I pour my downrigger balls and 10# bars for shrimp pots and can put in some input that might help for others in question on pouring lead. Never poured anything as small as your jig heads. When you melt the lead, the impurities float to the top. You can take a spoon and scoop it off the top. All that is left is the pure shiny lead. I use a crab cooker and a thick aluminum pot. I melt about 15-20 pounds at a time and my lead comes from sheet lead we use to build leaded X-Ray rooms. If you are melting big quantities of lead, I leave about an inch in the bottom of the pan to cool of for the next time. It is easier to melt this. This heats up quickly to start adding more lead. An empty pot is hard to melt lead in until you have a good amount of liquid lead to help melt down the new added lead. If you are heating a huge chunk of solid lead this really makes the difference. I use leather welding gloves, a welding bib and a face shield. I am careful not to breath the fumes as I do it outside. DO NOT do this when there can be any rain. Water or rain will cause an explosion!!!!! I was running out of propane one time and the lead started cooling off and I did not get the downrigger all of the way poured before it started cooling off in the funnel. The mold did not fill all of the way. I had a hollow ball at the bottom of the ball. I left this ball outside and when I poured more, I remelted this ball. I believe it might have had some water or just the air in it made it explode when I put it in the meltdown pot. Luckily it didn't hardly get me. It went all over the house and deck. You should really wear a respirator as these fumes are deadly. When you have a new mold, the best mold release is candle soot. Make sure and get the inside good and black. This works great. Another tip is get your mold hot and you won't get layering lines in your ball or weights.