act Resin Popper Homemade

[BZH]

Hello

I m trying to do my own GT resin popper.

The only problem I have is for the buoyancy.......

How do you do to get the right floating and then the right balancing ?

 

Thanks

 

(sorry for my bad English)

[Drop Bear]

6 hours ago, BZH said:

Hello

I m trying to do my own GT resin popper.

The only problem I have is for the buoyancy.......

How do you do to get the right floating and then the right balancing ?

 

Thanks

 

(sorry for my bad English)

Hey mate,

I made some timber poppers a few years ago. 

They were ok but pretty simple. I would drill a hole in the tail of the popper and put in sinkers to drop the back down using different sized sinkers to balance. 

What sort of popper are you trying to make? Roosters and bloopers are easy enough. Stick baits are a lot trickier.

[BZH]

Hi Drop Bear

Thanks for your answer

I would to do some Popper like Heru Cubera (resin)

To put sinker I need to get a floating popper , and this is not the case

Today the popper I have done are , are floating but as soon I install on it both treble it sink....... (and there is still no lead in )

and I dont thing I can had more "bubble powder" to increase floating , so I can t  had sinkers because it is already sinking without it

[Ed.]

I made 2 sizes of poppers a while ago, 155mm and a 180mm, using 2 part Polyurethane (not resin) and added micro balloons (from a fibreglass supply store) that gave me added buoyancy, when I put on the 6/0 treble hooks on the smaller lure it still floated. I also used much heavier 6/0 (5x) trebles on the larger 180mm lures,  those ones  sank but only slowly. Adding the micro ballons reduced the working time of the mix considerably and made the mix white. A 1.6mm stainless wire runs from the front to the back through the mold for the eyelets. The polyurethane I used is pretty tough (used for make boat trailer rollers) it was slightly flexible unlike resin, and it is very hard to get paint to stick to it, I sprayed the mold, when it dried I then poured in the mix. Coated  the outside with a  clear polyurethane paint and added glitter to it, then coated it again and added some eyes and the hooks.

If I used 1mm stainless wire it would reduce the weight a bit as well so probably float better but 1.6mm is what I had at the time, don't know what size hook you use but you might get better flotation if you used smaller or lighter hooks, also you might be able to add some light weight plastic beads inside the mold as well to lighten the weight of the resin.

 

[BZH]

Thank you Ed for those precisions....

Do you remember how % of micro balloon ?

the 2 part polyurethane is 50% / 50%

For this size of popper I use treble 4/0 to 5/0

[BZH]

I call it resin but I used 2 part polyurethane...

I add 10 % of micro balloon ( I thing is not enough, but if I add more is becoming difficult to do a good mix , and as you said it  reduced the working time of the mix considerably )

I used 2 mm stainless steel wire

I feel that I m close to reach my target , but something is bad or wrong

[Drop Bear]

10 minutes ago, BZH said:

I call it resin but I used 2 part polyurethane...

I add 10 % of micro balloon ( I thing is not enough, but if I add more is becoming difficult to do a good mix , and as you said it  reduced the working time of the mix considerably )

I used 2 mm stainless steel wire

I feel that I m close to reach my target , but something is bad or wrong

Do you need it to float? Are you doing fast retrieves or having pauses? 

[BZH]

yes I need it to float

What I did is mixing a part A with micro balloon then when it is OK I add the part B then then mix all together , then pour it in the mold...... I let it for an hour before retrieve it

[Ed.]

I can't remember  what percentage of micro balloons I used as it was quite a few years ago that I made them, using the 2mm wire will add a lot of weight to your lure so I would reduce it to a smaller diameter, you most likely do not need wire that thick, I am not sure what the breaking strength of 2mm is but it would be well in the area of several hundred KG's, even 1.6mm that I am using is overkill but I have a large roll of it so that is the only reason I used it. 1mm to 1.2mm  will probably be strong enough.

Polyurethane is heavier than water so you need to make the lure  lighter by reducing the lures weight per volume  ie; filler of some sort, light weight beads or even an air cavity of some sort.

Pic below is of one of the lures, replacing both hooks on the lure with the  hook size on the right will make it sink otherwise it will float with the ones on it. They are both 6/0 but the silver one is 5X strength.

[BZH]

Hi Everyones

After a long time I'm back !

I'm back to show you the result , after o lot of tests, a lot of mistakes , now they are not so bad ..... Could get opportunity to test my popper on giant GT on many destination , and they work very very fine !

Between 150 and 190 gr 

 

Result : 57 kg personnal  record 

 

[ellicat]

Very nice. How did you overcome the buoyancy issue ?

Don't be shy - post up a picture of your huge GT !

[kmcrosby78]

Mate they look brilliant, glad to see you reached your goal. And congrats on the 57kg PB - awesome fish. Caught in Australia or somewhere else? Got a pic?

[Angry51]

Love the paint job.

Job well done, good onya mate for putting in the time.

Where's the photo's?

[BZH]

Here are The beasts , they were not been catched in Australia 

[Angry51]

Very good, thanks mate.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Hi BZH

Nice work on the lures. They look marvellous. I am glad you figured out to get them them swimming right.

And great job on the GT's too, they're huge!!!

Cheers Hamish

[Kat]

They look awesome and obviously work!  Well done

[BZH]

Thanks for your comments….

as I loved  to do my own, and many friends ( and friends of friends) asked me to do some for them …I create à FB page 

https://www.facebook.com/LDP-lures-104185238081000/

[Angry51]

Sorry, don't do facebook.

Don't do mobile phone, don't have service where we live.

But they look really good.

Thanks for posting.

[BZH]

 

ellicat 

50%part A polyurethane + % of desire micro balloon (max 15/20 %)

50%part B polyurethane + % of desire micro balloon (max 15/20 %)

 

The percentage of micro balloon on the Part A and on the Part B must be the same 

The percentage of micro is depending of the buoyancy you desire , and position of the lure in the water you want , you'll have to do your own tests until getting the right position desired , it could be long and you may have to throw away a lot of lure before getting the perfection ( or almost) 

[Drop Bear]

Whoa! very satisfying. Well done mate that is a great effort. 

 

[BZH]

Thank you