I put the plaster of paris mold + wax into the oven (300F) to melt out the wax. This worked, but while checking on progress I discovered a whole in the plaster mold. It appears that while pouring the plaster of paris around the wax tree I let it rotate so far that it touched the insider of the container. The location of the hole means that ther mold is useless, so I will have to start over.
Lessons learned - be more careful when pouring the plaster, and use a bigger container.
I can't call the experiment a complete failure, because the next attempt should benefit from the lesson's learned. I am disppointed that I didn't get to pour any lead though.
