The following is a cut and paste of an article I authored in the Killeen Daily Herald...


By Bob Maindelle | For the Herald Jan 28, 2024





Shown, from top left, are bottles of two-part mold making resin, bottles of urethane resin for forming the product, two single-cavity molds (one upright, one on its side), and the white Sculpey Clay prototype. All were used to produce the 10 unweighted umbrella rigs with wires encapsulated in the resin shown at the bottom of the photo.
Courtesy | Holding the Line Guide Service



As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

I have fished my entire life, and on several occasions have found a need for something fishing tackle-related which simply did not exist. So, I fashioned that certain something myself.

In some instances, fashioning said component simply involved modifying an item already on the market or mixing and matching various components to produce a more user-friendly hybrid of something already on the market. But, on occasion, I have had to start from scratch, develop a prototype, test it, refine it, test it again, and so on, until it met the need.

Regardless of how the end result came to be, I have always enjoyed the process of thinking something through, then tinkering and adjusting the concept until a physical finished product was in hand.

I want to share with you in this column how my most recent experiment went, as the process I used lends itself readily to a wide variety of applications when it comes to crafting custom-made fishing tackle.

January and February are always slow months when it comes to guiding, so I work off my to-do list over the winter so as to be most ready from March through December when the majority of my guiding takes place.

This winter, one item on my to-do list was to come up with a way to more quickly and consistently produce three-armed umbrella rigs which I use from June through at least October to target white bass and hybrid stripers.

These umbrella rigs create the illusion of a school of shad swimming by as they present multiple lures simultaneously. In doing so, multiple fish caught and landed simultaneously often result.

Up until now I had used various diameters of wire as the umbrella rigs arms, all joined together with JB Weld SteelStik. Although these rigs worked, they generally lacked consistency in appearance, and each rig was essentially custom-made as I produced these only one at a time.

After doing some research on mold-making, I felt I could fashion a simple mold into which I could insert an umbrella rig’s three metal wire arms, thus allowing the arms to be positioned in the same manner each time a rig was created. The use of a mold would also ensure that the size, shape and weight of the head of the rig was consistent.

The process started with crafting a prototype head for the umbrella rig which would serve as the hub joining the three wire arms and the metal loop to which the fishing line would be attached.

To craft this prototype head, I simply used my fingers to fashion some Original Sculpey clay, available at Walmart, into the size and shape I had envisioned. To make sure this prototype’s dimensions were suitable, I molded the clay around the three metal wires and the line tie loop, all joined together with an aluminum crimp sleeve.

Once the clay was the shape I had in mind, and fully covered all of the metal components, I baked the assembly in an air fryer (when my wife was not home) at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for fifteen minutes based on the instructions on the package.

Once the baking process was complete, I placed the assembly outdoors to let it cool.

While waiting for the prototype to cool, I turned my attention on making a soft mold. For this task, I chose a two-part product produced by Alumilite, called “Amazing Mold Maker.” Equal parts of Part A and Part B are mixed by volume. I poured the resulting mixture into a small, cylindrical, plastic bottle roughly 1¼ inches in diameter, and 1½ inches in height.

With about eight minutes of working time until the mixture began to harden, I gently inserted the clay prototype into the red liquid using the three wire arms to suspend the clay head in the mold, which was filled to the rim with Amazing Mold Maker.

After 30 minutes, I was able to grasp the three wires and, using them as a handle of sorts, pull the clay head out of the hardened, but still flexible, mold material. This left behind a void in the mold which would now allow me to cast identically shaped heads using any number of resins available on the market.

After successfully producing this mold, I repeated the process to produce a second mold from the same clay prototype, thus allowing me to cast two identical rigs at a time.

Because I use my three-armed umbrella rigs for trolling behind a downrigger ball, I do not desire that they sink, hence, using lead to cast the head for these rigs was not an option, as it causes the rig to sink below the level of the downrigger ball.

Instead, I chose yet another Alumilite product called Alumilite White. This is a two-part, liquid urethane resin product which, when mixed in equal parts by volume, cures into a solid, durable material.

With the two molds now completed, I set them aside for 24 hours to allow for a full cure and began assembling a dozen sets of arms and line ties so they would be ready for insertion into the molds.

Once the molds were completely cured, I inserted the wire assemblies into the mold cavities, one at a time, and supported them from above so they would not lean to one side or another after the resin was poured into the mold.

Each rig required five milliliters of mixed Alumilite White resin. Once the resin parts were mixed together, I had two minutes to get them poured; and they cured quickly enough to be removed from the mold about 10 minutes after pouring.

I found that any waste, flashing, or overpoured resin was most easily removed right after taking the finished product out of the mold.

Once this tidying up process was complete, I allowed another 30 minutes for the product to completely cure and harden. I was pleased that at no point in either the mold making process or in using the molds with the Alumilite White resin, was there any offensive odor, as I did all of this work indoors.

The process I just described was simple and effective. Going forward, these molds will allow me to produce fishing tackle I find necessary for my business with consistency in shape, weight and durability which was previously lacking.

Had a more heavily weighted rig been desirable, other resin choices were available to me through Alumilite and other manufacturers, as well. The white color, which the clear Alumilite White resin dries to, was also desirable to me. Other resin colors are also available.

If you are a tackle tinkerer and have never considered mold making as a means of bringing an idea to life, I can assure you the learning curve is not at all steep.

That's a nice article Bob. For those of us with a lure-making bent it's very informative and opens a whole new realm of possibility.

Good luck to you if your wife reads the Killeen Daily Herald! Perhaps a good used toaster-oven is in your future?