How much time it actually takes

The making is quick. Everything after it is not, and the ratio surprises people.

The batch is the short part

Weigh, melt, hold, add, pour: under an hour for a batch that fills fifty tubes, most of it waiting.

Then it sets, and you go away.

Where the hours go

Labeling. Fifty small labels onto fifty small cylinders, straight. This is the longest single task in the process and nobody expects it.

Capping and banding. Quick per unit and it is per unit.

Second pouring, which doubles the pour step.

Cleaning down, which has to happen while things are warm and therefore interrupts everything else.

Selling. A market day is a whole day for what a good batch produces.

A realistic day

Set up, three or four batches back to back, second pour between them, set overnight.

The following session: cap, label, band, box. That second session is usually longer than the first.

So a couple of hundred finished tubes is two working sessions, not one, and that is with everything ready and nothing going wrong.

What this means for pricing

At a few dollars a tube, a day's work is a small number, and the arithmetic only improves through volume or through equipment that removes the labeling and filling time.

Which is why the honest answer for many people is that this is a product to sell alongside something else, or a product to eventually have somebody else fill.

References