Just heard from someone that their webpage was gone and now simply said "farewell". I went to the website, and sure enough,...
This now leaves only ACE (American Casting Equipment) in Commiefornia as the sole American automated casting manufacturer. And while that's better than nothing, their products are inferior to what Magma produced.
This is particularly distressing for me because a few months back, I bought out the former Laredo Bullets inventory of all their Magma equipment, with the intention of sometime here in the next year setting up operations under a new name and location, as well as converting over from the old school greasy wax lubed plain exposed lead (previous owner of Laredo never bothered changing with the technology) to the new standard poly-coated fully encapsulated colorized stuff folks use today. Although the machinery is functional and working, I was planning on having Magma refurbish the Mk6 models I have (about 30 years old now) to the most recent Mk8s. Unless someone buys Magma and returns it to operating status, I'll have to go a different route now.
Heck, I just got back from buying an 8 year old Magma Master Caster in Simi Valley Sunday. I guess the value of these machines all just went up.
Magma has been struggling to meet orders since the pandemic started. All their machines on hand sold out by late April of 2020, and Magma started informing potential customers that until supply chain issues could be conquered, they were at least a year out from delivering their machines. That never changed. What few employees Magma had apparently went and found new opportunities. In recent months, customers trying to reach someone on the phone at Magma, if they got hold of anyone at all, usually got hold of the owner himself, who it seems may have been running the entire operation single-handed for quite some time, and mentioned to several callers that he was having trouble finding replacement employees since they are all CNC-trained techs now and few folks run machines manually anymore.
I hope someone steps in and gets Magma up and running again. This impacts most of the affordable reloading projectile manufacturers. It won't affect manufacturers of JACKETED bullets like Hornady, Sierra, Winchester, Remington, RMR, Montana Gold, Zero, etc. But many many shops exclusively use Magma machines, like Missouri Bullet Company, ACME, SNS Casting, Blue Bullets, Brazos Bullet Company, Hoosier Bullets, Meister Bullets, and dozens of others.
Ultimately, this might well delay my plans, since although I received 50 sets of molds, there are plenty of newer designs I wanted to add to the retinue.
Grrrrr,...frustrating, and depressing. Magma has a long history of making the best products in the markets.
Yo,...Dillon. Maybe jump on this as a new division to add your brand?! They already use blue as their company color!
Here's a short little video of 2 of Hoosier Bullets' Magma Mk6 Bullet Masters in operation.
Here's a screen grab photo from Magma's webpage back in 2012, showing what the Bullet Master sold for back then. Just before the pandemic, the price had increased to $14,500, and most of us were expecting when Magma finally returned to regular production soon, the new price would likely be closer to $16,500.
And here's one bank of Magma Bullet Masters inside SNS Casting's shop. (If you order cast bullets via Dillon Precision, they come from SNS.)
I realize this likely doesn't bother many of you who shoot jacketed bullets exclusively. But even if so, it's sad to see this happen to an Arizona icon of the gun industry. Back when Meister Bullets was located here in the 80's, I spent part of a summer working for them tending a trio of automated Master Casters.
