Hi Brandon,
Id quibble with only one thing in your post. The wax part that
the ceramic slurry is applied to then fired in a kiln so the wax
melts out before molten steel is poured into the ceramic is
itself in fact "cast". There are molds first made to cast the
wax. There is hand work in that the wax parts out of the molds
need to be cleaned up just like the later final metal ones. The
hand made part youre referring to might apply to fabrication of
the wax mold - the mold that forms the wax part. Many thousands
of parts are made from these molds though.
Tom Rawson
Oakland, CA