I do both, casting and swaging. Casting is much faster. In fact, it's much, much faster than swaging. I just finished up swaging a run of a little over 800 .44 Magnum bullets. In the time it took me to swage them, I could have cast, sized and lubed roughly 5,000 bullets of the same caliber. Of course the cast bullets wouldn't be jacketed like the swaged ones are.
As to danger, the only danger is the heat involved in casting and handling molten metal. With swaging, you only have to keep your fingers out of the way or you'll injure yourself when running the punch into the die. Of course there are always the precautions you take with handling lead with either of them, which are basically the same as shooting. Wash your hands, don't eat while casting, swaging or shooting, don't put your fingers in your mouth or nose, don't smoke, etc., until you've thoroughly washed your hands.
Dies for swaging also cost more than bullet molds, and if you get really serious about swaging, you'll end up with a dedicated swaging press. It's possible to use "some" loading presses for swaging pistol caliber bullets, such as the RCBS Rockchucker and some of the older Hollywood presses, but most reloading presses aren't up to the job and will eventually break.
With bullet casting, you can do it cheaply, or go into it whole hog (which I've done) and spend as much as you can afford. There are all kinds of machines and tools to make certain tasks easier and more productive. It's just up to you how much you want to spend.
Hope this helps.
Fred
