I thought that if we poured molten aluminium at 750 degrees c onto wood, you would just end up
with a slushy mess of molten aluminium and ash. Turns out this is not the case
to understand exactly how we got here we need to rewind a little bit
so, epoxy river tables are all over YouTube at the minute and i love them, but i've had a big idea
what happens if we were to replace the epoxy with molten aluminium to make them even more beautiful...
and let's face it be pretty exciting pouring molten aluminium onto wood,
i want to build a side table stroke coffee table for next to my sofa
but first there are three things we need to work out before we can even think about success.
the first thing we need to trial is exactly how the wooden aluminium are going to react.
i'm going to trial this by pouring three different depths of aluminium, onto two types of wood. this
is just some plain soft wood and this is some cut and glued plywood that gives a striped
effect that i really like the look of and i want to see if it looks even better charred.
that was fun, not overly successful but fun. let's have a closer look at the issues. it
didn't pour very well onto the wood. so the aluminium is proud of the
surface. the aluminium has not bonded to the wood. air pockets have been created
under the aluminium. aluminium has caused the wood to bend.
and it looks like the cut and glued plywood fared the best. obviously disappointed that
we didn't succeed on the first go, but that's why we do trials and i think most of these problems
can be solved by how we design and cut the channels for the aluminium, and we can trial this
prior to the final pour, but in the meantime onto flame char in the wood. This should be interesting.
there's not much difference between these, only the surface has been charred and the
structure of all of them is absolutely fine. this area that has not been sanded has got a
lovely texture to it, and the more it's been charred the greater that texture.
this is definitely the finish i want in the final piece. in this final trial i want to see the best
way of casting two sections of aluminium at 90 degrees to each other as seamlessly as possible,
and while we're doing that we can try to iron out some of these other issues.
so i'm going to make the wood thicker to combat the bending, i'm going to make the channels for
the aluminium thinner and deeper i'm going to try a pattern with the aluminium that's
similar to a braided river. let's hope for a bit more success before we tackle the final build.
let's just say learnt a lot from that trial, what a school by error not leveling it before i poured
the aluminium. so there's a whole host of lessons to be taken into the final build, mainly around the
molten aluminium and my biggest concern is that there is a lot of work in cutting and gluing the
plywood and building the structure before we even get on to the riskiest, part pour in the aluminium.
so at that stage or even before, there's a lot of things to consider. like the channels not been too
complex, having the islands of wood large enough so they don't just burn, not going too close to the
edge, how we key the aluminium to the wood, possibly by drilling holes in the bottom of the channels,
and what volume of aluminium to have in what size crucible, and while neither of the trials have
gone well, poor in the molten aluminium, i think we've learnt enough to give the final build a go.
right the point of the aluminium went reasonably well but still not bonded
to the wood. so, before we plow on, what i want to do is glue these in and sand it all back.
great it's all done and dusted i've finished off the flame charring i've cleaned up the
aluminium with some sandpaper and i've given it all a coat of varnish
so let's put it in its final resting place look at it finished
and i'll meet you on the other side to share my final thoughts on the project.
all-in-all, i'm really pleased with how the project went and how it looks,
it did take a lot longer to trial and build than i thought it would. also pouring the aluminium was
much tougher than i expected and it's not quite as neat as i would have liked. I've tried filling in
some of the gaps but it just wasn't having it, the aluminium would just solidify on the surface and
not fill from the base. Overall i've really enjoyed the project and i hope you have too, if you did hit
that like button and if you're not yet subscribed please do and i'll see you in the next one.
you