In today's video, we're going to see
if we can make paper burn hot enough to liquefy metal.
[Music]
This is paper.
Paper was invented in China in approximately the year 105 CE.
It's usual for a lot of things.
We use it for writing, printing, drawing, folding,
and occasionally,
although it's not a very common fuel,
we do use it for burning.
It's made from wood cellulose,
and so, it's a flammable product.
The temperature which paper burns is famously
451 degrees Fahrenheit,
and that's not very warm as fires go.
In fact, it's about as cool as you can get.
But today, we wanted to put something to a test.
We wanted to see if we could take paper,
which can burn fairly cool,
and make it hot enough to melt metal.
We've got a couple different ways we're going to try that.
Here's the basic idea.
We're going to see
if we can use just paper as a fuel source to get hot
enough to melt our metal.
First thing we're going to do, it's kind of cheating honestly.
The metal we're going to use is gallium,
and gallium melts at about 85 degrees Fahrenheit,
which is well below the 451 Fahrenheit of paper burning.
So, I would be very surprised
if we can't get the gallium to burn a little bit.
But we want to go a step above that,
and move to aluminum.
I've got an aluminum can, a ball of aluminum foil,
and some aluminum wire,
and we want to see
if we can get any of these to melt.
And to give ourselves a really
good chance rather than just having printer paper,
we got a couple rolls of paper as well.
It's the same stuff that's made from the tree cellulose.
It's just brown,
and it hasn't been cleaned and bleached to be white,
like the printer paper,
and conveniently, comes in this little roll.
So I'm thinking,
we might be able to make some sort
of rocket stove style burner out of this paper,
and hopefully, we can get enough heat consistently
to actually melt down and liquefy our metal.
Now, the first thing
that we're going to try is our gallium.
I'm going to put that in this stainless steel cup,
which has fairly thin edges and bottom to it.
So it should transfer the heat pretty nicely.
We're just gonna make a little fire using this printer paper,
and we're going to see if that's enough to melt down our gallium.
There's definitely heat coming off of the paper,
but it's not staying in one place very well.
So it's sort of hard to concentrate our gallium over it.
Although I think we are, even with that issue,
starting to melt our metal.
There you go.
There's some liquid metal right there.
So, as proof of concept,
can burning paper get hot enough to liquefy metal?
Well, the quick answer is yes,
depending on how your paper setup,
and of course, what metal you're using.
It's pretty easy when you use a metal
that melts at under a hundred degrees Fahrenheit,
which is not very common.
That's not going to be a big problem.
If you've got gallium, and you need to melt it,
this is going to be pretty easy to melt.
You can just leave it outside on a hot day,
and it's going to liquefy.
So, we want to take this up a notch,
and we want to see
if we can get it to melt aluminum,
and that's why we've got those rolls of paper.
I've got a couple ideas
for how we might be able to make that work.
I've got this whole roll of paper.
I'm not going to try and use a whole thing.
I'm going to cut off a section that's about 1 foot long.
That's what we're going to use for our first little test
furnace we're going to set up.
I've now got this roll of paper, and this has a lot more fuel
than those 5 or 6 sheets of printer paper.
But in addition to that, it's all held together.
So hopefully, all of the heat will be concentrated.
My thought is that if I light the inside on fire,
it will just keep burning up from the inside to the outside.
And so, all of our heat will be contained in one little spot.
But even that,
I don't think it's going to be quite enough
so I want to make another modification.
When you're making fire, you need a few different things.
You need fuel,
and that's gonna be the paper, but you also need oxygen.
So my thought is
that will drill a hole down near the bottom of it
that it can draw oxygen in through,
and if that doesn't seem like it's enough,
I've also got this little bike pump,
and I've actually used this as a form of cheap bellows before.
It's pretty simple.
It's got a little nozzle on the front.
You just push on the back,
and it blows the concentrated blast of air out.
So here's the other thing.
We need to have good airflow.
If we set the can right on top,
it might just stop all the air from going anywhere.
So I might be able to hold the can at its side,
but then it's likely to roll off with all the air flow,
and I need two hands to work the pump.
So instead of using the can on this one,
we might just go with the aluminum wire.
That would be pretty easy to just hook a piece
of wire in there, and see if it melts from the heat.
Okay, we've got our roll of paper with our oxygen vent hole.
These two bricks were just using to hold everything steady
because you know,
I might bump it or something
while I'm trying to pump air into it,
and I have just a sheet of aluminum foil underneath
just kind of want to keep track of what all is lost here.
I expect a lot of paper ash will fall out of that.
But I'm also curious,
if this does melts to the point that it liquefies,
I kind of want to catch it as it falls down,
lands on that piece of aluminum.
So we're just going to get this burning a little bit.
See if it's self-sustaining at all, and if not,
start adding some oxygen.
[Music]
Well, right away,
I'm going to say that it's smoldering,
but we're not seeing much fire,
so I'm gonna see if I can add some good old-fashioned O2
will make a difference.
[Music]
It kind of burns on its own, but not super well.
I think it does need the additional oxygen
from the pump so we're going to keep using that.
Let's put our wire in, and see if we can get it to melt.
Oh, it just broke.
Oh, and there's actually some little drips down there too.
Okay.
This is why I put the aluminum down there.
Right there, that piece fell off.
We've also got some little spots down on the aluminum
that look like they have dripped down.
Well, those...
This little spot right here?
[Music]
Yeah, that's what I wanted.
That's some little bits of aluminum drips here.
One actually fused onto the aluminum foil
to the point that I can't take it off.
It just tears.
So, as a proof of concept, melting aluminum,
that worked okay.
So now, I'm going to try scaling this up,
and I had that bigger roll of paper,
and I've got a plan for how I don't have
to use the little bike pump the whole time,
which I hope works because that gets tiring.
Much much bigger roll of paper.
That is fuel for days.
So, same general idea.
We're going to have a hole down at the bottom where we can have
some just airflow,
and we're going to make it a bigger hole,
and it's actually going to be big enough for this piece
of metal conduit.
Well, I think this is made of steel, but
if it's made of aluminum, then,
we're going to see something interesting as it melts.
But we're going to fit this in,
and then this is going to be attached on the other side
to an air pump.
Right about over that nozzle,
we use some tape to hold it in place,
and that's just sit off to the side,
feeding are into our furnace,
which should hopefully just burn, burn, burn beautifully.
It's a great size.
This aluminum can for example just barely fits in.
It's got a little bit of space on the sides.
I think we're also going to try and drill a couple of holes up
near the top that this steel rod can fit into.
That way, it you just act as a support,
it can hold our can up where we want it
without it just falling right down to the bottom,
and that way,
I think we'll get a lot of good air flow, and hopefully,
melt this can down to nothing really quickly.
Okay.
We've got our big roll,
got the steel bar to hold our can up,
got our hose attached to our pump.
Just going to try and get this started burning.
Let's see what happens
if we just had a good flow of oxygen.
See how much heat we can get out of this.
[Music]
Feel like I should also say,
I cut our metal conduit a little bit shorter
just to get the airflow more directly there,
and it cut very easily to the point that I suspect
this is also aluminum.
So we may end up just melting through our conduit
at some point.
Let's see.
So I've noticed something as I'm trying to melt this can.
When it's in place,
the airflow is a little bit restricted,
and I've had it go out.
So if it goes out again,
I'm actually going to take the can out,
and let it burn
for a bit to sort of open up the top of our furnace.
I really want good flow of air
because it's the oxygen that we need.
[Music]
Ooh, that's deformed.
Down here at the bottom,
we've started melting our aluminum foil.
I just put that there as sort of a catching spot,
but it started to melt it quite a bit.
[Music]
We're getting a lot more fire blasting out the bottom,
and I don't know if that's just because of the shape.
Ooh, wow.
Well, the can
is definitely losing structural integrity here.
But I want to try flipping this upside down,
and it might just be that
because this is closer to the air vent,
it's getting more heat.
So, we're going
to try just flipping this whole thing upside down.
[Music]
I would say that's hot enough to liquefy metal.
That's gone.
We need to scale this up a little bit.
Oh, and we have started melting our pipe as well.
That's good.
[Music]
That's some little Minecraft figures
that we're going to call me and Cali.
I think we're going to try and make a mold of one of these.
So we've got some molding sand.
We're going to try and press one of these down into that,
and make a copy of it in our aluminum
if enough aluminum melts.
Okay, I like that.
We're going to call that good.
See about pouring aluminum into that.
It's a decent pool of aluminum now.
[Music]
So this is interesting.
We had this burning for a good while,
probably 45 minutes.
Just getting all that metal heated up,
melted down, turning into a liquid,
and it did liquefy it.
It liquefied it quite well.
I pulled the steel rod out.
That was just in
there to help the crucible stay in just the right position,
add just the right amount of airflow.
The steel rod was in there just
to help hold that crucible in just the right spot,
and have a good amount of air flow.
But that steel rod
was red hot to the point where I think you probably
could have even used that heat to do some basic forging.
Like I think if I'd taken a hammer to that,
it would have been soft enough that I could manipulate it.
So just using paper and oxygen,
we are able to get it hot enough
to heat up a steel bar to the point
that you could work it as blacksmithing techniques.
[Music]
Well, I'd say it's not a 100% perfectly faithful reproduction
of our little Calli Minecraft figure,
but it's the basic shape.
That worked all right,
and the flaw here was not the melting of the aluminum.
The flaw here was my molding technique,
where I just pressed the figure down into the sand instead of
the careful like layering you're supposed to do,
like through a sieve.
With this kind of ultra fine sand,
it can pick up a ton of detail.
But it also is a little bit sticky,
and you're supposed to use
like some baby powder or something to separate the two.
Overall though, paper melting metal?
Absolutely.
It may burn it 451 degrees Fahrenheit,
but it can clearly get way way hotter than that.
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