The S-Waver is a favorite of mine, but color options were limited and they are still hard to keep in stock, so desperation "made me do it".
I used synthetic clay, no sulfur, to plug the joint and then made a two piece mold with HS2 from the hard body kit.
You can see the joint location that was plugged with clay, but it is a one piece blank at this time. I experimented with alumidust on these, and as you can see the top and first was not nearly as good as the second. If the lure was ready to fish with, the second lure color would be worthy of fishing with no additional paint of clear coat.
I knew that I wanted to get to a two piece lure, like the original, so the next lure you see is actually made of Wax. I bought some low temperature sculpting wax and melted it and poured it into the HS2 mold. With wax, it was easier to cut and shape the joint. I then textured the sides to give it a scale effect and made a new mold from HS2.
The first few lures I poured started with straight Alumilite White, then Alumilite White with microballons. It became apparent very early that the old trick of drilling and placing lead ballast in the bottom was not going to work. The lure is just far too difficult to get that desired action, the correct center of gravity. Furthermore, I want to "improve" the action.
Mike mentioned in one of his post that you could mix microballons and tungsten powder in the same batch, then the microballons would rise and the tungsten would settle, as long as you poured within about 35 seconds. The next lure is the result of that test. The first thing to mention is that the same Alumidust pattern was used on the 4th and 5th lure from the top. The tungsten powder stains the Alumilite White, turning it black to dark gray. This means that if you want to use Alumidust, you need to use colors that you would normally put on a black primer.
The next lure, the second from the bottom, was also done with Tungsten, but I tried something else. I mixed up some Alumilite White with Microballons, then I poured a small amount in each part of the mold and rolled the mold around and around to stick the Alumilite White and Microballons to the surface to make a shell. I then did the Tungsten and microballons just like before. As you can see, this one came out pretty well, with a good Alumidust result. Yes, it could be better, but I did not take my time when I dusted it. Still, there were problems.
Neither of the last two versions had a low enough center of gravity for my desires. They swam OK, about as well as the original, but not up to my desires.
The last lure shown took a hint from Larry Dahlberg. Larry mentioned that he has done some lures with an Alumilite White bottom and a foam top. I have done some versions with the Alumidust, but at this point, I wanted to be able to see how the foam and Alumilite White fused, so I skipped this part.
This version used Alumilite White, straight, on the bottom. I rolled it around a little to get Alumilite White into some areas I wanted to be stronger. To save my Tungsten, I poured a pre-measured amount of #9 lead shot on top of the White after about 4 minutes. A few minutes later, I poured in the remainder using Alumilite 610 Foam. My previous test showed that the foam is as light and as strong as balsa, so if I used the Alumilite White and the 610 foam together, I figured I would get the perfect center of gravity, and still get a strong lure.
Thanks Larry!
The bottom lure swims like a dream, is strong, and it is fairly easy to make.
I am never satisfied, so as you can guess, I am changing my molds. I am not happy with my texture so I will do a different, smoother, surface next time. Other lures are to come, but at this time, the bottom lure is in my paint room ready for my airbrush.
