New to site. Have a few questions.

[CedarLakeMusky]

I have been making wood musky crankbaits for a few years now and was thinking of switching to resin. What products would be the easiest to start with? I would need to make a mold of my wood lure. I assume I would need to add micro balloons to resin to make the lure float? Can you drill holes in the lure for screw eyes when using micro balloons? Is it easy to mold a lip slot into your lure or cut it in after pouring? Thank you for any info.

Scott

[dahlberg]

hi scott
the answer is to most of your questions. the plastic will hold your screw eyes better than wood. You can either use balloons and super plastic or alumifoam, depending on how much or little floatation you need. High Strength 2 for your mold. The same paints and processes you use on wood will work from there.
Best thing might be to go to the makelure.com site and glance thru some of the tutorials.
As you have more specific questions, don't hesitate to jump on the forum and ask!
best,
L

[CedarLakeMusky]

Thanks for the information Larry.

Scott

[Mike - Alumilite]

A very good resource is the how to page on makelure.com ... the actual link is ... http://makelure.com/HowTos.cfm

If you look approx half way down, there is a video name St. Clair Bait Company. Angelo was making wood crankbaits for a number of years and made the transition to High Strength 2 mold making rubber and RC-3 casting resin with microballoons. It has saved him a ton of time over the years since he has switched in producing his baits and has been able to make them much more consistantly by dialing the baits in to a very specific weight and balance that was much more difficult with every piece or wood he used.

You can see the type of lure he used in the video with some on the water footage in the front half and then the casting and painting process in the second. There are tons of videos and printable instructions for making the mold if you'd like more info on that process but from a times sake, we skipped it on this video to avoid redundancy.

Hope it helps and please ask questions if you have any.
Mike