwork and a little money to find a way to ship like that that's affordable, but unfortunately sometimes it takes money to make money. Sometimes you have to think bigger.

This one? http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/topic/20047-injector-choices/

Seems like as long as it fits in the space between the plates it should shoot it. Depending on clamping force of the plates of course. An air over hydraulic system could easily provide enough clamping force if his system doesn't already.

Is there some sort of defacto method for claiming the length of a grub? It seems like everybody's 5" grub is much shorter than 5" unless you uncurl the tail and carefully pull it straight to its longest dimension for example. Is that the length standard?

On mine I cut the needle off right at the cone, and then drilled it out to a larger size. Seems to work for me.

Depends. You have a camera or a digital camera? Sign your name very large on a plain white piece of paper with a wide magic marker. Take a picture or scan it. Convert it to monochrome, delete any speckles, and then shrink it down to size.

It is either stainless or stainless plated brass. The tip appears to be the latter. You have to be using gloves to use it. It just keeps building heat as you go. The big key though I think is that unlike the three aluminum injectors it does not have a large mass of metal in the nozzle. As you mentioned I am sure the fact that it does not dissapate heat as quickly is a definite factor.

P.S. For Frank, The Bass Tackle manifold does only have one screw in it, but it is still drilled and tapped for three.

Alright, I have several injectors now. My first was one of those Jann's plastic thing. Almost total crap. Hardly more than a toy and dangerous to use IMO. Some will be all judgemental and tell me that's what I get for being cheap. They are wrong of course. I learned from it. Probably the biggest single amount of knowledge in one go came from studying their injector and molds. My second was the Cabelas meat injector, and for rapid shoot, refill, shoot again it seems to be the best. I can keep plastic hot in the Presto pot and just empty the injector and drop it in the plastic between shots. Then do my demolding, misc cleanup. When I have the molds ready for the next shot I cycle the injector a couple times and it shoots near flawlessly. It has two flaws. The first was obvious from even before I bought it. It is hard to clean. The second took a while to show up. The part that the tip screws into is pressed into the front of the injector. If you hit it too hard when emptying it the whole thing will pop out of the body. Makes it easier to clean though. LOL. The third was the home made one intended as a prototype for use in an electric caulking gun. Now that I am shooting molds with low clearance vents for low to no flashing I'm not sure that is a good idea anymore. I don't think you will be able to "feel" when the mold is full and stop at exactly the right time that way. It does work ok as a straight hand injector and is similar in design to the Jacobs injector. I even built it with a lock pin before I ever saw anybody else's. I used a large diameter tube and it holds a lot of plastic. I had what I considered to be a problem that turns out to exhibit in the Jacob's and Bass Tackle injectors as well. I can't shoot, refill, shoot, refill... without stopping and cleaning the injector. My fourth injector bought more to study than to use was a Jacob's injector. I'm not crazy about the pipe wrap foam. Its a nice idea, but it turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help to me. Some folks may like the idea. I wear leather work gloves while shooting to protect my hands, and even with the insulation property of the foam the injector won't shoot, refill, shoot, refill... like the Cabelas meat injector does. It is very smooth to operate, and well constructed. It cleans very easily and of course the locking pin design works well, but I already knew that. It worked in all of my molds without modification. The simple tapered nozzle design works. Fifth and sixth are the matching pair of Bass Tackle injectors that came in my laminating injector setup. I was going to build a two color injector manifold of my own, and to be honest it wouldn't be that hard, but I needed to build two matching injectors first. I've got my lathe apart rebuilding it with a longer bed with projects like that in mind, but I ran out of patience so I bought the Bass Tackle setup with the 6.5 oz injectors. (The lathe is back together, but I haven't finished reassembling the gear aseembly for threading and power feeding) All excited like a little kid at Christmas I opened the box and went, "oops." This injector would not fit in any of my molds. In between aside to be able to use the twin injector manifold: I played around with various ideas for enlarging the holes. My drill press is kinda crappy so I wrote off the idea of just chucking up a 5/8 Deming bit and drilling them out. I figured that would be self centering, but because the runout on my drill head is similar to a wheel bearing on a boat trailer that has already failed... LOL. Then it came to me. The injection port does not have to be exactly centered or aligned. Its bigger than the sprue itself on my molds so I just clamped three molds together that were roughly the same size and used cantilever clamps to lock them in place in the mini mill. Then I zeroed the mill roughly over each exisitng injection port and told it to make a round pocket .630 in diameter and .375 deep with a ,250 end mill. As Emeril would say, "BAM!" Now I know why Del was so adamant about having to use .500 to make molds. I didn't argue with him as I have made several that shoot great with .375 plate, but I will never be able to modifiy them for a twin injector. Atleast not the Bass Tackle one. Now, back to the Bass Tackle injectors. I like them. They are very similar in construction (for a single injector) to the Jacobs injector as well as to mine. The squared off .625 cylindrical injection nozzle is not going to work in a lot of molds, but as long as the mold is thick enough it can be modified easily enough. Of course if you are not going to shoot laminates Cabelas, Yuma Bob's, and Jacobs will work fine in the rest of the molds. The nozzles are a nice tight fit. Almost too tight as they can bind if you get them cocked a little when knocking them out to clean. Like my injector and Jacobs you have to clean them between every round of shooting. The nozzles freeze up the same way, even if you empty them and put them in the Presto pot of plastic between shots. I'm beginning to think only the Cabelas injector seems to work that way. Its obvious that Bass Tackle careas about their product and take pride in workmanship from the high degree of polish on all the parts. I bet they actually buff them before sending them out. Which one is best? That is not an easy question. I think the worst is the Jann's. I bet a lot of folks buy that and never ever shoot a bait again. Heck I would wonder if the commercial manufacturers don't pay them to produce that to discourage home bait making. If just using a microwave for heating all three of the aluminum ones work adequately as you have to reheat after every 1-2 shots depending on your efficiency. If you are efficent enough to get two shots or you are using some form of warmer to keep your plastic hot the Cabelas has a slight edge. I think mostly because it empties so completely. But if you do let it cool and plug its a pain to clean. Mine, Jacobs, and Bass Tackle all shoot about the same, except Jacobs and Bass Tackle are both better made than my prototype. For small molds and molds with small openings or if you have several molds you want to shoot at once time with various size openings the Jacob's is the better one. For laminating Bass Tackle's setup with the manifold, clamp, and cross bar can't be beat. I can shoot three of my Speckled Hog Molds and a Tapeworm mold with plastic to spare and they all come out pretty darn good. Also, for single color I think I would opt for the Bass Tackle if it will fit the molds as it holds more plastic at 6.5 ounces (he makes smaller ones too) and I can shoot all of the molds I have made of one type with a single draw. I hope this post helps out a beginner in his choices and direction.

Use a weighted hook?

Well, there is obviously a niche following for Mann's Hardnose Baits. I happen to have a couple bags of their jerkbaits which are similar to a medium swimbait. I can see somebody wanting to duplicate that for a swimabit.

Like this? http://www.uline.com...http://www.uline.com/BL_3651/Clear-Plastic-Tubes Another option might be flourescent tube protectors if you can find end caps for them.

For this sort of thing I use an 18-8 solid stainless pin. It won't rust in normal use and has a very low dissimilar metals reaction (galvanic corrosion) with aluminum. A lot of folks say you need a .008 interferrence fit, but for my molds the closest drill bit I have is only .006 smaller than the pins I use. It takes a hammer to dirve them in, and they won't come out without a hammer. There are a number of small hardware sellers on Amazon that carry things like this.

Its like having an unusual name. Everybody thinks they are ubber clever and the first one who ever thought of it when they say, " HYAH HYAH HYAH, Yew ain't ginna catch no fish in der!" Makes me glad I don't have to use the kiddy pool down at Kennedy park anymore.

What is the purpose of adding salt to baits? I always thought it was a taste attractant to the bass. I remember when I first started fishing Zoom salt worms it amazed me how long the fish would hold the bait. Since then I have read all kinds of things about salt, from the weight of the bait to the texture and hardness of the plastic. So far I have not put salt in ANY of the baits I have poured, and I have caught fish on every one of them, but then I am a fan of Megastrike.