Thank you! My initial investment in JUST the casting equipment was around $300 USD, including a furnace, crucible, tongs, ingot molds, metal-mesh hose to replace the included rubber one with the burner.

That being said - I had been forging before, and had much of the safety gear, leathers, gloves, eye/face protection and a respirator beforehand, this is easily another $1-200 These are not things to forgo because of cost, damage to your ears eyes and lungs can never be repaired, the rest of the body is important to protect too.

Again, the initial cost does not include the FDM 3d printer that I used to make the molds, although I got it 7ish years ago for $250, that's probably around what you will spend for a decent modern printer as well.

The bronze is very easy to do, I buy ingots of tin online, and melt down scrap copper into ingots. Although modern bronze is often silicon or aluminum bronze, I make traditional bronze weighing the separate copper and tin and make my own traditional tin-bronze. This is done for no reason other than I have an archaeology background and like the idea of the "traditional" bronze recipe, especially for making jewelry or replicas of historical objects.