Goes like this fellas.
a minmum economic batch size for casting alone is in the order of 200 to 500
minimum economic batch size for machining is inthe order of 500 to 1000
World wide demand is in the order of 10 to 20 / year, very much depending upon price .
Finished barrels would have a cost price in the order of $ 500 each on the shop floor
If you made 500 barrels to get the cheapest price then we are talking $ 250,000
so that is $ 250,000 sitting on the floor before we take into account storeage aand we are looking at at least 30 years to sell then all.
From a business point of view I can make any one of 10 million items that will be sold within a year and return a much hgher profit .
That is the simple economics of it .
So we need to get a 3D printing business to make at least if not 5 sets of cope & drag patterns for whatever grade of CI we want to use ≈$10,000
Then we take them to a foundry that is running way under capacity with the instructions that when ever you have some ( specify grade ) of CI left over in a melt run it out on our patterns please .
This will yield a steady supply of raw castings at the lowest price possible .
Then we need to find a macine shop that is also under capacity and ask them to macine these barrels if & when they have nothing to do as a loss reducer .
Of course this means they all must be paid for COD the day thay are ready .
That may knock 50,000 tp 75,000 off the cost price.
How big is the collective wallet of this forum, remembering we then have the problem of cranks , rods & pistons .
Way back on a different forum members were whinging about the lack of A65 pistons & it was John healy , a dealer back in the days & still in business who set people strait.
From memory he said world wide demand for A 65 pistons were in the order of 20 pairs a year .
I got some oversize forged pistons made for my M20 & B34 , they were $800 a piece and only that "cheap" because a batch of 50 were made of which the last few took over 2 years to shift.
This is why bespoke companies like GPM & JP are around and even then you are looking at $ 300 to $ 500 for a cast piston.
Vintage steel just quoted $2850 + freight for the mudguards & stays for my B2 , they were 3 & 5 shillings in 1927 plus I am looking at 2 years minimum unless I want to pay near double that for a rush order and when finished the round tank miht fetch $ 8,000 on a good day .
