July 14, 2020

Making Lure Eyes (Round 2)

I’ve gone through several different methods of making my own lure eyes. The first basic break down I showed here and this method is basically the same with a few minor changes.

The main difference with these eyes are they are printed out on a transparency type paper.  I learned this technique from a YouTube video. (I’d post a link but I can’t find it again.) You can probably print these at home on special paper if you have a color printer but I just had these printed at my local Staples store. A full 8″ x 10″ sheet is around $1.75 so it’s well worth the price for the amount of eyes you can get on one sheet.  All of the eyes shown here were just grabbed off of google images for testing.

The next step I just cut out a few eyes at a time to work with.

The brilliant part of this technique is adding a reflective backing to the transparency.  This chrome like HVAC tape is perfect for this and creates a nice glimmering finished eye.

You just peal and stick it to the back side of the printed transparency.

The next step is to punch out the individual eyes.  For my last eyes I used a paper punch to make .25″ eyes but a paper punch really doesn’t punch an exact .25 hole so I turned up my own punch on a lathe.

In the end I did just end up buying a true hollow punch set because I wanted a full range of punches to make different sized eyes. Plus it was only like $14 and I’ll use it for other projects too.

Basically you just line up the punch on the eye and give it a lite wack with a hammer.

These little eyes were a little hard to line up perfect but the edges really don’t show in the end so it’s not a big deal to be off a bit.

I would recommend in the design/printing phase to make them a little bit bigger than the actual size needed as this will make aligning the punch a little easier if you can see the otter edge protruding from the punch.

Another thing you can do with this technique is to use different types of backers to achieve different results using the same eyes.

This is just a quick example of that.  The left eye has a holographic silver backing while the right has a plain gold backing.

If you need a self stick eye you can add some double sided 3M tape to the backer before punching them out too. (I prefer to just skip this step as it makes them thicker and I usually glue them onto the lures anyway.)

Once all of the eyes are punched out I use these 3D printed eye blocks to hold the eyes for the next step. I just dab a tiny amount of glue to the raised posts using a glue stick. (You can use a wood block with simple screws or nails for this too.)

The eyes can have a bit of a wrap after punching them out so I just press them flat with my finger before sticking them to the block.

Then it’s just a matter of sticking them to the block.

To form the dome of the eye I am using UV resin but epoxy will work too.  (You can actually mix the epoxy on a piece of wax paper and fold it up and then just clip one corner off to make a dispenser sort of like they do for icing a cake.

It takes a little practice to get the domes all the same. I’m experimenting with different sized domes… taller ones for hard baits and lower ones for soft baits.

Once my domes are formed I put the eye blocks in my UV Drying Rack for 30 minutes to cure.

Here are the finished eyes outside under the sun. Its hard to show how well they came out on camera but they came out amazing.

This quick GIF shows how they reflect the light.

For my second batch of eyes I spent an hour or so in Photoshop and drew up some quick custom eyes.

These dragon eyes are some of my favorite ones so far. I’m still amazed at the amount of detail in a little .25″ eye.

Here are some of the other examples that I drew to see how the details would print.

I did a few creature eyes too just for some fun.

These are just some of the first batch of eyes I made. I’m sure they will work great for hard baits but I’ll have to see if they will hold up on soft baits when just glued on.

With the exception on these .50″ eyes that I made for a special lure all of the ones I have made so far have been .25″ and with how well these all came out I doubt if I’ll ever have to buy eyes again.

Here’s a couple of eyes ready for testing on some soft bait Epic Puds.

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