My casting sessions often come to an end when the sprue plate begins to accumulate lead spots and smears – and when I’m looking for an excuse to stop. To minimise the lead smear/spot nuisance I follow the well-beaten remedy of a very light wipe of synthetic two-stroke oil on both sides of the sprue plate and on the tops of the blocks. Nothing new there.
Eventually, I do get lead smears and spots, which I have previously cleaned up with 50:50 white vinegar and hydrogen peroxide – apply, leave for a while, rub with steel wool, repeat until clean.
Then it occurred to me that I could just remove the sprue plate at the end of the casting session, dunk it in the melt while the candle wax flux was burning, then remove and clean with steel wool. This is pretty close to what I do when I want to blue something in the lead pot, and those bits come out nice and clean.
So on my last cast I tried it out. Result was a nice clean sprue plate with a lot less effort expended.
You are only as good as your library.
