Casting an Axe Worthy of Thor Using Primitive Technology
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- I try to create Thor's Stormbreaker by casting using primitive technology. After many attempts, I finally land on an axe blade worthy of Thor, which will allows me to continue on my journey through the Bronze Age.
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When you were pouring the bronze was coming out in blobs. That will almost certainly lead to trapped air pockets.
yes, my guess is that the bronze wasn't hot enough (also, if the stone broke that wasn't hot enough either)
and it looks like the bronze was still full of slag
@@matthiasvanhecke1283 Bronze is scarce. So gotta keep slag in to make it go further.
I guess?
The problems is, in the Bronze Age they didn’t have metal implements that could withstand the heat of being dipped into a crucible of molten bronze to scoop out the dross. A bronze utensil would have worked if used quickly and allowed to cool sufficiently during use.
Yeah it wasn't nearly hot enough, far too gloopy. And a flux would have most certainly helped. This could have been as simple as a layer of white ash.
Archeologists in 3019:
"People from just a thousand of years ago still used bronze tools to get wood".
r/technicallythetruth
also same archeologist: but why it there so much low tech fliming stuff?
@@satakrionkryptomortis Most likely the inefficient usage of low-tier bronze tools made it very hard to get enough wood to power better quality cameras :D
That was absolutely amazing
Nah most likely they’ll still have some video recordings for them to recover. We do have time capsule bunkers for that purpose.
“That was a lot of time, for a mold that didn’t work so well”
He was dying inside so hard
Jacob Wan been there
Imagine being in the late Bronze Age flexing your wealth by casting a bronze axe with a bronze cast
Itd be like having an airpods case made of crushed up airpods.
unless it had a gigantic volume to dissipate the heat into, and since that bronze isn't just barely melted, it'd probably melt it a bit. even if it didn't, since it becomes malleable it'd lose form quickly.
@@terriblegoatman826 lmfao! 😂
@@MsHumanOfTheDecade hes referencing the video where the sword casting guy said they used bronze to cast bronze but the cast had so much mass that it just cooled quickly on the sides touching so the mold didn't weld together.
@personalperson r/woooosh
I will share this secret piece of ancient knowledge in order to make your future builds a bit easier.
It is always best to drive the handle INTO the tool head, rather than drive the tool head onto the handle... Set axe head onto handle as best you can get it by pushing it on, then hold the handle in your off hand, and strike the bottom end of the handle. The weight of the tool head will provide resistance for you to drive the handle in. Rotate the handle in your hand as needed to ensure a proper setting for the axe head.
You're welcome.
I really like the tech sourcing popups you've added in the corner (for which episode something is from). That's a nice addition!
This new series is definitely more engaging than the last one, it gives a sense of progression and a little bit of a historical context on why thing developed the way they did.
Great job !
5:10 the colors on the bronze are due to oxydation of copper. Why does it make a rainbow from the tip ? Well the oxidation of metals occurs instantly when very hot. The difference of temperature leads to different thicknesses of oxides, making different colors. The finer part will cool quicker and get covered in a different oxide layer.
Just a note - trading someone for soapstone would be a VERY bronze age thing to do. Trade was a very real thing. Also, sandstone doesn't take heat very well and tends to explode under heat. Also, you can hollow out a log with your existing axes to make boxes for sand casting.
I am a huge fan of this series. I hope to see it go on quite a bit longer. I’m sure it’s very taxing, but I appreciate your work
I cant wait until he gets to the early 1940's. "Making my own Thermonuclear bomb"
"Making my own Zyklon B form Scratch"
With special guest Cody's Lab
Like the nuclear Boy Scout lol.
Raven's hobbies I’ve heard that story
Raven's hobbies ah yes, David Hahn
I love that in your videos you keep failed attempts, it just feels genuine!
It's one hell of an axe, but it looks more of a weapon type axe than a wood axe, the semicircular curve is much more prevalent in battle axes than ones used in woodcutting, which tend to be straighter curves
Not that it isn't effective, it obviously is, but that may be what the original that tree farmer found was
I was thinking that too, but, hmm, yk? It's probably easier to cut wood with it with less practice, for all the reasons it was used in battle, since the broad curve means most strikes hit at a right angle to the surface. But if you've got a skilled woodsman, and you're a feudal lord of a while ago, you might use less space on a smaller axe cos he can try again fro the right approach angle and everythign. Save that bronze for the military boys
Kit Vitae true, it does mean less blade hits the tree though, so theoretically it wouldn't be as fast, but yeah, bronze military Bois
Work hardening - the process of disrupting metal crystalline structure, forming smaller crystals, and therefore more surface area between said crystals, increasing the friction between them, and therefore the amount of work necessary to move them relative to each other.
Flaring out the top of the draft furnace above where the charcoal sits and adding as many holes in the bottom as necessary to match the cross sectional area of the part with charcoal will make a the furnace be able to oxidize a lot more fuel at a time, as well as a covering the top with a holed cover
This is so inspirational! I never put much tought into how much skill and craftsmanship went into early Bronze Tools. It never crossed my mind before.
who could have known taking massive shortcuts would result in a subpar final product *surprised pikachu face*
Notes for the future:
ALWAYS clean the slag from the top of your molten metal before casting. the slag was a large reason of why your pour failed after cooling.
Stop with the horizontal casting, at least, when using a stone mold. There's a reason that, like he stated, stone molds came in *halves*, and not a single slab.
Great job Andy! It may not be an axe forged by Dwarfs using a star but it works!
Why'd you steal my comment?
Is no one gonna tall about how giant the dwarf was
@@MrBlack0950 that is the way to subvert expectations!
Whenever his theme song plays, i feel hyped af.
*creator music*
Whenever his theme song plays, my dog gets all hyped and keeps looking around for a cat that isnt there 😂
You could use a clay bowl filled with sand. This would allow you to get creative with the mold shapes and might act as a better heat sink than just the rock. Also a lot easier lol. Love the channel, keep on keeping on!
How would he get the shape he needs, melt out the medium, and have the sand stay in the same place?
Those colors come from an affect called reily scattering which is a certain wavelength of light being reflected by a small amount of molecules while the wrest of the light is obsorbed slowly or is too sparse for your eye to see. In this case the reiley scattering is caused from diffraction thicknesses of oxides, the different thicknesses of oxides formed because axe cools at different rates from place to place in casting. Reiley scattering is also the reason the sky is blue and same with blue butterfly wings.
If you do carve stone mold again, I wouldn't mind more details on the process.
It's quite simple actually : get Annelise to do it off camera.
Youenn Fenard lol hes done alot by himself too, we could still like to watch her do the process
No no
1) find rock
2) trace mould
3) hit rock with metal in shape of mould
He used the wrong kind of stone for detailed carving. From what i assume he used sandstone, a better material would've been soapstone, a mineral you could theoretically carve with your fingernails, but allows elaborate processing.
I love that you had a pro make those bronze pieces. No offence but I like seeing how the pros do it, and after all you don't have to do all the hard work yourself all the time, you're the host.
Glad to see the level of finish coming up on these pieces
The bronze axe you chose to mould is one of my most preferred shapes I'm only mentioning this to thank you for giving me my next project to be made out of steel based off of the design again thank you
I’m fairly certain that your experience of casting an axe for the first time is the same as the experiences of humans 3000 years ago. They, as well as you, probably get better at it the more you do it.
the holes and broken back of the big ax just make it look more badass
Casting on a flat stone with no second "side" to it means you can make chisels, plane blades, and other hewing tools, which means you can process wood to make planks or boards. You could make the wooden molds already.
I would have been tempted to sharpen that back piece that broke off the last axe you made to make it another kind of tool or weapon. I am sorry it broke off.
I love this series much better than random videos. Seeing how things advanced through the ages is great.
I love this series! It's everything I wanted and more.
I love the “how it’s made” music you guys got going on! Hah, it is so cool that you guys are doing this!
Typically those colors come from thin metal-oxide layers on the surface of the metal.
Exactly. The process is called thin film interference (sorry, wrote diffraction first, mixed up the terms) and it's the same thing that happens when you observe a thin oil film on water. Because the piece of metal cools faster at thinner sections the depth of the oxide layer differs and with that the colour changes too.
Neeeeeeeeeeeerd!
Well I have an IQ of at least 7!
Yet another entertaining and informational episode! Always love seeing another video in my feed. Keep up the great work team!
Excellent work as always
For soapstone go to the Vermont area, just make sure to source your stone from asbestos free quarry. Also do make the two part mold and pour vertically into a preheated mold.
You are amazing Andy! Please keep it up! More power to you!
The colour gradient is MOST likely due to tempering during the casting process:
The first bit of bronze loses the most heat to the casting medium and so it quenches rather rapidly(relatively speaking to the rest of the cast). The Bronze after it then quenches slower, but tempers the already quenched leading edge of the cast. Looking up the materials on MatWeb would give you some details on the typical properties of them, but you should definitely pour a long enough bar to get a good gradient for some hardness and strength tests. Local colleges with mechanical engineering or materials engineering/science curriculum should be able to help with the testing.
Might be interesting to have a secondary channel with some of those kinds of tests of historical crafts through the lens of modern science?
This is such a fantastic series.
The problem of the bubbles happens because you are pouring the metal on to an open mold, if you don't use a closed mold, it will always happen. The expert actually told you that they used TWO pieces of stone.
The other stone just needs to be flat enough to perfectly enclose the mold, so any bubble that gets formed while pouring goes out, that's probably why you see some material dripping and spilling out through the hole, as it's pushed by the air that otherwise it would had formed bubbles.
The colors are usually from the greensand. I've had similar colors from aluminum and pewter, so it cannot be oxide layers, and it only happens when casting with greensand. Depending on the brand or composition of the greensand you could have something that makes those colors when it burns away, like oil.
5:03 is called tempering; when metal cools slowly it tempers Wich causes it to be less brittle.
I just love this guy videos one day at the apocalypse his vids will save us and rebuild society
sandstone is a sedimentary rock. Porous and has a tendency to hold water, soapstone occurs where tectonic plates fold under and there's alot of compression. I hope that helps!
super cool enjoying the reboot.
I want to say part of the reason it is casting with so many bubbles, especially the big ones near the front, come from when you moved the crucible up towards unfilled part of the mold. From what I know casting other materials you can trap air pockets that way, you basically always want to pour from the same spot, and let it flow into the rest of the mold. Not as much of a problem when you get vertical casts, but when it is open topped it can be a factor.
That hardness thing is that metal crystals tend to slide along specific directions really easily, so called "slip planes" where the bonds aren't strong.
When you get impurities they break up the slip planes, but right when cast they're distributed somewhat randomly, and the surrounding metal crystals can still slip
When you work harden, you push those around until they bind/can't slip anymore
I wonder if you could make relatively precise clay boxes that fit each other and hold the two halves of the sand mold?
He could even try using wax as his first head then pour it out by heating the whole thing
You should use a wooden mallet or maul for the chisels and wedges. They're easier to make than a hammer, and do less damage to your tools.
I find this statement humorous... but correct... after all... today we buy bronze hammers for metal work on cars so we don't damage the car.
You need to pour quick and you're trapping air bubbles. Great job! you're the only one doing it and everybody sitting on the couch watching it
Keep it up man, I'll keep watching
Have you never heard of removing the dross before you cast?
in lue of soapstone you could use Limestone, it is fairly common and you could "come across" a nice flat piece with rough edges and use that, theres data to say that it was also used and there is historical evidence for it as well that shows it was used for copper casting
Limestone is calcium carbonate. Under heat it breaks down to form calcium oxide and CO2 gas, so it would bubble like crazy as a mold
@@tp6335 look up Bronze Limestone Casting, a PDF of a paper written about it from PT Craddock titled Casting Metals in Limestone Molds saying in the Abstract that if it's not a large flat cast you would be fine. (most likely due to it cooling quick and gas gen low) theres ingot molds from around Gozo and Malta. It can be done just not large swords or sheet metal
5:00~ I think the colors are the effect of the scale and the bronze forming a passive state, preventing the axehead from further rusting, just like heat-bluing of steel. The gradient in color may be a result from the difference in temperature, and heat dissipation.
They're thin film interference related colors as a result of the oxidation of the hot metal.
Banana0042 Thanks for correcting me.
Is your cat's name bill or Phil?? 😂😂😂 That's great
Great vid
The coloring you saw was achieved while cooling when it hit around 350 - 800 degrees Fahrenheit. This typically occurs in steel and iron. However, there are a few other metals that this occurs in. To try it for yourself, find a piece of mild steel, and put it in a preheated oven anywhere from 350 - 500 degrees Fahrenheit as that’s usually the maximum temp that most ovens hit leave the steel in the oven for around 1 1/2 to 2 hours let it cool in the open air and you will be left with a color ranging from a yellow tint a reddish tint to a blue tint. sometimes you can get a tie dye effect at random. I believe it depends on thickness of the steel and the quality.
Should get this pinned as the answer to the question in the video. ☺️
the colors are caused by copper oxidizing from the heat. It means when it's still hot the copper is in contact with air and it somewhat changes the coppers chemical make up from copper to copper oxide. When casting in sand there is still a lot of air inbetween the grains of sand, making it so the metal can breathe after casting. You can use copper dust in pottery and when it's heated it'll change all sorts of colors from green to red to blue and purple. surface oxidation. Also the blobs will allow air to be trapped in with the metal as it cools. Pouring out in a smooth pour would stop that from happening as much.
I feel so bad for Andy he looked so defeated after the mold broke
Oxides from the metal cause those patterns. Love the show!
Soapstone is a metamorphic rock rich in talc, it's soft heat resistant and works well in casting. Sandstone is a sedimentary rock they can be made of pretty much anything plus quartz with pretty much none of the requirements for casting.
It's the air that gets trapped and causes it to oxidize and overheat. You need vents in your mold.
Please update on this!!
The color change happens because of heat. Its consistency is because the axe head is tapered. Color specificity can be achieved by using specific temperatures
These videos are awesome
Can you please make a spear next also the Thor thumbnail is amazing
Try clean beach sand and molasses mix for creating sand moulds next time, does a good work
3 things. 1 Multiple inlets for the kiln with a total aria the same as the single is more efficient. 2 taller the chimney the more draft. 3 make a pit for ash and dirt lower than the inlets.
Sandstone is too porous as a sedimentary rock and has tiny organic matters trapped within (thus your off gassing bubbles) whereas soapstone is a metamorphic rock structure (and talc derived IIRC)
If you soak the twine for a while and use it to wrap it, you can get a tighter wind on your tools. Or sinew from deer if you source a deer again.
Thor's suit and hair suit Andy so well!
If I remember my chemistry classes correctly😏, the colour variations are caused by the dissipation of heat as the metal cools. As you observe in the film, the molten bronze has the consistency of molasses on a cold day, consequently, by the time the caster has finished pouring, the first of the bronze to enter the mould has already begun to cool in comparison to the bronze at the top of the mould. As the axe head tapers (is wedge shaped) the bronze near the blade also cools faster, owing to there being less material there. Whereas the handle and mid section of the blade are much thicker, the heat takes longer to dissipate and solidify resulting in the colour variations you see. A wee scuff with a wire wheel or brush would eliminate the effect (polishing the metal). In fact, until the invention of the thermometer in the 1600’s, this was how blacksmiths gauged how hot to heat a piece of metal before working on it. Yellow hot and red hot and white hot are all different temperature “grades” and ancient smiths would have learned this knowledge over time through trial and error, talking to other smiths and finding what works best for them etc. As I recall, if one wanted to harden things that were going to take a lot of abuse (farm implements, tools, weapons, armour and so on) you’d heat it until it turned a dull blue before ‘quenching’ it in a liquid-usually an oil of some sort- this was done by plunging the still hot piece into a bath of oil which evenly dissipated the heat and hardened the metal. What you see with bronze casting is the same phenomenon, before we learned to ‘harness’ it, if you like. Hope this helps, Cheers from the Dominion of Canada!!😁👌🏻🇨🇦🇧🇲
You should make your mould out of soapstone. It is far more heat resistant and less prone to crack. As well as being easy to carve
Like steel, most metals have a discoloration that is caused by the speed the heat leaves the metal and thus it is tempering coloring that the metal structure at the various areas of the cast have different crystal structure. So each part of the cast will have a different hardness and it needs to be tempered to make it a more homogeneous material design
If you smith your cast after making them it will condense the material reducing the airpockets as well as giving it a grain structure you could probably utilize a rock as a anvil
If you make a draw knife out of bronze you can flatten out some boards enough to make boards for a casting frame.
Andy you should use soap stone. Easier to carve and not as time consuming to work with
gases normally get trapped in molten metal, that's likely where the bubbles are coming from. Modern casters normally bubble nitrogen up through the metal prior to casting, as it normally pulls the trapped gasses out with it as it bubbles up out of the metal
(edit)
also the blobby nature of the pour probably had a hand, although you can't really fix that without a hotter kiln, which i know you don't have.
Add charcoal dust to your bronze/copper. Copper absorbs massive volumes of oxygen. You will get a foamy/bubble filled copper piece if you dont.
Try and use soapstone, for the mold, it's pretty easy to carve
I've browsed some of the comments but not all so this might have been mentioned already but holes aren't just about saving material but are often used, perhaps counterintuitively, to increase the strength of a material with respect to what it is used for.
Also, while I definitely enjoy the brutal just do it attitude you take with your projects, one thing that was definitely developed over time was the precision, advancement of measurement, care, and artisanry required to make better tools. I hope you get into that eventually... for example, Grade AA surface plates
The colors happen because the cast object has different thicknesses in different parts. This causes them to cool at different rates at the parts of different thickness which cause different oxide layers(these different oxide layers are the color) based on how fast they cooled.
Fun fact. Any metal past iron on the periodic table is made from the heart of a dying star. Iron is as far as a star in its main stage can go
It's an oxide layer of different thickness, I used to cast bronze and brass for a living it happens all the time, and when you bead blast and use a magnet to get the pellets it traps brass in between and makes a fuzz looking material
I don't think you really need milled wood for the frames for sand casting. I was thinking you could use eight large sticks, four with sockets and four with plugs to fit in those sockets, to make two squares. Then put some flat object like slate on the back of each. Flatten the sides which will touch each other when the mold is closed and it should work pretty well. I've never done that but it might just work.
You should make a fro for making shingles. And a adze. With those tools you wouldn't need to mill lumber, you could split it with the fro and flatten it with your adze and axes. Also spokeshaves or planes are very simple tools that would allow you to make something flat
I've seen a few palstave axe's get dug up while I've been out metal detecting with friends, they're really nice.
(In England of course)
Are your friends also nice in other countries?
@@prielknaaphofnar.9754 I doubt they'd find any like it the US....
Higher heat on the pour, remove slag first, flux and degassing agent needed, heat the mold more first.
I think it could be a slag issue with the bronze, also casting vertically will help with gas bubbles in casting. i don't know a bunch on casting so thos might not be the issues.
5:13 I think the process is called bluing it is usually done with silvery metals and the reason it has different Colors is because the oxide layer at different sicknesses refracture different wavelengths of light so you get multi colors but it think that is what’s happening
different thickness of the metal cools at different rates giving different colors in a nut shell
Nice video! I always enjoy them.
FYI, Christmas trees were around long before Jesus.
It was originally a pagan ritual that was incorporated into Christianity.
Dude I love your approach, just go for it and then own the outcome and then chop down a tree! I think you need to bake the mold to dry it out or harden it? Just my thoughts, I love the METALS bronze and copper and silver and gold! Who wouldn't! Thanks for sharing!
put your rock mold by a fire to warm it up before casting, the holes were there probably because it cooled to fast to allow the gas to escape proper. Also is why it cracked
Also what was the thing Greg put in the duck-billed ax to hold the shaft hole open?
I'd presume some sort of brittle stone that could be easily ground out
It looked to me like a piece of firebrick shaped into a cylinder.
plaster of paris mixed with sand, i would guess, so they could just put it in water after and dissolve it out
It looks like pumice stone
If possible, try pouring simultaneously from two or more crucibles? That way you're getting fewer cold spots as it runs down the mold.
Sand stone is porous, and is a combination of minerals, some of which breakdown to produce water or CO2 at the temperatures of about those that the bronze is at, so that might be why. An idea that might help is to carve a deeper mold and add a bottom layer of glass, the other might be to poke any cold spots when you poor the mold (being careful obv). Other wise perhaps use a dry sand bottom instead of glass.
Assuming bronze behaves like steel, the different colours appear because of different oxides forming on the surface. The thickness of the oxide layer depends on how fast it cools, and the thickness determines the colour.
My best guess for the color would be because when the metal is poured it it’s rlly hot and as your are filling it up it’s cooling going from grey hottest to red to the orangey bronze. This might not be correct but it’s the best idea I can think of to why it happens. :)
While im sure you put a lot of effort into this, its mildy infuriating how you seem to make things more difficult than needed. For example early in the video you talked about stone casting, using 2 sides of a stone cast to pour vertically, then you immediately afterwards used a single side stone mould poured horizontally.
As he said, it was a lot of work making the mold. Creating a 2 sided mold is more than twice as hard. Not only do you need to make a second mold. You need to make sure it is an exact match for both size and shape. And even harder, you need to make the two halves fit perfectly to avoid leaks. He did take the easy way out. Would he have gotten better results if he did it the right way? That I don't know.
@@johnbennett1465 it much easier than your making it out to be he can take two pieces of that sandstone and rub them against each other until they are flat. then chip out the components design bind the two stones with a minimal amount of clay or cobb bake above the furnace during heating to remove excess moisture and pour.
@@calebarchambault9706 What you say may well be true, but it is still a good bit more work than what he did.
The main issue is that that nice-looking angle of his horizontal cast just doesn't work. He needs to pour the cast vertically if he wants a high quality product
Open-faced molds make a low quality casting, but the problem with a two-sided mold is the metal tends to leak out the sides. The low viscosity of molten metal, plus its high density, makes squirt from even tiny cracks. Plus most materials including that sandstone will crack and deform when the hot metal hits them.
im pretty sure the consistant pattern of color is due to the thinner parts of the axe head cooling down quicker and thicker parts slower
Nope, it's called thin film interference. Caused by different thickness' of the oxide layers that form and absorb certain wavelengths of light
@@seanbush5313 i am aware of thin film interference and it will oxidize at different rates depending of the thermal mass of that specific part of the blade. Longer its hot, longer time for oxide to form
I am uncertain about bronze, but with steel similar oxidation colors occur. Different colors correspond to different temperatures reached by that piece of metal after a quench. When the color is close to a straw yellow, there is almost tempering, but when you move towards purple you get softer and softer as the stress in the crystal structure of the metal is released by being given enough energy to transform. I suspect that the thinner parts of the pieces lose their temperature rapidly, resulting in a quench like effect. The residual heat in the larger sections of the piece then effectively temper the regions. The color gradient is due to heat being fully radiated before reaching the far ends of the thinner sections.