I have failed over and over and over again making lures, 3D printed designing lures, everything. I failed so much that I was able to create this entire 4×4 foot panel of failed molds and lures and I didn't even use them all. I still have half a bin of failures that I can make more panels of. This really represents 2+ years of failing over and over again with very few actual successes in the middle and it really represents my journey from figuring out how to use Fusion 360 to how to design lures and the ins-and-outs of molding. There's a lot a failure and a lot of resin. I think I have gone through close to 65 or 70 kilograms of Siraya Tech Sculpt Resin, there's some clear now and then, but it's mainly the Sculpt gray and I just buy two 5 gallon jugs at a time. It's about $320 a pop and I keep going through it because I keep messing up. I created this monument to failure to remind myself to stay humble and to make sure everybody sees that I failed over and over again and that it's okay.
I get these messages all the time from people that tell me I make this look easy and they've been trying for weeks and haven't been able to do something like get a tail to look right, or get a lure to print and guess what, I couldn't either at first. I couldn't do anything for 6 months, at least. I was going back and looking through some of my old Fusion 360 projects and I mean, they were terrible. I thought so many of my designs were good enough to save and there are so many times I'd open Fusion 360 and start working on something, spending around 3 hours on it and in the end I wouldn't even save it. I would just delete it and run away and cry for awhile.
I get it dude, I make it look easy because I make videos on YouTube that get edited by a very good editor and you don't see the hours of frustration as I spend hours trying to get Fusion 360 to do what I want and not being able to figure it out. I've made Fusion 360 mad plenty of times trying to do some weird thing that it doesn't like and it'll crash or I'll loose some work. You don't even see all the molds that even failed to print properly because I didn't set something up right and you would be bored to tears if I sat down in front of the computer and showed you all the times that I screwed-up and had to start over again. I'll include more screw-ups in the future, but I like to produce videos on YouTube that try to teach you as quickly as possible, not to show you how much I screw-up.
So I started this channel to help you guys fail less, not fail more or at all. You're going to fail, I made this for you to fail less and I created my Patreon group to help people be able to get great models that you can print out on your own printer to make sure all that stuff works, but you're still going to fail. You're going to fail sometimes and it's totally cool. What we're doing here is pretty hard and a fairly rare skill. I was talking to a guy who emailed me and he does low pressure mold design. If you've ever seen those USB-like cables or any cables really, that's the kind of soft molded pressure relief pieces that he does. I was like, dude, this guy must know everything. He told me I was pretty good and I told him I was nowhere near him since he's combining multiple skills to produce these molds and there are few people that know how to actually design and produce like he does.
There's no degree or college course that teaches you how to make molds that I'm aware of and to learn the skills in this industry you have to do it on the job, it's the only way to learn it. Learning from somebody else is the traditional way to learn these skills so the fact that you're even in there trying is great. Don't get upset, don't get frustrated because it's going to be tough and you're going to have failures and stuff that comes out wrong. You're also going to have good designs for molds that get ruined because you have a bad 3D print and you're going to have a bad design and a lure that's not going to do what you want to and you're going to have to start over and over again.
Keep working and you will get it, I promise. I learned it and you can too.
Take care- Tight lines