Interesting observations here that I'll throw in on. . .
I will hypothesize that there are more people casting their own boolits today than there were when Colonel Harrison and Elmer Keith and Skeeter and those pioneers were casting their own.
Harrison, Keith, Skelton and others were the trailblazers in the field of using lead to make our favored and beloved projectiles. . . like John Browning and Arthur Savage, Samuel Colt, (Horace) Smith & (Dan) Wesson, Dr. Richard Gatling, and John Garand to just name a few, were to the modern firearms we so love today.
But does anyone really think that the engineers and Glock or Sig or H&K turn their nose up at Browning, Savage, Garand, and company? Having visited those corporate headquarters, and many others, I can personally tell you that is not the case.
At the same time, the engineers will tell you the best way they can honor their predecessors is by making better and stronger firearms. Likewise, I think John Browning would be fascinated by today's semi-automatic handguns. John Browning would be amazed at firing the Barrett .50 calibre rifle, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson would be blown away by what Glock did with polymer frames.
There are those who accept the status quo and there are those who do not. I wasn't satisfied with Lee's Liquid Alox, so I took what I'd read by the folks ahead of me on Cast Boolits and what they'd tried and experimented with and finally settled on this 45/45/10 blend.
Now, Glenn (Larson) is looking to take the idea of a "liquid" tumble-lube and take the alox right out of it and in doing so, he very well may revolutionize the entire concept of tumble-lubing. . .maybe lubing altogether. Who knows? But it will be fun to watch and try.
Felix lube is a PERFECT example of utilizing today's knowledge with yesterday's resources. Likewise, the Freechex gas-check punch system and our fellow casters experimenting with aluminum as a cost-effective way of reducing leading in high-velocity cast boolit rounds.
Look over at the Special Projects section of this forum. What some of our members are doing and developing will blow you away.
Look at the sticky on Lee-menting. Amazing! You can take a $20 mold and in less than an hour, have it casting perfect boolits like a $100 mold. Not saying aluminum will be as durable or easy to work with as steel or iron, but what I'm saying is that for those who like Lee molds or who do not have the cash to spend on a more expensive mold, the problem with mass-produced aluminum molds now has a solution.
NOW, compare our solution with that of Lee's, with both their aluminum molds and the lubing of their tumble lube boolits. OUR solutions blow Lee's away. Period.
So not everything that is "written in stone" is the absolute end-all or be-all. In our case, here in the cast boolit world, many of those "stone tablets" are seeing signs of erosion. Some are just flat starting to crumble away.