My friend and I are going to be attempting to build our own hard plastic lures. We're starting off with just a square bill and we have an extremely cheap and effective way of manufacturing them but the part im stuck on is the hardware for them. Hes an engineer i'm the fisherman and the marketer essentially. He drew it up and now were wondering what to use for the eye lets on the lip and underside to attach the split rings to. If any one has any info i'd love to hear from you bc the first prototype will be done here in a day or two.  

Try cutting up a lure to see how they're built. Generally there are either some figure of eight shaped pieces of wire moulded in or a wire form running from the front attachment point to the rear hook hanger. These are referred to as "Through wired" and are stronger than the fig8 wires usually. I imagine there's lots of examples on you tube as there are plenty of people making lures on there.

http://www.jannsnetcraft.com/plug-parts/310311.aspx

If you look at a unpainted bait many of them use these figure 8 links. Figure 8 links, screw eyes, and through wire are the three techniques that I am aware of for making crankbaits.

 

Allen

 

The figure 8s might be best these baits were making are coming out of a 3D printer and will me half and halfs and they will have pillars and corresponding holes on the other half for the pillars. So i could just make it to where the 8s just slide over the pillars to hold them in place. Anyone know of the best glue/epoxy to put the halfs together?

Most are put together with a sonic welder, machines can be ordered through Bransone or Dukane and they type normally used for lures will run around $6500 for a used model and up to $14000 new. I looked into molding plastic baits a long time ago and I was told glue is a thing of the past because it isn't a consistent process as some baits will have a little more glue than others and it will cause them to run differently. There are stories of how pros would go through 2 dozen baits of the same lure to find one that was "right" and this happened even with plastic cranks and it due to gluing baits together by hand. Using a sonic welder eliminates the glue and is fast but it takes an investment. Go to you tube and look for videos on how plastic crankbaits are made, you'll be amazed and informed and it will give you an idea of how to go about your lure making. If you want to this only on a small scale without making money then ignore this post, because you need to be able to make large volumes of lures in order to make real money and sonic welding is the way to do it.