July 4, 2021

Soft Plastic Bluegill

This is a soft plastic version of the Lipless Bluegill I made before.  This is currently under development and will probably change along the way.

This is the modified design of the other hard body bluegill. I stretched it out, added the tail, and pectoral fins. I might add scale details later I’m not sure yet. I highly doubt the tail is going to work like I have it right now but I wanted to try it anyway.

The pectoral fins are actually life like were they stick out… I don’t know if this will add to the action and it kind of makes de-molding a PITA but it’s something else I just wanted to try.

One half of the mold design.

I printed the actual mold with a layer height of .25 just so it printed fast but I actually like the details the layer lines added so I might not have to go back to add scale details.

Right now I went with a through line design add just added a few 38 wad cutter bullets for weights. (the placement will change.)

Here is the first injection.  Ignore the color it was just some remelt like most of my test baits.

The pectoral fins actually came out great. Whether the have any action is another story…

Onto the testing phase.

Just as I thought… the tail design was a crap with hardly any action. To get a feel for what it should be I grafted an Epic Baits Pud tail in the field to my bait with a lighter.   So now it’s back to the CAD to fix things.

Prototype #2 – New Tail, slightly different body shape, ditched the external pectoral fins.

Kept the first version to test out if a side hooking method will work.

Top view.

Here is a quick GIF of the new tail in action.  This is just in the current (not being retrieved) but it has a good tail action with a slight body wobble.  I like it but I’m not done with the design just yet.

Not the best picture but I also did a Prototype #3 with a PUD like tail. The side hook version I tested had a lot more body wobble so I wanted to give this a shot too to see if it’s the tail or hook that makes a difference just to be sure.

I tried to machine up some inserts out of brass but they ended up being to lite and the bait no longer swam correctly.

I made some custom lead ones too that were closer to the weight of the original bullets I used but haven’t tried them yet as I moved onto another version to try first.

Prototype #4 will be a wire harness version. To start I made a wire form block to bend the wire form using my wire forming tool.

Once the wire forms were made I design a custom mold box to pour silicone molds from. These will allow me to form a lead weight around the wire form.

Here’s what the finished forms look like.

These were also designed to weight about the same as the .38 bullets I used in the first designs.

After all the the forms are placed into the new mold and the lures are injected around the weighted forms.

Ready for another round of testing…

I tried painting up a couple… they are a little rough but painting a soft plastic lure from a 3D printed mold is a different game that’s for sure.  While not perfect I’m still happy with them.

To be continued…

---

All Information, Pictures, and Material is copyright © 2021 by Stephen Thone and may not be used for any personal or commercial purposes without the consent of the author. All rights reserved. The Author makes no guarantees or warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of, or results to be obtained from accessing and using the Information herein.