SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 (edited) My friend who bullet casts for us was trying to order some new molds and magma has taken down their website, it says So long, farewell. He called them and it didn't sound good Edited April 10 by SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER 1 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bailey Creek,5759 Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 I was thinking of ordering a couple of Molds from them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buffalo Bill Mathewson, 37826 Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 1 hour ago, SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER said: My friend who bullet casts for us was trying to order some new molds and magma has taken down their website, it says So long, farewell. He called them and it didn't sound good Did they say what was going on or just not answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER Posted February 7 Author Share Posted February 7 Usual, can't find help, supply issues. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 (edited) From Cast Bullets.Com - I talked with Eric on the phone yesterday (2/5/24). He said he put the "so long, farewell" message on there himself. He told me it all started with Covid. He can't find good machinists, and too many of his parts are made out of country. He's closing "for now". When I spoke with him yesterday, he mentioned he had been doing this for 50 years. The conversation definitely left me with the impression he might be ready retire and not have the stress of running a business. Edited February 7 by Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 1 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sedalia Dave Posted February 7 Share Posted February 7 Accurate Molds may be able to make a mould that will work in a Magma Caster. Only way to know for sure is to contact them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waimea Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Holy crap! Eric and Magma will definitely be missed. I called him so many times when I first started but he never once put me off even though I bought used. He knew what customer service was and stood behind his product. I was lucky enough to meet him and Mark in 2017. Nice guys! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Jack Black Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 As I have been saying for years stock up for the LOOOOOOOOOOONG haul. Best Wishes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badlands Bob #61228 Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 (edited) I'm surprised he couldn't sell a well established business like Magma Engineering. Maybe it's not scalable in it's current configuration. There are only so many commercial bullet casters. Edited February 9 by Badlands Bob #61228 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward R S Canby, SASS#59971 Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 1 hour ago, Badlands Bob #61228 said: I'm surprised he couldn't sell a well established business like Magma Engineering. Maybe it's not scalable in it's current configuration. There are only so many commercial bullet casters. Perhaps an established reloading company like RCBS or Dillon Precision could buy Magma Engineering and incorporate its products into its business. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Jack Black Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 3 hours ago, Badlands Bob #61228 said: I'm surprised he couldn't sell a well established business like Magma Engineering. Maybe it's not scalable in it's current configuration. There are only so many commercial bullet casters. A dying breed we are. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Jack Black Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 All shooting sports are dwindling and Lead will be banned in hunting and the shooting sports. Enjoy while you still can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 7 hours ago, Texas Jack Black said: All shooting sports are dwindling and Lead will be banned in hunting and the shooting sports. Enjoy while you still can. I do not believe that for a second. Vista Outdoors just sold their ammo business side including Speer, Remington, Federal etc business to CZ Group for $1.9 BILLION! I talk to new shooters all the time. Great big hugs! Scarlett 6 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smokin Gator SASS #29736 Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 What equipment do many or most of the cast lead bullet manufacturers use? I thought a lot of it was the Magma machines and molds but don't really know. Some manufacturers are much bigger then others too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cholla Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 8 hours ago, Texas Jack Black said: All shooting sports are dwindling and Lead will be banned in hunting and the shooting sports. Enjoy while you still can. You have not been to the Shot Show. The vast majority of folks were 20s-40s, all wanting to see and try the next big thing, all wanting to be first to get it on their YouTube channel, Instagram, or similar platform. Long Range sports are all the rage these days. 1,000 yards is done with budget Ruger Americans. 1400 yards is well in reach of many younger shooters. I watched an NRL Hunter match last month, mostly done by 20-30-year-old shooters. The matches are so popular they sell out months ahead. PRS matches are even more popular. You may not be seeing it locally, but there were 55,000 people at Shot Show 2024! Most wanted to see the next best AR-type rifle or the next best chassis-stocked bolt-action rifle. (Admittedly, I was also looking as the NRL Hunter series was fun to watch and now I'm bit by the bug.) You can scream sacrilege all you want, but many were handling the black plastic-stocked lever-action rifles as well. 3 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 A few quotes from an American Rifleman article from 2021 - RCBS: Handloading’s Helping Hand by JOHN HAVILAND posted on October 11, 2021 NEWS, AMMUNITION, RIFLES, EXTRAS According to Will Hemeyer, senior product manager for RCBS, there are about 4 million handloaders. . . . American shooters and hunters represent 95 percent of the handloading market, however, handloading is also somewhat popular in Germany and Australia. “Russia is becoming a fairly big market, too,” Hemeyer said. Shotshell reloading has diminished to the point that RCBS may discontinue its The Grand shotshell press. Bullet casting remains prevalent only among handloaders of those cartridges that lack commonly available projectiles. The difficulty of finding inexpensive lead and lead alloys—and the sun setting on the growth of cowboy action shooting—have also stalled the practice of bullet casting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Jack Black Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 Read the extensive report " Responsive Management" put out By the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The decline is real. Best Wishes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waimea Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 "have also stalled the practice of bullet casting." Maybe overall market conditions but I never noticed it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edward R S Canby, SASS#59971 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 On 2/10/2024 at 7:29 AM, Texas Jack Black said: Read the extensive report " Responsive Management" put out By the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The decline is real. Best Wishes I read the report. The first paragraph is a good summary: Responsive Management research indicates that the incentives with the highest likelihood of encouraging participation in the shooting sports focus on creating opportunities for hands-on, tangible experiences with the shooting sports. When introducing someone to shooting, it is important to provide a physical, tangible opportunity to experience the activity first-hand. Less active mechanisms of initiation to an activity, such as reading about the activity or watching others do the activity, are not nearly as effective at providing meaningful opportunities for persons to become involved in the shooting sports. Responsive Management research indicates that the most important reasons for participating in any of the shooting sports (other than hunting) typically include honing skills, having fun, and being with family and/or friends. A shooting club where I am a board member is doing a good job in this respect. We allow our ranges to be used by young shooters preparing for the Junior Olympics. Every year some are selected for the Junior Olympics. We partially fund their travel expenses. Our indoor .22 range is used by 4-H shooters and scouts to earn merit badges. Recently we made the indoor .22 range handicap-accessible so disabled veterans could compete under a Veterans Administration recreation program. One of our members runs the program for the VA. At a recent tournament our veterans brought home many of the top prizes. Finally, we restarted a .22 action activity loosely based on NSSF Rimfire. I run the activity. About a third of the shooters are youngsters brought by the families. My experienced adult shooters are proving good at reinforcing basic firearms safety and coaching youngsters how to engage target arrays efficiently. Our hope is some youngsters will continue in the shooting sports as they grow up. However, all get a positive shooting experience to help counter the anti-gun teaching they get in public schools. Sidebar: the scouts that have the most difficulty are those that spent endless hours playing shootem-up video games. We teach them how to shoot a rifle, but they revert to video gaming when shooting for their merit badge and have so many misses that they fail the course. The other scouts earn their merit badges. When they come back for another try next year we teach them fundamentals again. They put aside their video game methods and earn their merit badge. They discover that shooting a rifle is quite different than manipulating a game-controller. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Jack Black Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 The decline across the board still exists Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Assassin Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 Does this make their casting machines obsolete, will parts still be available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slipperyd Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 On 2/12/2024 at 3:12 PM, Assassin said: Does this make their casting machines obsolete, will parts still be available? Some proprietary parts will not be available. I’m a commercial bullet caster and We are preparing to have parts engineered as needed. Many parts like motors, air parts ect are available through other places since they are not specific to the machines. you can have molds cut for magma machines but will need to have the key ways made and the Spru cutters. a mill and lathe are part of our plans in the near future. we have backup magma equipment, we have been buying so we can still expand from our current production. magma machines are the best available on the market at this time. There is another company that seems to be a copy of balisticast which was a failure. They are beautiful machines but just don’t run like magmas. I know of several companies that bought them when they couldn’t get magmas and they regretted the purchase. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slipperyd Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 On 2/9/2024 at 8:55 PM, Smokin Gator SASS #29736 said: What equipment do many or most of the cast lead bullet manufacturers use? I thought a lot of it was the Magma machines and molds but don't really know. Some manufacturers are much bigger then others too. We all use magma machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER Posted April 10 Author Share Posted April 10 After 50 years of manufacturing the original owners of USA based Magma engineering have decided its time to go fishing - hope you catch plenty Eric. Fortunately for all there is light at the end of the tunnel We are now in the process of transferring all the information to our manufacturing facility based in Melbourne Australia. This will be by no means an easy or fast process but rest assured we will get there. As yet no website or email address have been set up however, we are working on this and all updates will be posted here. While we get ourselves sorted, we will be focusing on parts and molds before tackling full machines. We look forward to this adventure and hope you join us for the journey. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckshot Sheridan Posted April 11 Share Posted April 11 Been using a few things from Magma for years. Used to be about a 15 minute drive from the house. Guess that won’t be the case anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Painted Mohawk SASS 77785 Posted April 11 Share Posted April 11 On 4/11/2024 at 5:05 AM, SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER said: After 50 years of manufacturing the original owners of USA based Magma engineering have decided its time to go fishing - hope you catch plenty Eric. Fortunately for all there is light at the end of the tunnel We are now in the process of transferring all the information to our manufacturing facility based in Melbourne Australia. This will be by no means an easy or fast process but rest assured we will get there. As yet no website or email address have been set up however, we are working on this and all updates will be posted here. While we get ourselves sorted, we will be focusing on parts and molds before tackling full machines. We look forward to this adventure and hope you join us for the journey. Howdy SGT ELI...Are you saying that Magma casters & molds in the future will be made in Australia...wow I hope so or am I reading it wrong..Cheers Mohawk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SGT. ELI 35882 GUNFIGHTER Posted April 11 Author Share Posted April 11 25 minutes ago, Painted Mohawk SASS 77785 said: Howdy SGT ELI...Are you saying that Magma casters & molds in the future will be made in Australia...wow I hope so or am I reading it wrong..Cheers Mohawk This was a direct quote from their Facebook page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 On 2/11/2024 at 1:10 PM, Waimea said: "have also stalled the practice of bullet casting." Maybe overall market conditions but I never noticed it. Me either! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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