The walls are thicker than normal. We used a tapered pin vs a dowl pin to give it some additional beef toward the head and mid section. I poured them in medium and it seems very durable. I'll know better later today : )
The cost is a little obscene. They currently take around 2 hours in just actual machine time. I think I can get this down some and still maintain the quality. Then you add in the manual stuff, material, etc. My target would be to get it under $150, $200 including the mandrel and pin. This is my biggest concern, that's a pretty hefty price for 1 cavity.
Just as a side note, all of our tube type baits are going to use the same mandrel, 2.25" (this is what makes the tail). We did this for a couple reasons: 1) You can have many different tube baits and only need x (however many you want to shoot at one time) amount of mandrels and pins, 2) It lets you choose what length you want the tail to be (maybe you like a long tail on a short tube, you have this flexibility, 3) It allowed us to keep our overall price of the tube baits down by standardizing one tail length. This will make more sense when I post the other tubes on the site.
We'll see what the feedback is and if it's good I'll make up an inventory of them, if not I can just have it be a special order. Depending on what's going on we should still be able to make them in a reasonable time.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
Jason