The Hunt For Big Fish with Larry Dahlberg

Is there a video for making the tail mold for whiggley? I'd like to see the mold making process for the tail mold that is plugged into the body mold for advanced whiggley.

Larry-
And speaking of the Wiggley tail mold, I noticed on the video that you pour and trim the tail first, then affix the tail mold to the Wiggley body mold. Once attached, your pour your hot plastisol into the body mold which adheres to the tail. Whenever I pour two colors of plastic, if they're not both still VERY hot, they can be separated at the seam when cooled. Do you have this problem with the Wiggley tail also? Just curious. Thanks.

Scott

The four piece mold was an SLA (3D printed) original off of some Solid Works drawings that we did at Alumilite. Not realistic option for most unless you are ready to go into production and want perfectly symmetrical designs.

You can do this same thing manually by simply claying each section up individually. So basically, you would have your left half side of the tail section showing and everything else would be in clay or mold box. Then pour it with rubber. Then flip it, cut locators and pour the right side (same way you'd make a two piece mold). Make sure to mold release inbetween pours. Now you have your tail mold halves. Then cut locators on the vertical side (facing the body), then repeat the process for each half of the body. Where the body halves meet the tail halves, they will locate.

Once you have all four pieces of your mold, remove your original, put the tail sections together, stand it up so the hole and locators are facing the ceiling, pack some clay in the tail and sculpt a little tongue that hangs out of the tail portion of the body, then construct a mold box around the two halves of the tail section, mold release it, and pour a 5th mold of the tongue section coming out of the tail. Then cut to the tongue or simply don't pour the rubber over the tip of the tongue. This will locate in the two halves of the tail mold and give you a place to pour the tongue which will create a stem for the body pour of Alumisol to wrap around and better adhere to the tail rather than only having the tiny flat seam to adhere (which it wouldn't do very well). That's why we make the tail first with a tongue/stem that will dangle inside the body mold and be encapsulated and bonded to the body pour of Alumisol much better.

Hope that makes sense.

Now for an even easier way of doing it ... make a mold of the tail section separate, pour it separate and then simply insert in into the mold before pouring the body similar to the way I made the Bull Dawg style bait.

The first way is more professional and looks better but the second way allows you to much more easily create multiple tails with much less work and requires much less time to mold.

Mike

The trick in getting the tail to stick is to have very hot plastic and to angle the mold so it's steeply tail down. This insures the plastic is still hot when it hits the tail. I then begin to slowly level the mold and pour at the same time.
best
L