I posted here when I poured my first jigs about having problems with the collar and barb not pouring. I got many helpful replies. Most agreed that I had contaminated lead in the pot and suggested cleaning it out, so I did that. I cleaned every speck of lead out of my Lee 4-20. When I needed some jigs a few weeks ago, I put 2 lead "muffins" that I made from xray room lining in the pot. I fluxed the lead when I melted it all down to start with wax and I fluxed it again with wax before I started pouring. It was very clean lead and I suspect it's close to pure. The first time I used the pot after cleaning I was going to make 200 jig heads. I poured the first 100 and had very few bad ones. When I tried to pour the 2nd 100, I ended up with 75 keepers and 25 not fully poured. I was very frustrated. So today I decided to spend more time trying to flux the lead in case there was something in it causing the problems. I put cardboard chips in the lead because I didn't have any dry sawdust. It worked pretty well and did get out some rust from the pot. I then added more wax and stirred it more. I got out a little ashy looking substance. I started pouring and had the same exact problems that caused me to stop pouring the last time. Incomplete collars with no barb. It was then that I remembered somebody suggesting, on my original thread about this, to put the spout on my pot, into the holes in the mold. BINGO. I had 249 good ones out of 250 and I know why the one bad one didn't pour correctly. That sure makes like a whole lot easier. So whoever that was who recommended that, thanks!

Here's the question.... I had the pot on for probably an hour and a half. When I got close to being done I decided to pour 50 1/16 ounce jigs. I got around 10 of them poured and then started getting no collars at all. I checked the spout and the lead was only dribbling out when I'd open it. I hadn't looked into the pot in quite a while so I did and there was lots and lots of floating rust around the edges. I scraped the sides down in the lead pool and ended up getting almost two full spoons of rust and "film" out of the pot.

It's only been a few weeks since I did a full cleaning. Is it the heat from melting the lead, the dissimilar metals in contact with each other, or something else that causes all this rust so fast? I guess that's what was causing the lead to only dribble out of the spout. I cleaned it good with a torch tip cleaner and it went back to working great.