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Kent I

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  • About Me:
    Phil Ellis
  • Interests (Hobbies, favorite activities, etc.):
    Kayaking, boating, fishing, crabbing,woodworking, plug building, bicycling, nature study, and so on.
  • What I do for a living:
    Retired product engineer

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Stevensville MD

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  1. I should add that the above only applies to filament printing. Resin printing can produce smooth surfaces and is much more precise.
  2. Well, wood really is better. The plastic banana weighed less than it should have, apparently because 3-D printed models are somewhat porous. If it were wood, I could just drill it and add more weight, but it’s hollow, so that won’t work. I could just drill a little hole and add some bb’s, but probably won’t bother. Also, it’s somewhat hygroscopic, so it has to be sealed (duh, just like wood). Worse, the holes are not really round, and can’t be drilled out unless they are thru holes. The process also produces a surface texture that is very difficult to sand off (at least the stuff is abrasion resistant). I’ll probably make another one, but split it vertically and make it in two halves, so I can drop the weights and hangers in, then glue the halves together so no filling is necessary. I’ll leave the surface texture as is. The technology will probably improve in the future, but for now, this doesn’t seem like a practical way to make fishing plugs except maybe if you own a 3-D printer so the components can be added during the build, and if you don’t mind the texture. But it is an interesting experiment.
  3. I was lucky enough to get into two of Joe Cordero’s classes at the RI show, and wasn’t a particularly promising student but learned a lot. I also bought the book and already had a copy of Perfect Fish. So far I’ve avoided buying a flat wing saddle, and have just been using feathers I already have that are more or less suitable while I’m learning. Fortunately, Eagle Claw L 253’s are cheap. There are also two tight line videos of Joe tying a flat wing, and Davie McPhail has one as well.
  4. And to you as well. Our tree was also infested.
  5. Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of a pinned hook hanger. I think for v2 I’ll probably flatten out the holes to conform to the hook hangers, or maybe add ribs to the insides of the holes. I doubt I’ll have time for assembly and float test until after Christmas. After the float, a lot of things may change.
  6. Thanks for the tip. I think I have some VMC 6X around somewhere, which should help, but I think the model is going to need some modification.
  7. I’ve been retired long enough so it doesn’t seem so much like work, and play with CAD just enough to keep up my capability. I expect this model will take a good bit of fiddling to make a good plug, but it will be fun to mess with, and somebody else is doing the plastic part.
  8. Took a trip to the dark side…the library got a 3-D printer and I had built a CAD model a while back. Took about 5 minutes to shell it out and the print job was free. I don’t think the PLA resin they used is durable enough to make a good plug, and it’s about 3/8 oz light compared with my wooden ones, so weighting will be a problem, but my paint booth is down, and it was sort of an interesting change of pace.
  9. They’re all great, but the weakfish is especially fine.
  10. Oh yeah, I forgot about him.
  11. I started my career as a machinist doing mostly prototypes, which is like a real machinist except you start with a vague description of what somebody wants, then make things until you get something that looks about right, and everything but the final piece goes in the scrap. Then somebody else tools it up and you go on to the next thing. My plug making follows pretty much the prototype path, where I try out an idea until I get it to work (or put it in the “for later consideration” box) then make multiple iterations, trying to figure out easier ways to make them. My wife tells people that my nickname is “on the other hand “. By the time I figure it out, I have maybe a dozen plugs that do more or less the same thing, and I don’t really need any more. It took me six tries to get a banana that suits me, and now I’m working on fixturing to make them easier to build. By the time the fixtures are dialed in, I’ll have more than I need. Ironically, bananas could easily be CNC machined or cast in resin, but nobody seems to do it, probably because it isn’t any fun. Paint and epoxy still baffle me. Hats off to those who are able to produce the flawless finishes I see on the “showtime” thread.
  12. Understood. I could do $40 shipped if you’re still interested.
  13. Here’s a pic of the flaw. There’s unevenly applied black paint on the face, and a big epoxy drip. There’s also epoxy on the lip. The plug was sold to me as new, and it doesn’t show any signs of ever having been rigged or gotten wet.
  14. $50 shipped. It has a peculiar manufacturing flaw that you should see before we close a deal. I’ll post additional pics tomorrow.
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