Cody'sLab - 2024-07-04
I use a thermite reaction to produce the heat and metal needed to make something out of iron. Help me make videos by donating here: https://www.patreon.com/CodysLab Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/codydonreeder SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/codyslab/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CodysLab
feeding aluminum and iron oxide burritos to a fiery thermite volcano was not on the list of things I thought I would ever see
Thermite Burrito! Love it.
Well wake up, Cody's here
It made me imagine an alternative universe where wood doesn't exist and logs of thermite would be used to to fuel fires
To me, it had a sort of Terminator 2 ending.
"I cannot self-tehminate; you must lowah me into da steel..."
Same here. But he makes things very interesting😂
Know what I love about Cody? I have been watching for at least a decade and while the video quality has improved he’s never fallen into the over-the-top YouTube editing and production team that everyone else seems to get into. It’s still just a man filming his passion and sharing it with the world.
Honestly same. I've watched him from since i was in Highschool. It's been over a decade now and I'm now a board certified lab scientist and I still enjoy his content. I hope he never changes
I just watch to see if by sheer chance alone he ever gets something to work, or gets an above 5% yield of anything, by sheer accident. Surely he'll get lucky eventually. They don't call him professor bumblefsck for nothing.
It really feels like the old youtube here still, and I mean that in the best way
Amen. If more people were themselves and not followers part of cookie cutter groups, more insecure people would remain individuals and do what they believe
Similar vibe with Primitive Technology
It's also really fun to see cody saying "i'm not gonna do it that way because it doesnt work" and proceeds to show a clip of the thing he said doest work, going wrong. Love it! haha
It's a great way to use the footage of failed attempts without using a lot of time to do so. (And a very Cody way of doing it)
That was so cool editing!
I really like seeing the trial and error, though for a split second I thought the same issue happened the 2nd time around lol
I wonder if the pan would be usable even if it had turned out well. I think the magnetite has impurities in it.
This has always been one of the best thing about his channel, show where mistakes were made
For future attempts - Prior to the early 20th century, cast iron pans were bottom gated, meaning the iron was poured through a flue leading to the bottom of the pan, with the pan upside down and horizontal in the mold. Older pans will have a visible gate mark, as they didn't have the ability to machine it smooth. Eventually they became side gated, and the iron was poured in through a gate at the top of one of the side walls. Modern pans will still have rough machining marks around the side walls where the gate was ground away.
You'd probably have better luck with the bottom gate. The cooking surface of the pan would be formed first, with the iron then flowing down to fill the walls and handle. As it backfills the thickness of the pan is built up. At least by my basic understanding of casting.
They did have the ability to smooth it, they had files and grinding stones etc, just wasn't a priority or necessary.
Yes and the crack in your pan might have been because it cools too quickly.
Also I wonder how much (or how little) carbon actually was in that thermite iron.
@@tz8785that's also my doubt. He may actually be making steel not actually cast iron. Major issue is the much higher temperature and difficulty to cast steel. Adding carbon will definitely reduce melting temperature and increase fluidity.
@@tz8785 Isn't cast iron atleast over 2% carbon? I think this would've just been some weird alloy of mild iron and aluminium or whatever
The fact that you got anything, let alone a skillet-shaped item is downright amazing. One thing I will say regarding cast iron, from having done a few braze jobs on it, is the fact that it needs to cool SLOWLY, and dumping a bunch of water on it likely did not help any residual stresses it had inside.
exactly. I would suggest cody to add some Brass like a very small amoutn for example 1kg to 10 kg ratio. The Brass may eleminate this problem with the Casting process since its a very Malleable metal from the Getgo, it can help endure the stress during the cooling.
cody should also heat the molds a little too like atleast 200 degree celsius. A common problem in Casting in a cold Mould is the Cold Joint Problem which caused by pressure and temperature difference of the two substances. Its similar to putting very hot water in a normal glass. The crystalline structure cannot endure the rapid fluctation in temperature and hence will be very fragile. In case of metals, cooling the metal as slowly as possible gives it large and malleable crystal lattice that is key to metal strength and flexiblity.
i hope he will make more casted pan videos, i cant buy anymore
Yup pouring water on the casting is a no-no. I learned that in high school shop class.
like any future human wouldnt know who cody's lab was
Cody is the mad scientist of our generation. Nonchalantly tapping a thermite volcano to pour molten iron into a mold made of old bee boxes is the most Cody thing I’ve seen. Well played sir.
if reddit was a person 🙄😒
The only more Cody thing would be if the boxes were still full of bees or sth xDDD
i mean the molten iron was flying out and one drop of that thing gets in your shoe, it catches fire.
bro the way he smacked the pipe in and the whole thing just roared molten iron out like a dragon, seriously a cool process
That was a dedicated pour.
Future archaeologists are gonna be so confused by your farm
Nah they'll know it's Cody
do you mean archeologists? :D
"They used thermite to cast iron but they were bare footed, never discovering foot wear."
They be saying a great magus lived here and make it a sanctum or something 😉
@@burlak3182 both spellings are used, although "archaeologist" tends to be used by Brits... and archaeologists.
so i work in a foundry that does cast iron. those lines in there we call cold shut or interrupted pour so what happens is different parts of the pan cooled faster than the others so it makes those lines. could have happened because you used 2 crucibles could have happened because sometimes the molds have air leaks which cause the iron to cool faster. but for someone who is doing this essentially in their back yard this was a very good first attempt terrific work!
Preheat your crucibles to a soft red glow. This’ll help prevent the iron from skinning on top. Also hit it with a small handful of borax before you pour. Cleans the metal.
Yep, was also going to suggest some borax.
I know next to nothing about metalworking, but I think the aluminum in the mix might also be making the skin problem worse as I've never really heard of an iron-aluminum alloy nor do I think they'd mix well together.
I think the sand ended up acting like a flux at those high temps, causing the skin problem as it cooled just a hair too quickly. I also suggested borax lol
Cody used plenty of borax before in normal casting im betting he just didnt have any there and also wanted it to be low tech
@@kbot1060 the skin itself is the aluminium oxide
Though failed attempts are frustrating, showing them and explaining how you learned from them is arguably the most important part of this entire project. Also, an entire set of kitchenware made of the sand (the iron in the sand technically) around the area sounds amazing.
For those who aren't on Patreon, Cody has been working on this one for a loooooong time on and off, refining his process.
@Blandge I wish I had the funds to support. Because those are exactly the videos I miss. And all the ones he had to take down...
@@geak78 It's not as important anymore since Cody finally got his YT payments figured out. He does post a ton of extra content there though
@@geak78 why did he have to take some down?
@josephdorey8458 he was getting hit with strikes on a lot of videos that even hinted at explosives despite other larger channels basically teaching how to make them. He took a bunch down just to prevent losing the channel.
Others probably have better details on the fiasco.
Detonating home-made nitro glycerine with a butter knife, and the moment of 'tapping' off home-made thermite iron with no PPE whatsoever, is some of the best content on the internet. You are still as crazy as ever Cody. Never change mate, the world needs fearless people like you. Greetings from a loyal viewer in the UK.
Which video is the nitroglycerin one?
@@gusallan3967 He had to remove it from youtube, or they did it... it wasn't allowed.. but it was there for a while! Nerrly blew his finger off even though he was wearing a thick leather welding glove... it was only a tiny drop off nitro too!
aye, once upon a time we called these people men and not dangerous suspects.
Hey, what do you mean no PPE?! He has glasses on! Sunglasses, but glasses nonetheless
I work as a mechatronics engineer for a ductile iron company (actually just up north of you) and those folds are called Mold Splash. It is because the casting was not a single smooth motion.
That is absolutely still usable!
It's cool to see structures from manufacturing like this imo, like waves in plastic from the pump pushing in spurts of plastic in an injection mold causing a chatoyancy effect.
@@MrPruske not so nice that it creates leak or break point tho
This is also due to the low casting temperature, and mostly because that. As the temperature reduces, viscosity gets higher and makes it harder to fill the mold cavity.
You should do lost iron casting with something REALLY hot.
@@leonardoulian764that was the long way to describe what anybody watching this would know intuitively but I’m sure it helped with all those people who watch this channel for the music…
Those are some MONSTEROUS crickets at 2:22
I've paused at 17:00, to share my appreciation of the sound of the fleeing cricket. I don't know if it was added in production, or if it was wearing a mike, but it was just perfect.
in my village we have big crickets in rainy season so i was like how big they can we but man these guys are huge
Dude yeah they are huge what in the hell. Where im from the brown ones are tiny and the black ones are slight larger. Dime or nickel size is just about the limit in my location.
Also known as chicken treats!
Those are Mormon Crickets. They swarm nevada/utah by the billions in the early summer. They have to get snow plows out to clear the roads because it gets so slippery from the mashed up crickets.
Backyard scientist found that adding steel or iron fillings helped the casting go much better.
Also, adding a release agent like talc to the mold halves could help with the stuck sand.
Might be good to add some flux and let the slag rise to the top of your "ladle" as well before tapping
I don't know why he bothered with thermite when jet fuel and office paper would have done the same.
@@geografiainfinituluibecause it's cool to use thermite as the iron source and the heat source
Outstanding work
that pour was so messy and chaotic, i love it
youtube has taught me that until your a pro the pour is always chaotic and everything goes wrong no matter how much you prepare. haha
One of my favorite "Cody things" is that like nothing seems to go to waste.
"I need a funnel" doesn't mean go to the store and buy a funnel, it means cut the top off of a plastic bottle.
"I need a vent for my mold..." Well, take the rest of that bottle you made a funnel out of and cut off the bottom.
Cracked beaker? So what, it'll still measure out dry stuff fine. Wet stuff? An empty gallon jug is fine!
Need something like a pastry bag? Well I'll just go ahead and cut a hole in the corner of a ziplock.
I do get nervous seeing him handling a moderately heavy box of hardened sand around his bare feet... but I guess if you are careful enough to play with thermite, you are probably careful enough to not lose a toe :)
when you live out in the sticks you improvise
When working around crushing hazards w/o any foot coverings, one tends to be hyperfocused where your feet are at all times. Except for that one time where your "ain't never got hurt before" hubris catches up to you...
My uncle used ziplock bags to ice cakes for years, and I always had the best birthday cakes growing up. Sometimes it's more about the skill than the tools.
wait, they SELL funnels in stores??? DAMNIT....
> need a funnel
> just cut it out from a plastic bottle
dude, that's, like, how 95% of people who ever lived on a ranch are doing it. Seriously, are you ever touched grass in your life?
Really glad youre still here man
10/10 casting a pan with thermite skills; 2/10 egg frying skills.
You forgot the skills to document the process; that is no small feat.
I'd say 9/10 for the casting since it's got the leak
he was holding camera in one hand and braking egg with another.
@@Lookingformorefunhe hit the egg on a sharp edge, if he hit it flat on the counter the you'll would not of broke. One hand easy. Please season your pan
Cody spec'd all his points into intellect and none at all in cooking. Whenever he cooks it looks like a one-handed chimpanzee did it lmao XD
For your next attempt, you should probably try to have the volcano drain directly into a channel that feeds the mold, rather than filling up crucibles and then needing to dump the crucibles, the extra transfer step is just giving that crust time to form and obstruct the casting
I wanted to suggested something similar. Maybe the same way pig iron is casted into ingots (piglets), but with a shorter channel, to avoid freezing the metal innthe channel.
I refrained myself from suggesting this, tyinking there was probably a good reason hé chose to use crucibles. Maybe it has something to do with the slag ?
@@gnusamgnu the slag definetly poses a problem for using channels, but I think that a deep channel would allow the more dense iron to flow on the bottom, while the slag solidifies on top.
Of course, the channels would beed to be as short as possible, and Cody would have to babysit it and remove any slag blockages.
@@gnusamgnuThere are Casting Filters made of SiliconCarbide. Might help enough.
I also commented that. A direct pour could help. but isn't trivial to implement.
Thank you. The idea using CO2 to harden sodium silicate is genius. I have for months been fighting to make refractory bricks and had trouble with it. This saved me.
This is a common procedure in casting, especially for core making.
@@leonardoulian764 Glad to finally know it then. Couldnt find it on search engines.
How's the bricks turn out?
@@Rossklessorry for the late reply. Have tried it on a small scale and it worked well. Gonna try it on a large scale now once the sand arrives.
@@memejeff Awesome! Be safe and good luck 👍😁
I think pre-heating the mold before the pour may have helped the iron flow a bit better. But a great success, especially doing it single-handed.
that won't work here because of the melting point of iron. Its over 1500°C (don't ask what it is in freedom units) and the temp in the melt is even higher, around 1700 - 1800°C. So to have any effect the mold would have to at least 800°C. In that heat the mold would simply collaps.
The best solution would be to use finer alu and iron oxide in the correct ratio, maybe a bit more iron oxide than needed to reduce the alu content in the final product to make it less brittle as aluminium makes iron very brittle
@@DerHenker_ What would that be in freedom units, by chance?
Pretty sure he has two hands
@@FishyBoi1337 5 times hotter than a well-done steak, or 6 times hotter than a football field on July 4th
@@drusnaactually it’s 17 times hotter than a well done steak.
I love how you come up with this shit and actually do it even though its a logistical nightmare
One of the best YouTube videos I've seen in a while. There was a reason, why i wanted to check your channel again after a few months, and you did not disappoint 🎉
one thing i love about cody is he never cuts his video short, i love it that he goes through and investigates what happened and shows us his investigation too.
Science at its finest and most basic, all at the same!
NileRed: “Always wear proper PPE at all times”
Cody: “where are my shoes? Eh screw it”
Styropyro: "That was a cool reaction, but let's make it more powerful with my 10 gigawatt laser. "
@@dbblues.9168 William Osman: That's all well and good, but I think I can make it better with head trauma
I did a thing, "Right Cody, we don't need shoes!"
That was BY FAR the best casting I’ve ever seen with thermite. They always look horrendous. I’m extremely impressed
Easily one of the most entertaining and educational channels on youtube. Love everything you do.
Educational? Sure if you're wanting to learn the wrong way to do something😂
@@jodiecavinder9891atleast he knows how to do it, you could never do anything like this in your life
I love you explaining why you are not doing something and then cutting to where you learned that lesson. Really nice to see the failures as well as the successes since they give so much to learn from.
I think annealing the iron afterwards will help with the casting Bing brittle. We also used a special paint inside the molds to help maintain the integrity of the mold while pouring. We also used a 2 part epoxy sprayed in the sand to bind the sand together.
We made steal at the foundry I used to work at, hopefully these tips may help some.
17:00 good thing you did a bug check before hitting run.
Debugging is always important.
Cast crickets for the knick knack shelf.
@@pvc988best youtube comment I've seen today 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@pvc988 Lol I'm dead.
bug very nearly became a feature.
This is an amazing video. So typical of a typical Cody's Lab video, yet also, I don't know. Oddly accomplished somehow. I've been watching for years on and off, but with this one I realized just how much I enjoy watching these, and also why I enjoy it. It's relaxation pure and simple, sitting back and emerging myself in this feelgood, slightly nutty chemical engineer univers and knowing that there is this guy out there on a badlands hillside doing backyard science like none of all that other stupid shit going on even existed.
You help keeping the world just a little sane and playful, Cody. Also, yeah. Of course the wind is going to blow the smoke your way, that's a natural law. It doesn't help move around because then the wind just shifts, so. But at least it spewed the lava in the other direction, so there's that👍
Yes, Cody is the sane one 😅
I’m 27 and in my early teens I started watching your channel and I feel like I’ve grown up with you in a way. It’s so weird and cool. I’ve had your notifications on since I was 14 and I’m always reminded of you whenever you post a new video. Please don’t stop
i worked in a foundry when i was young the finale step they would do with a mold is use a supper fine silica powder and make a surly with it thick like paint then spray it on the mold lightly dont want drips prob 3 or 4 times use a torch to bake the coating on each lair tell smooth this creates a glass like lair between the coarse sand and molten metal
That sounds really cool
Cast the iron pan upside down so the thinner walls get filled first.
Cast the pan in one go directly from the volcano.
Good video as always
For the flipping of a sand mold you need a lot of compaction. You can use pounding but you can also use vibration. A fairly powerful subwoofer attached to any sand mold for a good period of time will compact a great deal. Might also err on the side of excessive moisture. Liquifaction is your friend here. Try to compress everything at once, not in layer. Layers make surfaces for delamination. Compressing as much volume as possible means you have more of a single chunk.
Also, pleeeeeeeease, support both surfaces at all times while flipping. Some plywood screwed down would be eperfect. The whole thing should move as a monolith as much as possible.
Great work. Great video. Just had ME 153 flashbacks.
25:54 Cody: What you think? Should I dump some water in this ?
Me: I thought you'd never ask !!! 😂
Came to see if someone wrote this because I was thinking the exact same thing hahaha
ditto
The "I guess I'm having scrambled eggs" makes the 30 minutes of complex chemistry prior almost relatable
Things I'm surprised he didn't use: Using a sparkler to start the thermite reaction ; Using a Wire metal brush to clean off the sand from the cast pan ; Shoes for any length of time in Nevada sun ; And salt on eggs. - Good Lord, are we not savages?!?!?!
I'm pretty sure he did use a sparkler as a fuse, rewatch the part when he's lighting it. It ends up not working too well I guess, cause he just started blasting the powdered thermite mix with the torch. ALSO, he did wear shoes for the rest of the video after he started the thermite, surprisingly. 🤣Thankfully he had some heavy, non-polyester clothing. Tbh that's the most important part. I'm pretty sure that's a Carhartt jacket or something similar, and I don't think he would just wear that in Nevada sun for no reason. It IISSS Cody though, so you can never predict him lol.
Purple fuse. Better than sparklers and easy to make
This man’s insistence on always using the wrong tool for the job drives me crazy but I keep watching. I was literally going “bro wire bru…wire brush…g…go get a fkn wire brush!”
Cody:
The single guy on YouTube who have 2million subscriber's but still record like a young YouTuber, without any setup or other 😂
Only the resolution is higher since some videos 🤣
I dig his lofi approach
It's great. He's focusing on content and is the reason people still come back after many many years. If he did one project every few months with no videos in between but high production value, it would defeat the purpose of his rough and tough approach to things. How he does it is perfect for his content.
old style youtube videos, back then didnt need crazy editing to get views, just an interesting video idea was enough
When collecting the metal from a thermite reaction you need to start the reaction from the bottom.. Mythbusters showed this in one of their thermite episodes and it's also how thermite welding of rail steel (railroad) works. If you start it from the top most of the metal is lost to the reaction and burnt up instead of being usable. Something to help the metal flow in the mold is to preheat it.
You need to season cast iron pans before you cook with them.
You don't NEED to season cast iron before cooking the first time, it's just a really helpful thing to do. It'll work just fine unseasoned, similar to carbon steel. Food will just stick more and the pan will rust pretty fast. I suppose you might also get a higher iron content from your food.
@@iankrasnow5383yeppers
The pan has a crack and leaks 😁
Seasoning isn't important yet.
I came for Cody's Kitchen and was not disappointed
As far as the pan goes, I think the flaws can be mostly mitigated. The pan is brittle because it was cooled too fast. reheating it and holding it at temperature should destress the material, so it's not crazy brittle. For the leak, you may be able to seal it off by seasoning the pan. Over time that could also fill that crack up giving you a nice cooking surface.
That pan came out a lot better than I was expecting. Not the most efficient method, but certainly a lot more interesting to watch. Thank you, Cody. Keep up the great work.
Using thermite to cast a pan? Wicked Cool.
Using an unseasoned iron pan to fry an egg? You monster.
The pan was a seasoned veteran, it went through literal hellfire to be able to fry that egg!
@@LordDragox412 when you quench with oil not only will it cool, it forms a natural non stick coating too!
@@hugegamer5988 It causes polymerization of the oils/fats, and with enough layers it could even plug up the hole in the pan. But that's besides the point of my comment, which was meant to be a joke.
I was a bit shocked as well that he would cook in an unseasoned pan.
@@hugegamer5988 That's so cool! I imagine it should be a vegetable oil, not a machine oil, as normally used in blacksmithing?
"bit of an iron leak" 😂😂😂
Unbelievable, that molten iron pouring out of the volcano like water. Best video i have seen in a long time
I'm equal parts amazed and stressed out by that pour and molten metal spray, awesome video.
40 minutes of codyslab, fuck yeah
Seemed more like ten. Best. Content. Ever.
Cody slab
Hope this will become a series: Thermite Casting with Cody!
And we cast some really silly stuff everytime 😄
Maybe just going wild and creating some artsy stuff.
I would buy one 😉
Just under 20 for me.. 2x speed watcher 😉
@@Science-Vlog BIG MEMBER 12CM
I absolutely want more of this, I could watch Cody cast like this 24/7
This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to knowing a dwarven blacksmith.
I've been watching your videos for years and that sequence at 22:30 was one of the coolest things ive ever seen, the molten steel shooting out violently at 2000ºC and then the way you have to fight to wrangle it into the mold, that was amazing!
@toothlessblue - 2024-07-04
22:25 "Now to tap it off" was the coolest thing I've seen in forever
Like something out of a mythical dwarven forge.
@keithjurena9319 - 2024-07-04
Now you know why it is called tapping the furnace.
@clorky2 - 2024-07-04
I don't think it was cool, but a rather hot shot.
@harriehausenman8623 - 2024-07-04
Yeah, that was WILD
@Aaron-fh6hd - 2024-07-04
really awesome shot
@y33t23 - 2024-07-04
Just like in a professional smeltery, and soon much iron was actually made from such crude thermite