12/16 pesky lil #%^

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by GregAndrew

Another difference between jigs of the same type is that there is not one mold that produces them, but several or many of them. If they poured them one at a time you would not see racks of them in all tackle stores.

It all depends how you define one or single Greg.

A single cavity die is a mold that makes only one object per pour. You rarely see those kind of molds or dies in the casting industry. Like you say they are inefficient because they only make one object at a time.

Technically the molds used for this type of casting are called dies and they are two part (or more) molds made by machinists or more precisely mold makers out of alloy tool steel, and in this case what you have is a multiple cavity mold. Evan though it's probably still just a simple two part die, it's still a die where a single pour produces multiple numbers of identical jigs.

In order to get that die they took an original 6XJR (a "blank") that they wanted cast to a mold maker, and then specified how many pieces they wanted the die to produce. That mold maker then made the die exactly duplicating the blank for each cavity space or piece unit in the mold.

Mold making is serious business, the guys that do it really know their shit, and a good mold maker will duplicate that original blank within thousandths of an inch for each piece in the mold.. Any flaws or idiosyncrasies in the blank will end up in every single one of them so you better make sure the blank is correct before you ever give it to the mold maker.


Take a look at the bigger 6X jigs in this picture.




Now looking at those bigger 6X jigs I see two distinct separate production runs or dies.

With the first die the blank was probably made from metal, steel brass or aluminum. To put the lettering on it they took a set of letter/number stamps which are essentually hand held punches and smacked the "6X SALAS" in with a hammer. Now because the punches were hand held the Salas in not perfectly straight, and it looks like they double struck the X creating a flaw in it.

When they took that blank to the mold maker he faithfully duplicated those exact letter flaws into every single cavity in the die so every jig that comes from that die has those exact same letter flaws.

Now look at the other 6X's lettering. Those letters are perfect because it was made with a different die. With that die they had a machinist machine the letters into the blank so they are perfect and straight. So when they took that blank to the mold maker to have the die made he faithfully duplicated those exact letters into every single cavity in the mold so every jig that comes from that mold has those exact same machined looking letters.

I imagine the first die is the earlier model, and that the first blank was simply hand made.

The second is the later die when they had more money to spare and wanted to make superior die for a cleaner more professional looking product. They probably hired a machinist to make that second blank, so naturally the lettering is machined rather then stamped.

I also find it interesting that the lighter 6x jigs were poured with the older mold which makes perfect sense to me, since they no longer make them, and even the lite 6XJR pictured has hand stamped letters, suggesting once again it's an old jig from an early production run.

How old are they? who knows? I certainly don't. Salas jigs have been around forever, they probably updated their dies years ago.

Just for fun I dug through some of my older jigs and found two jigs with the older hand stamped letters. A really old 7X lite I no longer fish, and an ancient heavy 6X with those exact same letter flaws as Stevooos.



They just don't make them like that any more....

So at any rate when I said the same mold, I was not suggesting they came from a same single cavity in a mold where only one thing is produced like a sinker mold but instead a multi cavity die or dies where all the pieces created by those dies are identical because they all came from or were derived from the same original blank.

In casting we think of these like generations. A first generation object would come from a original die created from the original blank, subsequent generations are those from a die made from a different blank, or dies made from a blank derived from a first generation casting. They could of and probably did make multiple dies off each blank, but all the jigs they produced from those dies would still be virtually identical or of the same generation if that makes any sense.

Think of die like an upside down tree where the trunk is open and each leaf is a jig. The metal pours in the trunk then flows down into the leaves (jigs) through the branches (sprues), and though there are many leaves (jigs), they are all pretty much identical, because they were all created from the same pattern. It doesn't matter how many trees you have, or even how many leaves are on the trees, as long as the leaves are patterned from the same blank they are essentually from the same mold.

Jim