Upgrade Your Roman Era Casting Technology

[Southron]

Roman Legions were armed with their Short Swords, Spears and used slingshots to throw cast lead balls at their enemies. Guess what? Their lead projectiles were hand cast...the same way most of us still make bullets!

The best casting machine out there is the Master Caster for the individual that casts bullets for himself and maybe a few friends. With a Master Caster one can make better bullets than one can by hand casting after one gets to know how to us the machine. Another benefit is one can cast hundreds of bullets at a time...much, much faster than using a hand mould.

I purchased my first Master Caster in the early 1980's and have been happy with them ever since. One can easily modify Lyman or RCBS bullet moulds to work on a Master Caster. One word of warning...Master Casters will literally "eat aluminum moulds alive" so you can't use aluminum moulds on them.

http://www.magmaengineering.com/master-caster/

[tryNto]

Do you work for them?

[Southron]

No, I do not work for Magma Engineering;the company that makes the Master Caster. I have absolutely no connection with them except as a very satisfied customer.

Matter of fact, my Gripe with them is that they have added too many "Bells & Whistles," causing the price of the machine to increase. I have no need for a "digital temperature control," nor, for that matter, a fan to cool the mould.

I found out a long time ago one could cast excellent bullets by working the machine at a moderate pace. I have had my present Master Caster for about 15 years now and never had a problem with it. I purchased my first Master Caster in 1982 and used it for many years until it was stolen.

So yes, I recommend you get a Master Caster and I am sure you will be very pleased with it.

[bhn22]

I'm not satisfied with the price. I don't like the idea of buying an expensive machine to perform a task that I enjoy doing by hand. I assure you, my work is light years ahead of the Romans.

[JSnover]

Those MCs are pretty nice but I can't justify $1000 + whatever it would cost to replace all of my aluminum molds. Maybe if the house burns down… Then I'd have a good excuse to start over.

[jmorris]

Back when I first looked into casting I came across the mastercaster and liked the simplicity but didn't like the manual operation or price very much. So I looked at photos of them and built my own version.

[rodsvet]

Jmorris, you are the real "master caster". I am awed by the tools and machines you make. You can adopt me anytime!! Rod

[Southron]

Jmorris

Congratulations on a job well done!!!

[bangerjim]

Must be nice to be rich. I can buy a ton of molds that give me EXCELLENT boolits for the price of that thing.

And their facility is just up the street from me.

banger

[youngmman]

I have both a Cast Master Pot and Master Pot. I use the Cast Master for alloying and melting down WW and the Master Pot for actual casting.

I love the process and can't imagine automating it and ruining the fun. Your right, of course, that Master Caster is more efficient but, so what? It can't possibly be as much fun.

[Whiterabbit]

A better bullet huh.

I agree that a nail gun will yield MUCH better uniformity with respect to nail depth and operates far faster. But the reality is the shed I built using a hammer is strong, and based on that metric it is a wash.

So really, it depends on your metrics. Uniformity to the nth degree? Great! But for those of us who tend to care more about "good enough" uniformity, and care MUCH MORE about CoO (cost of ownership), the price per boolit is MUCH lower using a pot and aluminum mold.

As to more fun, I'd probably have more fun tinkering with a master caster than sitting in front of a pot. Making machines work is frankly an enormous amount of fun. But then again, there is a zen when sitting in front of the pot, there's time to think and plan and design and that just doesn't happen when playing tinker with a machine. So it goes both ways.

[wallenba]

I don't cast every day, or even every week. I'd have to shoot a whole lot more to justify that much money. Then I'd wonder what to do with all my NOE molds.
I noticed too, that the caster in the video cuts the sprue much sooner after the pour than I usually do. How is that even possible?

[Love Life]

Since Bad Water Bill is the only living person to have actually been around when the Romans were still relevant, we should ask his opinion on this subject.

[9.3X62AL]

Not so fast, Youthful Marine.......I was around in Rome's later years. Here to tell ya, that Constantine was a stone badaxx.

The Roman legions were multi-tasking organizations. A percentage of the legion were designated as armorers, and charged with weapons maintenance--not unlike modern military orgs. In Julius Caesar's legion, the sling missiles were cast or stamped with the words "AD INFERNOS", or "Go to Hell". This was clearly a message to their Frankish enemies, who conceived of Perdition as a flaming eternity; Roman mythology presented their River Styx as dark, cold, and forbidding. (from Caesar's Gallic Wars)

[Springfield]

I love my Magma pot, but I can cast perfectly good bullets with my LEE 6 cavity moulds, and do 8-900 an hour. And many of my moulds are custom aluminum NOE, Mihec and Accurate Molds that I can not duplicate in steel. More than one way to skin a cat.

[Whiterabbit]

Not so fast, Youthful Marine.......I was around in Rome's later years. Here to tell ya, that Constantine was a stone badaxx.

The Roman legions were multi-tasking organizations. A percentage of the legion were designated as armorers, and charged with weapons maintenance--not unlike modern military orgs. In Julius Caesar's legion, the sling missiles were cast or stamped with the words "AD INFERNOS", or "Go to Hell". This was clearly a message to their Frankish enemies, who conceived of Perdition as a flaming eternity; Roman mythology presented their River Styx as dark, cold, and forbidding. (from Caesar's Gallic Wars)

Yeah. Yeah, you would see that in Ceasar's memoirs from the Gallic Wars, as opposed to the civil wars with Pompey, later Cato and the rest of the senate when he was wiping his bottom with the equivalent of the Roman constitution.

[9.3X62AL]

"Gallia dividat est in tres partes......."

The Latin version is far richer and more informative. Most English translations skip over or guess at problematic or colloquial Latin, since it changed context and/or meanings as the Republic and Empire continued. The Church's use of the language was (and is) pretty myopic, also. I had two excellent Latin teachers in high school that really made the language come alive.

[jmorris]

Must be nice to be rich. I can buy a ton of molds that give me EXCELLENT boolits for the price of that thing.

Thats kind of what I though before I wound up building my own, could buy a lot of bullets for what they cost.

The most expensive part of my build was the $60 Magma mold.

[Love Life]

Not so fast, Youthful Marine.......I was around in Rome's later years. Here to tell ya, that Constantine was a stone badaxx.

The Roman legions were multi-tasking organizations. A percentage of the legion were designated as armorers, and charged with weapons maintenance--not unlike modern military orgs. In Julius Caesar's legion, the sling missiles were cast or stamped with the words "AD INFERNOS", or "Go to Hell". This was clearly a message to their Frankish enemies, who conceived of Perdition as a flaming eternity; Roman mythology presented their River Styx as dark, cold, and forbidding. (from Caesar's Gallic Wars)

I can personally attest to your advance age. I seen'st you in person. That was a beautiful area.

[quasi]

Roman's short swords were called a "Gladius".