enforcer

I'm not sure how do'it's new essential series is but I found that their other plastics had decent strength but were terrible for yellowing . I think premium is only in the pricing ! Heat stablizer helped some but not nearly enough for my satisfaction . If they have minimized the yellowing in the essential series then it should be pretty decent plastic Lurecraft has a great plastic , I've used the 502 medium which is quite durable and makes a good bait , but at this point I'm using the plastic from bait junky which is also pretty good . Both plastics are better than do-it in my opinion , they are cheaper and they last longer before burning up . I test a lot of molds and my plastic gets tortured from being reheated a rediculous amount of times , far beyond what would be considered normal use , so I need a tough cheap plastic since most of it eventually lands up in the garbage Bait wise , I've been happy with the action of both mentioned plastics . I fish a lot of nasty areas and they stand up to the abuse and the baits behave as they should

the sprue is the injection port

the bait will draw plastic from the sprue as the bait cools , and if theres not enough reserve in the sprue then it'll draw what ever plastic that it can , then it'll suck in air . best thing to do is to keep the sprue topped off and don't over heat the plastic

if you can push a wire thru the worm then you'd be able to suspend it , Fill 1/2 way up the worm , Let your material cure then pour the other other 1/2 over top . at some point in between you may want to add a couple locator pins or something so that your molds close up properly located every time . Its possible that your molds won't be tight enough to need venting , but if you are getting air locks then a hacksaw is a quick venting tool . a single side pour would do for most flukes

Thanks for the welcome and the compliment .

there is cost efficiency in making ones own baits , the materials are fairly cheap , but most important is the resale value is quite high if the equipment is taken care of during largie season I found that I shreaded so many baits that I needed to make my own . I've spent so many days after work and on the weekends that I averaged roughly 5-6 days on the water . Cost of baits wasn't as much of a factor as selection and the reliability of the products still being on the shelf mid season , I loved the gulp worms and I'd easily blow thru a pack a week since the summer bassing here is soo productive , but I had too many experiences of them being sold out . So I looked into my own baits , plastic is relatively cheap and I simply started machining my own molds since I have the right machinery . Bait choice is almost instant , color of the day is at hand . if affordability is a problem for a guy/gal , then there are a lot of materials that can be used to hand craft molds , a lot of people are using silicone bondo etc , Personally I found the two part urethane from smooth-on to be extremely tough , durable and fairly easy to work with . It's not as easy to have as perfect of baits as a machined aluminum mold , but at the end of the day we are probably more picky about our baits than the fish are . I made my first few molds with plasticine and urethane , I'd model the bait then cast it . It worked ok except the urethane gets pretty warm while curing and the plasticine melts some , so it was a bit of a mess to clean the finished product but where theres a will ............ . I'm sure that any fly tyer will agree , we have more money worth of hooks , feathers and hair than if we just bought bags of flies at the tackle shop