Making a Spinnerbait Mold

Making a Spinnerbait Mold
and more

Man you guys know how to flood an email account!!! I certainly hope this helps alot of you Do-it yourselfers out there, but I can't write this article without giving credit to Maser Crafter and King Master Tinkerer Troy Jens as 99.9% of this information came from Troy going through his trials and tribulations and a few of my own of making copies of a lead mold. Thanks T!!

Just a few words of caution. Handling lead can be dangerous (hazarous to your health.. By the way does anyone know what isn't hazardous to your health in California :) ??) and handling hot lead can be even more dangerous so be sure to use thick casting lead gloves for your protection against spills and splashes (splashes do happen quite often!!)and please please don't wear sandals or socks or shorts when pouring lead. Be smart and have good ventilation and have some fun.

Making a mold you'll need alot of supplies most of them are pretty cheap and become cheaper when you have 100 lead forms of your favorite spinnerbait design. Here are a list of supplies you will need.

1. Durhams water putty (Home Depot has it for $5 bucks for 4lbs in the plaster dept makes a bunch of molds)
2. Small tupperware container (I get mine from Super Target)
3. 1/2 oz egg sinker
4. A 2 inch nail that fits snuggly inside the egg sinker
5. duh!! a spinnerbait you like to copy
6. vaseline
7. water
8. lead and a lead melting pot and a lead pouring ladle
9. 2 marbles or 2 small marble size xmas ornaments (bet you can't figure out what I am going to do with this :))
10. sandpaper 100 grit
11. wire forms and hooks
12. heavy duty hand clamp
13. oven
14. possibly a wire bench grinder
15. spray paint in your favorite spinnerbait colors (I like white, chart, red)
16. 3 D eyes (not mandatory)
17. masking tape or just plain tape
18. fine glitter (Hobby lobby or any craft store)
19. two ton epoxy (wally world in the paint dept it comes in a double syringe. Don't get the quick drying!!!)

Okay now once you have the supplies we are ready to start making our mold. Note a few of the above items are for the actual painting and clear coating of the spinnerbait head ie 3D eyes, two ton epoxy, masking tape, paint. In advance, if you see something in bold print read it carefully and make sure you understand why it is important in this whole process. Trust me it will make your life lots easier once you start making your mold.
Lets start with the small tupperware container. Ask your wife for permission (remember what I said about bold print??) to use one of hers if it is the right size. (Notice for your health and possibly mine I said ask for permission!! to avoid the iron skillet upside your head later when she finds out that you ruined one part of her highly gaurded tupperware collection) Now for spinnerbaits, the size of the container is important as you don't want a sprue hole (lead pouring hole in case your not familiar with a sprue) a mile long, but even with a small tupperware container a half mile sprue is really unavoidable. Also the size of the container is important to avoid wasting unneccesary useage of Water Putty (The more you save the more molds you can make right?? yeah!!!). The actual container I have is made by Rubbermaid and is 1.25 cups and comes with a white lid in case you absolutely need to know.
In the first picture you see my mold setup. I have cut two slits with a knife from the top of the tupperware container at the appropriate angle of the wire and hook going toward the lead body down to the 1/2 way mark of the container. After I cut my slits I then placed the egg sinker at the appropriate place behind the head of the bait and puntured a nail at the halfway mark on the tupperware container to meet that sinker and hold the sinker in place. Actually if I would have caught it soon enuf it looks like I might be able to have put in two sinkers on that nail. The sinkers are acting as my sprue hole for pouring my lead into the mold when I finish. So in a nutshell I have a levatating spinnerbait lead form and a sprue hole created by the egg sinker half way up in my tupperware container without me holding anything in place with my hands.

After I have my mold setup. I will vaseline the entire inside of the tupperwater container so the mold will slide out later when I remove it. Next I mix the Durhams water putty. It takes about 8oz by volume (way more than you think) to fill this little container up to the halfway mark. (One thing I might add. I hear a few folks asking about RTV silicone by Dow Corning. They actually make some silicone that is made for lead molding, but from what I gather it costs a fortune to buy somewhere in the vicinity of $100.00 a gallon. Don't quote me on this though if anyone can find it cheap I would like to try it myself) I add water to the point to where the mixture just becomes pourable and I have to scrape about half of it out into the mold container. A thick thick pancake batter is a good comparison. I then pour it into the container and make sure it comes up to the bottom of the slits (which are halfway down the side of the container remember??) I cut for the spinnerbait wire and hook. I then take the tupperware container in my hand and tap it on the table to get rid of any air bubbles in the mixture. Now I am ready to insert my spinnerbait into the slits following the egg sinker and nail.

With the spinnerbait form in the slits and slowly pressed down sideways carefully submerged halfway below the water putty mixture and the nail in the hole you should get very little if any leakage of the water putty due to the thickness you made the water putty :) (Ain't life grand you didn't make a mess of your wife's kitchen give yourself a pat on the back you know you deserve it :)) Also submerge the egg sinker halfway down into the mixture as well. Next get those marbles or small xmas ornaments out (god forbid ask your wife permission about using those xmas balls first, as they might belong on her little xmas tree when she was a child and might have some sentimental value or something lord knows you don't need another knot on your head from that iron skillet) and place them halfway into the mixture as you see in the pic above. The marbles or xmas ornaments act as a hinge to make sure your mold will be put together the same way everytime. The next thing I want to do is take a pointed object, a knife or a toothpick will work and any water putty you see above the halfway line on the egg sinker, nail, spinnerbait head, wire form, hook and marbles you need to scrape away very carefully. On the same token if any part of the above items are not halfway under the putty they need to be pressed down until they are. The whole idea is to get a half exact duplicate of everything in the mold.

Now you want to give the mold about 2 hrs or so to dry. It is through drying when it becomes rock hard on the surface and is cold to the touch. Once it dries you want to pop out your marbles, egg sinker and spinnerbait form. Do this very very very very very carefully and slowly!!! You can screw up a mold real easy and start you over completely on this step if you are not careful. The idea is you don't want anything cracking out of the plaster except your spinnerbait form and egg sinker. No biggie if you crack the putty on the xmas balls. If you did a great job with the knife by scraping away everything above the halfway mark this step should be a piece of cake and it should look like the picture here. After everything is out of the mold, pop the mold out of the tupperware container by turning the container upside down and by pressing the bottom of it.

Now place the mold face down on a sheet of medium grit sandpaper I use 100 grit and sand the top smooth till the top has sandpaper marks over the entire surface of the half mold. Note: do not sand on your wifes kitchen counter or nice dining room table :(. As you can see from this pick I am still luckily married :).

Now place the mold back into the tupperwater container and put the egg sinker and nail in place and also the spinnerbait form. DO NOT place the xmas balls back into there spot leave the xmas balls out!!. Clean the xmas balls and place them back nicely on your wife's itty bitty xmas tree and if you did a good job she won't even know they were missing :)~. Next you want to spread a semi thin coat of vaseline on the surface of the mold. Coat the spinnerbait form, wire, hook, egg sinker, nail entirely. If you have any structural designs on your spinnerbait head that you want to keep such as eye indentions, gill marks etc take a toothpick and clean those indentions free of excess vaseline. Be very sure to genorously apply vaseline into the holes created by the xmas balls or marbles and you might want to recoat the side of the tupperware container as well to assure a smooth removal. Now let the mold dry for 2 hrs or so until hard and cold to touch. In this pic you can get an idea of how thick my molds are. This is primarily for durability as a thin mold is going to become very fragile. Each half is about inch and a quarter high.

After your mold is dry and you pop it out of the container, put your mold itself without the tupperware container into the oven at 225 for about an hour. This process gets rid of almost of any moisture left over in the mold. Or you can wait overnite and let it dry out without using the oven. One thing make sure your wife knows you are using the oven. What is to say while you are watching football on TV she comes in to turn the oven on 400 degrees to pre heat it to start dinner with your mold in there?? Does charcoal briquet ring a bell?? Been there done that!! By the way, do you know what happens when moisture and lead combine?? In short, it ain't pretty and lead will splatter everywhere including on your hands, feet, legs and even eyes so be careful and wear eye protection as well.. By the way liquid lead is 500 degrees ++. So be careful. As you can see in the picture below I strongly recommend using some heavy duty metal clamps or plastic clamps when pouring lead along with casting gloves. Not only is the lead a safety device but it also keeps your two halves tightly together and helps prevent excess lead flowing out of the seams of the halves. When you pour in the lead it will bubble and sizzle as you are pouring hot lead into a cold mold so splattering is gonna happen so be safe. That hole is my sprue hole.

Since I have the actual mold above still drying I wanted to show you a finished product casted inside of another mold I made of the same spinnerbait form. If you did everything right your spinnerbait should come out like the one in the picture. If you have some excess lead left on the seams a wire brush bench sander will take off the excess pretty easily and also some sandpaper can do it as well with a little arm work. Some of you might be wondering why did I not mold in the hook on the one in the pic on the right but I did on the left?? I learned this from trial and error. With the mold on the left I am pretty much limited to the exact hook that came with the spinnerbait form I molded. I like big hooks on my spinnerbaits and as you can see if you look closely on the one on the left I carved out a place for the bigger hook point to fit in, but I couldn't get that mold to take a wide gap jig hook hence the reason I made the mold on the right as it will accept any hook and I won't have to match it up with the exact hook. I want to put a wide gap jig hook on a spinnerbait in the spinnerbait mold on the right.

Now that you have a spinnerbait lead form ya gotta paint it for that added attraction. If you are fortunate to be a artist with a air brush please pass this step as this is T Mikes school of Piscasso 101. For spinnerbaits, unless you want some real fancy artistic designs you won't need a fancy Paasche airbrush or any airbrush equipment. Give me a spray can and I can paint almost anything and make it look appealing. There is no secret in painting your own baits as it is pretty much all technique and using the angles to your advantage. The spray paint I like you can get from Wally world and anything in a glossy color will give you a good effect. The first thing I do is take those same plastic clamps that I used to hold the two mold halves together and I put the hook in it covering the entire hook to keep it from being painted (You can mask it if you want with tape). Next I take some masking tape or plain tape for that matter and cover the wire. I am going to make a white spinnerbait with a red patch on the head. I spray paint the entire lead portion with a light coat of glossy white paint. You will probably need two coats and don't spray the first coat on too heavy as you don't need much (if it is dripping you used too much paint). Now for the red patch on the back of the head of the spinnerbait. I take a piece of cardboard and stand it up. Then I put the spinnerbait head behind the cardboard with just the small part of the head showing (the part you want painted red). The key to making this look like a good job is to hold the spray can back away from the cardboard about a foot or more with the spinnerbait behind it to get the so called "spray effect".

Okay now you got a painted spinnerbait head now what??

This is were beautification comes to play. Whip out your two part epoxy and mix it thoroghly and put a dab of it on a piece of cardboard or small throwaway souffle cup. It is best if you have several baits to epoxy at once to maximize the use of the epoxy. The epoxy cost like $2.99 a tube and you can do about a hundred jig heads or blades with a whole tube. Mix the epoxy and add a little fine glitter and mix it thoroughly into the epoxy. I have some rubber laytex gloves that I use to apply the epoxy onto the spinnerbait head and if you are really cheap you can reuse those laytex gloves over again.. Another idea is to put your hand in a sandwhich baggy. It sucks having to buy disposable brushes as it is almost impossible to clean a brush with epoxy on it. After I get a coat of epoxy on it I put my 3D eyes in place and then put epoxy over it to double hold them into place. The epoxy not only gives you a awesome "Glossy shiney Effect" even better than alot of manufactured blades that you see on the market, but also protects the paint with a durable clear finish. You can also use this two ton epoxy to protect the paint on alot of baits such as traps, jigs, topwater and cranks and also add the glitter as well. The glitter really gives it a sparkly shine just like a shad when you see them flashing under the water. If I can do this anyone can. I know this article is long, but not counting the drying time of the mold you can do this project easily in less than 45 minutes no problem. Let me know if this article helps any. If you guys have any better ideas or short cuts I am all open for new ideas and easier ways to do things. I hope this article helps everyone out and if you have any questions on why I did things a certain way you know me just holler and remember to reread the bold print and be safe :)~ !!

Triton Mike