Wow these weeks are going so fast it's unbelievable. Welcome back All the awesome people to today's slag melt. A lot of people have been asking for it and I thought why not get it done today. A couple of awesome pieces to add to the stack for sure. Now sit back and enjoy but most importantly have an awesome weekend and I hope to see you all next Friday👋🏻😁
high carbon knife and tool steel harden from oil and water quenching, non-ferrous metals like copper, brass, and aluminum won't. as far as i know, quenching non-ferrous metals actually softens them. but keep doing the ice quench anyway!👍
The very first video I watched here, he pulled a pack of steaks from behind panel and I was appalled and confused. A few videos later it clicked and I lol’d.
I theorize his 10mm sockets are doing his hunting and gathering for him. That's why they always seem to be missing and he can never account for all of them.
A recommendation to prevent the zinc from boiling off is to add boric acid or borax while you melt brass. It prevents the zinc from boiling off and you can add it before or during the melt depending on what you are melting.
hey, just a suggestion: you should melt salt. salt can actually melt, depending on what salt it is it melts at different temperatures. just thought u might like the idea and get some cool tasting bars out of it! also it makes a really cool tinging noise when it cools, its pretty cool
Isn't that like... Exceedingly dangerous even for a forge melt though? Like, bringing it to that sort of temperature will have it react with moisture in the air or something? Honestly I'm probably wrong but I remember a few videos saying melting salt is super dangerous and/or explosive.
As has been said in here already, non-ferrous metals like Brass, Copper and Bronze don't harden under quenching, the do the opposite, they go soft. I used to enjoy demonstrating this to kids/students when teaching metalwork.
Interesting. I didn't know that. But then, I'm not big into metal (apart from the music). My preferred material of choice is wood. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn another little nugget (no pun intended) of knowledge.
@@lewisgiles8855 I’m pretty sure it’s to do with the crystalline structure of the metal. The larger the crystals the softer the metal. If you bend and or hammer the metal (copper say) the crystals get smaller and the metal harder and more brittle, called work hardening. When heated and quenched it restores the large crystal structure again. I’d check that though.
@@lewisgiles8855 Basically metals form different types of crystals wich determine it's properties depending on the temperature and the alloy. Non-ferrous metal alloys form crystals that harden it in a specific temperature range. So if you keep the metal there longer it will get harder. Quenching cools it so quickly It doesn't form much of that type of crystals. There is a process where you keep them in the temperature range for multiple hours to harden it even more. Like mentioned this only works with alloys.
Just bought my first house and now that I have a garage my next step is to save up and start doing my own melts. Thanks for the videos and helping me find a new interest! Cheers from Chicago 🍻
I mostly do residential repair and modifications. I'm lucky to be around a lot of scraps. Wire and pipe jobs bring in the copper and brass. Aluminum is every where tho I don't melt much of the painted stuff, it stinks way too bad!
I have to say that was one of the coolest ice block breaks I have seen. The slow motion of the shadow falling with that bird's eerie call in the background...
I almost did a slag melt this week. Now it’ll be pushed back to whenever I’m not lazy and get around to it. However mines so mixed I have no idea what I’ll end up with. Probably a brittle piece of crap but we’ll see soon enough. 🤣
Be careful though... Slag contains plenty of oxides. If you have some aluminium slag/dross in there, alumothermic reactions can be quite dangerous. Thermite-like reactions can easily get up to temperatures that shorten the lifespan of your crucible, or even have it crack. Best case, you have a bad time cleaning up the furnace, worst case your furnace is a write-off.
In recovery from surgery, a #bigstackD video is just what the doctor ordered. It melts away the discomfort, so to speak. Handsome pups and hidden sandwiches are good too! Have a great weekend!👍
I'm definitely not an expert on soft metals, but as far as I know, they don't harden the same way steel and other hard metals do, so I don't think you have to worry about the ingots hardening. When working with soft metals (bending, hammering etc), they work harden and you have to heat them up and quench them in water to soften them again, so your ice method should be just fine!
ahhhh... nothing like a calm, Australian morning with a golden sunrise and with a lovely bird's song in the backgrou- **PPPHHHHHHRRRRAARRRRRGHHHH** (lights Devil Forge Torch)
For that slag you could try to let it steep in vinegar bath for a week or so (with mixing it a bit everyday, or not) and see what happens to it, if it leaves more metal behind for you to melt. Zinc is one that dissolves into vinegar forming zinc acetate, which can be boiled back to zinc oxide. Although that would need more info of chemistry etc. to get pure stuff since slag has some other crap in it. But might be worth testing with a liter of vinegar and about 100 grams of slag.
I bought my first forge for 400 dollars because of you, saved up the money from odd jobs still waiting for it to arrive but also moving into a big house with a plenty big enough yard
"The white smoke is zinc do not breathe it in..." _Neighbour passing by_ "Howdy neighbour, what's u-blehhh" 😵💀 also @19:34 -- what sorcery is this?? lol
In a world filled with war, genocide, pandemics, conspiracies, and corruptions just all sorts of doom and gloom. These videos are a vacation of the mind. An escape of sort. Soothing to the frontal lobe. Mindless yet engaging if that makes any sense. Thank you for making these. I don't know what your motivation for these activities and videos are to be honest I don't really care. But I appreciate them more than I can communicate here.
Slag melt slag melt slag melt! As one of those who keeps asking, thrilled to see it. Great shiny bars to bring the scraps home. Looking forward to the mixed slag and get that overflowing jar cleaned out! And that big motor on the cart foreshadows another teardown on the horizon, I hope. 😁
Such a great melt. So Happy to see the Slag Jars get emptied. Does this mean we might see a dust melt next? /wink wink GREAT shot when you crushed the Ice, the shadow falling in the background was SUPREME PUPPY LOVE!!! From the new Dross, how do you determine what to keep and what to toss in the trash? Shiney = good, but the other pieces..... Thanks for a great video ARMY SE Oregon
Man another awesome video....but i gotta be honest every time you jam ur finger or hand into the cageless fan i laugh every time. I use to do that when i was a kid 😆.
Loving the videos man, quick question. As the devil forges can reach up to 1600c have you ever thought about doing a glass melt?good way to get rid of all the beer bottles.
Cans and glass bottles are worth money in our Aussie recycling schemes. Generally 5 or 10 cents each depending on state. Melting down aluminium drink cans adds to the stack. TBH, the glass is worth more to recycle for cash to buy more stuff to melt from the scrapyard.
@@AussieSnoflake that’s good to hear, over here in the UK, you know, “the wasteful society” they just go in the recycling bins…. If they were to introduce a small payback scheme I don’t think there would be as many laying around … But one melt would be cool to see.
@@biglala32 pretty much what we do here.. we have bins for normal household, paper/cardboard, plastics, and food waste .... they all go on different days to the same place ....comical aint it?
I don't comment very often because I don't really feel like I have anything to contribute, but every now and then I just want to let you know that I'm still watching and still subbed. I love what you do, and I am looking so forward to seeing you reach the one tonne mark.
I have a question, when getting the slack out of your melts, why don’t you ever degas the melted down material, I’ve seen it done on other channels and it sort of makes the slack rise up so it’s much easier to get out, but you just scoop it out. Have you tried a degasser? I personally think they are awesome to see how they make the slack bubble up on top
So to you smelter guys out here, is it difficult to un-alloy these metals? I know some have some highly different melting points, does being mixed with a higher melting point metal keep a lower melting point metal from liquefying and separating? Or is the process prohibitively difficult?
Generally, when you mix two metals, the melting point lowers. In some cases, the melting point will drop below the individual melting point of any of the ingredients (such as in electronics solder). Un-alloying the metals can be done by various methods, depending on which metals you wish to keep, and how much garbage you're willing to accept (and pay for) to get that metal back from the alloy, or slag. In this mixture, there's probably copper, zinc, aluminum, and perhaps some tin as the primary components. There will also be a lot of oxygen bound to the metals in the slag, which is why they aren't stuck together as solid bars, like he was trying to get. Now, there are many ways to get that oxygen out of the slag, and that's where the volumes of chemistry knowledge come in and make it interesting or boring. If I were presented with the materials that the author threw in the garbage, I would probably focus on recovering the copper, because that's the easiest, and tin, because that's my favorite, and a challenge for my level of chemistry. To recover the copper, the easiest way would likely to use a different type of crucible, and then heat it with Borax powder (found in the washing isle, and does great in laundry!). The Borax will steal oxygen from the mixture, and then float to the top to solidify as glass. You could even mix some silica sand in with it to really help the metal come together. In this case, you'll likely make it even harder to recover the tin though. Another way would be to add copper to the crumbs and melt it into a bar. The slag that's left would then be heated to very high temperatures with carbon or "coke" to burn off the oxides. Perhaps some of the tin would be in whatever liquid metal survived that, and it could be refined further. The copper bar, however, can be placed in a bath of copper II sulfate, which is cheap, and connected to positive pole of some DC electricity, and the negative pole would be some copper wire, or other purified copper. The copper from the metal bar will go into solution, but then come out of solution on the other electrode. You could use stainless steel as the other electrode and flake the sheets of purified copper off for remelting as an option. On the bottom of the container you do this in will be the stuff that was not copper. This may include the tin, but can also have a bit of silver, or gold in it. The "slimes" as they are called, can be cleaned off of the bottom and roasted to get rid of the sulfur compounds that came from the copper II sulfate. Then, you can dissolve the slimes in nitric acid (which you can make from air and water, using electricity, which makes it my favorite acid). The dissolved slimes will probably turn the acid colors, and those colors will help you tell what was in the slimes. There will certainly be a lot of copper in it, because it was used in the previous steps, and one way you can separate the copper in this stage is to try and dissolve all of the slimes, and then filter out whatever won't dissolve (keep these little bits for when you get a large collection, and then re-process those). Now, put good, clean copper into the solution, and watch everything that is less reactive than copper solidify out and sink to the bottom as the copper takes its place. There may not be much of this stuff at all, but in a situation like this BigstackD fella, who has remelted about a ton of metals, there is likely to be at least some silver, gold, platinum, paladium, and other valuable metals that were contaminants in those recovered materials he melted. The cost to recover them may have been too high for previous refiners, during whichever era the device it came from was made, or perhaps a fancy part (like a breaker contact with copper buss bar, and silver-graphite contact pad) may have been thrown in the melting pot at some point. You don't know until you give it a go. If reading this whole thing was boring as hell, or not, then it's served its purpose. Perhaps you are interested in chemistry, or not.
Don't take it the wrong way, but half the reason I watch these melts is to see Ingot and Bullion, those two are just such incredibly handsome pups (I know they're grown, and they're big vicious monster hounds - but still so adorable), I just adore them.
Could not tell the difference between the brass and AL bronze at the end. I love seeing you recycling the slag, seeing you squeeze as much out of your melts as possible.
Ooh, a sub sandwich. I had one today too. 👍 These slag melts are always cool to watch... seeing those clumps of metal and whatnot turned into nice bars is awesome. ✨
Finally, the slag gives up it's bounty! What a well stitched video! Such quality! I hope your hand get's better. Small nicks, cut and burns are the most annoying. Thanks for stressing the safety messages!! Good luck for the next burn!
Nice work, just a tip ( not that you need it ). I seem to find that a lot of stirring and time will recover almost all of the metal in the slag particularly brass slag. Perfect temperature will achieve this I go 20-30 C above the brass melting point ) being very careful not to over heat as you say ) and stir every 2-3 minutes for about 15 mins. You’ll know when it’s done it will all look like powder on top and will stop smoking all together. I never get chunks of metal in my slag maybe only the last 2-3 scrapes and it’s very clean. I never use borax it’s messy, and can damage the crucible. Remove the crucible from the furnace after use ( to prolong its life ) I fully clean my crucible after each melt adding a small bar first and add the slag once it’s melted, keeps the crap off the bottom. BTW you quench copper it ( anneals the copper making it softer, brass has a high copper content and will have a softening affect like copper. I’ve been a fitter for 30 years and I can tell you that quenching will make the metal softer, so the info you got was incorrect. Try it on thinner pieces and you will see the brass will bend in a vice and not fracture, this can depend on the lead/ zinc content as to how soft it will be, it will also work harden like stainless steel. Rough look bars are great, way better than slag 👍 Well done.
I love watching this it's so relaxing I've only been subscribed for a couple weeks and watch nearly half of your videos keep it up bro such an inspiration
I love your videos. You’ve inspired me to get into melting. Others have inspired me to build my own furnaces. Another awesome video. Thanks. Cheers from the USA!
Hey D, again, I'm loving the rounded corners. I really like those compared to just square. Bullion was very focused on that bird like he wanted to eat it. I bet they rarely land in your yard, if at all. Ingot was super chilled out in this video. I hope he's alright. That slow motion shadow coming down the wall was awesome before the smashed ice. Also, the camera rotating around the finished bars is a really nice touch. Take care and see you next week. 💙✌️
I'm not sure which we love more, the slag/dust melts or the dumpster-dive days! 😅 And ooh! I actually know what that bird on the satellite dish was! That's a wally wagtail!!
Excellent as always, love this channel . Would love to see you make a silver bullet, like in the movie of the same name , never know when you might come across a werewolf
Wow these weeks are going so fast it's unbelievable. Welcome back All the awesome people to today's slag melt. A lot of people have been asking for it and I thought why not get it done today. A couple of awesome pieces to add to the stack for sure. Now sit back and enjoy but most importantly have an awesome weekend and I hope to see you all next Friday👋🏻😁
Ok.
Even faster now that we're not in lockdown eh
Gday mate. Fellow aussie/devil forge user/stacker and subscriber here. Absolutely beautiful bars and 811 kg! wow! great job 😀
And next week you are going to finally tell us what are in the garbage bags that are now on pallets,right?
high carbon knife and tool steel harden from oil and water quenching, non-ferrous metals like copper, brass, and aluminum won't. as far as i know, quenching non-ferrous metals actually softens them. but keep doing the ice quench anyway!👍
I'm always amazed by your ability to just summon food wherever in the house.
The very first video I watched here, he pulled a pack of steaks from behind panel and I was appalled and confused. A few videos later it clicked and I lol’d.
I thought he was going to find a piece of cucumber in the slag, for the doggo's 😆
I theorize his 10mm sockets are doing his hunting and gathering for him. That's why they always seem to be missing and he can never account for all of them.
Pretty sure ingot and bullion hide it for enrichment for him
I was gonna make this exact comment
So basically, when you melt down slag you have to clean the slag off of the slag so that you don't have slag in your slag.
Slagception.
thats slegit
“Yo dawg…”
Yes basically
15:20 You caught the shadow of the falling block perfectly. Very nice.
A recommendation to prevent the zinc from boiling off is to add boric acid or borax while you melt brass. It prevents the zinc from boiling off and you can add it before or during the melt depending on what you are melting.
hey, just a suggestion: you should melt salt. salt can actually melt, depending on what salt it is it melts at different temperatures. just thought u might like the idea and get some cool tasting bars out of it! also it makes a really cool tinging noise when it cools, its pretty cool
But we would miss the ice quench.
Also yeah it will be sweet to see.
But yeah kosher sea salt will make a nice bar
Isn't that like... Exceedingly dangerous even for a forge melt though? Like, bringing it to that sort of temperature will have it react with moisture in the air or something?
Honestly I'm probably wrong but I remember a few videos saying melting salt is super dangerous and/or explosive.
@@vonBelfry that's pure sodium. sodium + water = BANG. table salt, though, is not pure sodium, it's sodium chloride which is stable when melted.
Yess let's start a salt collection
If you pour molten salt (NaCl) into water will explode with a big steam explosion. If you pour it into a mold it will be fine.
Thank you Australia for supporting Ukraine! Helping a country so far from war is a great deed! Many thanks from the Ukrainians! We are from Ukraine!
The slag melts are always great. What most would discard, you turn into something beautiful. Love this channel
As has been said in here already, non-ferrous metals like Brass, Copper and Bronze don't harden under quenching, the do the opposite, they go soft. I used to enjoy demonstrating this to kids/students when teaching metalwork.
Interesting. I didn't know that. But then, I'm not big into metal (apart from the music). My preferred material of choice is wood.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn another little nugget (no pun intended) of knowledge.
Hey Pablo could ya touch on how that happens!
@@lewisgiles8855 I’m pretty sure it’s to do with the crystalline structure of the metal. The larger the crystals the softer the metal. If you bend and or hammer the metal (copper say) the crystals get smaller and the metal harder and more brittle, called work hardening. When heated and quenched it restores the large crystal structure again. I’d check that though.
@@zimton539 Even so, both brass and bronze are alloys.
@@lewisgiles8855 Basically metals form different types of crystals wich determine it's properties depending on the temperature and the alloy. Non-ferrous metal alloys form crystals that harden it in a specific temperature range. So if you keep the metal there longer it will get harder. Quenching cools it so quickly It doesn't form much of that type of crystals. There is a process where you keep them in the temperature range for multiple hours to harden it even more. Like mentioned this only works with alloys.
Just bought my first house and now that I have a garage my next step is to save up and start doing my own melts. Thanks for the videos and helping me find a new interest!
Cheers from Chicago 🍻
Stack it up bro! I slowed down around 100lb of copper I'm very content with my metals now on to making a hot air balloon! Woo!
@@lewisgiles8855 where did you get your scrap to melt, I don’t mind investing money into metals but the cheaper I can get things the better
I mostly do residential repair and modifications. I'm lucky to be around a lot of scraps. Wire and pipe jobs bring in the copper and brass. Aluminum is every where tho I don't melt much of the painted stuff, it stinks way too bad!
I love how he always has snacks in the most randomest places
one of my favorite things in you videos is where you pull food from at times, cracks me up.
I have to say that was one of the coolest ice block breaks I have seen. The slow motion of the shadow falling with that bird's eerie call in the background...
I almost did a slag melt this week. Now it’ll be pushed back to whenever I’m not lazy and get around to it. However mines so mixed I have no idea what I’ll end up with. Probably a brittle piece of crap but we’ll see soon enough. 🤣
may you shuld do that lol
Be careful though... Slag contains plenty of oxides. If you have some aluminium slag/dross in there, alumothermic reactions can be quite dangerous. Thermite-like reactions can easily get up to temperatures that shorten the lifespan of your crucible, or even have it crack. Best case, you have a bad time cleaning up the furnace, worst case your furnace is a write-off.
You could sell it as a meteorite 🤣
The axe in your last video turned out nice. Could use a little bit more detail grinding & polishing, but it was nice.
🤣🤣🤣
Whoa, I've never seen a video so fresh. Good Friday!
In recovery from surgery, a #bigstackD video is just what the doctor ordered. It melts away the discomfort, so to speak. Handsome pups and hidden sandwiches are good too! Have a great weekend!👍
Oh hell yeah, a slag video! Been waiting on this for a while now. Hope all is well down in Oz.
🍻 Cheers from America 🇺🇸
I knew i was staying up so late for a reason, and now I'm watching it.
I can't wait until you find an old, aluminum boat on Craigslist. That would be an epic melt.
Ahhh...there's no Craigslist in Australia 😊
@@jasonmain8133 yes, there is.
These videos are cinematic. Always a work of art.
Watching you put your finger in the fan and then move on normally made me laugh
I do that too in the shop, for reasons unknown 😂
It’s something about watching metal melt so satisfying 😍
I'm definitely not an expert on soft metals, but as far as I know, they don't harden the same way steel and other hard metals do, so I don't think you have to worry about the ingots hardening.
When working with soft metals (bending, hammering etc), they work harden and you have to heat them up and quench them in water to soften them again, so your ice method should be just fine!
Yep. Non ferrous metals are annealed in water or oil, only ferrous metals harden.
So does air cooling harm anything or just simply slower than water cooling?
@@theender422 As far as I know it doesn't harm the metal as you can just heat it up and quench it again to anneal it.
ahhhh... nothing like a calm, Australian morning with a golden sunrise and with a lovely bird's song in the backgrou- **PPPHHHHHHRRRRAARRRRRGHHHH** (lights Devil Forge Torch)
Thanks! I was waiting for some if that slag to get melted 😎
cheers buddy I hope you enjoyed the video👊🏻😁
For that slag you could try to let it steep in vinegar bath for a week or so (with mixing it a bit everyday, or not) and see what happens to it, if it leaves more metal behind for you to melt. Zinc is one that dissolves into vinegar forming zinc acetate, which can be boiled back to zinc oxide. Although that would need more info of chemistry etc. to get pure stuff since slag has some other crap in it. But might be worth testing with a liter of vinegar and about 100 grams of slag.
Great video today. Looks like so much fun to do melts have a good weekend mate.
I do enjoy watching your videos.
There is something really relaxing about watching the metals melt and listening to the bird calls on the background.
Love the videos man cheers big ears
I bought my first forge for 400 dollars because of you, saved up the money from odd jobs still waiting for it to arrive but also moving into a big house with a plenty big enough yard
"The white smoke is zinc do not breathe it in..."
_Neighbour passing by_
"Howdy neighbour, what's u-blehhh" 😵💀
also @19:34 -- what sorcery is this?? lol
In a world filled with war, genocide, pandemics, conspiracies, and corruptions just all sorts of doom and gloom. These videos are a vacation of the mind. An escape of sort. Soothing to the frontal lobe. Mindless yet engaging if that makes any sense. Thank you for making these. I don't know what your motivation for these activities and videos are to be honest I don't really care. But I appreciate them more than I can communicate here.
Ah, yes bigstackD's new video in the morning. Do you smell that people? That's the fresh smell of smelting 🤤
Don't sniff that, metal gases are often toxic!
watch out for the white smoke when you breathe that smell! 😂
Yeah I know.
Slag melt slag melt slag melt! As one of those who keeps asking, thrilled to see it. Great shiny bars to bring the scraps home. Looking forward to the mixed slag and get that overflowing jar cleaned out!
And that big motor on the cart foreshadows another teardown on the horizon, I hope. 😁
Such a great melt.
So Happy to see the Slag Jars get emptied.
Does this mean we might see a dust melt next? /wink wink
GREAT shot when you crushed the Ice, the shadow falling in the background was SUPREME
PUPPY LOVE!!!
From the new Dross, how do you determine what to keep and what to toss in the trash?
Shiney = good, but the other pieces.....
Thanks for a great video
ARMY
SE Oregon
2 very nice chunks added to the stack dude. Hope your weekend is wicked
Man another awesome video....but i gotta be honest every time you jam ur finger or hand into the cageless fan i laugh every time. I use to do that when i was a kid 😆.
Love the melts my dude! Im stuck in a high drought situation and its a bit unsafe to do any melting myself so this is the best way to get my fix.
Loving the videos man, quick question. As the devil forges can reach up to 1600c have you ever thought about doing a glass melt?good way to get rid of all the beer bottles.
Cans and glass bottles are worth money in our Aussie recycling schemes. Generally 5 or 10 cents each depending on state. Melting down aluminium drink cans adds to the stack. TBH, the glass is worth more to recycle for cash to buy more stuff to melt from the scrapyard.
@@AussieSnoflake that’s good to hear, over here in the UK, you know, “the wasteful society” they just go in the recycling bins…. If they were to introduce a small payback scheme I don’t think there would be as many laying around …
But one melt would be cool to see.
@@MrGibbie2210 think UK is wasteful here in Orlando FL they have you recyclables in a different bin but still just take it to a landfill
@@biglala32 pretty much what we do here.. we have bins for normal household, paper/cardboard, plastics, and food waste .... they all go on different days to the same place ....comical aint it?
I don't comment very often because I don't really feel like I have anything to contribute, but every now and then I just want to let you know that I'm still watching and still subbed. I love what you do, and I am looking so forward to seeing you reach the one tonne mark.
I have a question, when getting the slack out of your melts, why don’t you ever degas the melted down material, I’ve seen it done on other channels and it sort of makes the slack rise up so it’s much easier to get out, but you just scoop it out. Have you tried a degasser? I personally think they are awesome to see how they make the slack bubble up on top
Just woke up to the best 'meltdown' (pun intended) i could wish for.... greetings from germany
So to you smelter guys out here, is it difficult to un-alloy these metals? I know some have some highly different melting points, does being mixed with a higher melting point metal keep a lower melting point metal from liquefying and separating? Or is the process prohibitively difficult?
100%. Easy af
Generally, when you mix two metals, the melting point lowers. In some cases, the melting point will drop below the individual melting point of any of the ingredients (such as in electronics solder).
Un-alloying the metals can be done by various methods, depending on which metals you wish to keep, and how much garbage you're willing to accept (and pay for) to get that metal back from the alloy, or slag. In this mixture, there's probably copper, zinc, aluminum, and perhaps some tin as the primary components. There will also be a lot of oxygen bound to the metals in the slag, which is why they aren't stuck together as solid bars, like he was trying to get.
Now, there are many ways to get that oxygen out of the slag, and that's where the volumes of chemistry knowledge come in and make it interesting or boring. If I were presented with the materials that the author threw in the garbage, I would probably focus on recovering the copper, because that's the easiest, and tin, because that's my favorite, and a challenge for my level of chemistry. To recover the copper, the easiest way would likely to use a different type of crucible, and then heat it with Borax powder (found in the washing isle, and does great in laundry!). The Borax will steal oxygen from the mixture, and then float to the top to solidify as glass. You could even mix some silica sand in with it to really help the metal come together. In this case, you'll likely make it even harder to recover the tin though.
Another way would be to add copper to the crumbs and melt it into a bar. The slag that's left would then be heated to very high temperatures with carbon or "coke" to burn off the oxides. Perhaps some of the tin would be in whatever liquid metal survived that, and it could be refined further. The copper bar, however, can be placed in a bath of copper II sulfate, which is cheap, and connected to positive pole of some DC electricity, and the negative pole would be some copper wire, or other purified copper. The copper from the metal bar will go into solution, but then come out of solution on the other electrode. You could use stainless steel as the other electrode and flake the sheets of purified copper off for remelting as an option. On the bottom of the container you do this in will be the stuff that was not copper. This may include the tin, but can also have a bit of silver, or gold in it.
The "slimes" as they are called, can be cleaned off of the bottom and roasted to get rid of the sulfur compounds that came from the copper II sulfate. Then, you can dissolve the slimes in nitric acid (which you can make from air and water, using electricity, which makes it my favorite acid). The dissolved slimes will probably turn the acid colors, and those colors will help you tell what was in the slimes. There will certainly be a lot of copper in it, because it was used in the previous steps, and one way you can separate the copper in this stage is to try and dissolve all of the slimes, and then filter out whatever won't dissolve (keep these little bits for when you get a large collection, and then re-process those). Now, put good, clean copper into the solution, and watch everything that is less reactive than copper solidify out and sink to the bottom as the copper takes its place. There may not be much of this stuff at all, but in a situation like this BigstackD fella, who has remelted about a ton of metals, there is likely to be at least some silver, gold, platinum, paladium, and other valuable metals that were contaminants in those recovered materials he melted. The cost to recover them may have been too high for previous refiners, during whichever era the device it came from was made, or perhaps a fancy part (like a breaker contact with copper buss bar, and silver-graphite contact pad) may have been thrown in the melting pot at some point. You don't know until you give it a go. If reading this whole thing was boring as hell, or not, then it's served its purpose. Perhaps you are interested in chemistry, or not.
@@buckstarchaser2376 Wow, thank you for the detailed response!
BTW I have no idea how to smelt besides skyrim
Don't take it the wrong way, but half the reason I watch these melts is to see Ingot and Bullion, those two are just such incredibly handsome pups (I know they're grown, and they're big vicious monster hounds - but still so adorable), I just adore them.
That white container cut from the bottom is the most use full thing ever 😂❤️
I love how on every melt that bird keeps coming back to laugh at you. 🤣
How's that bird called?
Hey bigstackD awesome melting video as always I love seeing metal being melted down and turned into something really cool it just fascinates me! 😃
i appreciate your taste in jewelry
that shot of you pouring the brass in the sun light was pure gold :@)
Awesome melt, thanks! I loved the slow motion of the shadow of impending doom for the ice block. That was great!
I watched that ice break like five times! Also I love the ones that go slow motion for a second as well, super cool!
For some reason , I enjoy watching your videos , going to hit that subscribe button after years of watching you
Thank you man for video, i look forward to every week after i get off work. Finally getting rid of that slay o yea!!
Seeing the flame change color always mesmerizes me.
Thanks for the class on slag melting. Very cool to learn about such things and it’s easy to see how people get inspired to start doing this themselves
I liked watching the slow motion shadow of the brick you dropped on the ice! Cinematic! Epic!
Nothing says its friday like watching a new BIGSTACKD melting video. Love watching out for the background humour
wow the slag melt looks so satisfying. its crazy to see how much of all that is just dirt and junk
Love the slow mo shadow of the brick coming down on the ice!
You’re my new favourite channel for calming my anxiety.
It makes sense that a glowing hot crucible would give off a glow, but it was cool actually seeing the glow around 4:40
Could not tell the difference between the brass and AL bronze at the end. I love seeing you recycling the slag, seeing you squeeze as much out of your melts as possible.
Awesome video BigStack👍🏻
Ooh, a sub sandwich. I had one today too. 👍 These slag melts are always cool to watch... seeing those clumps of metal and whatnot turned into nice bars is awesome. ✨
Love your Chanel. Your Suttle humor, dogs, shoes , socks, meals in storage boxes etc . Great job of digital production .
THANK YOU .
"DK"
Dat bird intrigue me so much!
I always love seeing where BigstackD puts his BigsnackD. Love the videos. Keep it up
Greetings from Turkey. Every Friday i looking for your new videos :D
Finally, the slag gives up it's bounty! What a well stitched video! Such quality! I hope your hand get's better. Small nicks, cut and burns are the most annoying. Thanks for stressing the safety messages!! Good luck for the next burn!
Who would have thought that all that slag would have so much slag in it? :)
That cloth was very cool!
Dang, I caught you early for once. Some of my favorite melts are the slag ones.
I very much appreciate your videos. they are as entertaining as they are informative! Much love from Texas!
That was a really awesome melt and I really love the aesthetics of the result, the rough, squarish ingot: Raw beauty.
Happy birthday, Ingot
Nice work, just a tip ( not that you need it ).
I seem to find that a lot of stirring and time will recover almost all of the metal in the slag particularly brass slag.
Perfect temperature will achieve this I go 20-30 C above the brass melting point ) being very careful not to over heat as you say ) and stir every 2-3 minutes for about 15 mins.
You’ll know when it’s done it will all look like powder on top and will stop smoking all together.
I never get chunks of metal in my slag maybe only the last 2-3 scrapes and it’s very clean.
I never use borax it’s messy, and can damage the crucible. Remove the crucible from the furnace after use ( to prolong its life )
I fully clean my crucible after each melt adding a small bar first and add the slag once it’s melted, keeps the crap off the bottom.
BTW you quench copper it ( anneals the copper making it softer, brass has a high copper content and will have a softening affect like copper.
I’ve been a fitter for 30 years and I can tell you that quenching will make the metal softer, so the info you got was incorrect.
Try it on thinner pieces and you will see the brass will bend in a vice and not fracture, this can depend on the lead/ zinc content as to how soft it will be, it will also work harden like stainless steel.
Rough look bars are great, way better than slag 👍
Well done.
next week looks like a banger. as always ill be here watching.
like the extra details given in this one. makes it even more interesting.
I love watching this it's so relaxing I've only been subscribed for a couple weeks and watch nearly half of your videos keep it up bro such an inspiration
I love your videos. You’ve inspired me to get into melting. Others have inspired me to build my own furnaces. Another awesome video. Thanks. Cheers from the USA!
Nice melting and I thought it was hilarious when you drilled in the ice block for the water!🤣🤣
so cool to see someone doing something like this halfway around the world. and upside down as well. :)
Keep the pups coming. I watch 50/50 for dogs and casting! Give my love to Ingot and Bullion
A SLAG MELT!!!! I've been waiting weeks for this thank you!!!
Love the slow-mo of the shadow of the other block falling which it's still out of frame for the ice smash
So satisfying sir I watch ur video everyday before going to bed almost I have watched 90% of ur videos
The shadow of the cinder block was a nice touch
These videos always put me in a good mood, looking forward to seeing next week's!
To my amazement. The waste after a slag remelt....
😲 Did I finally run into a video with a link to how to temper a crucible? 🤔😃I DID! I DID! Thank you!!!
Hey D, again, I'm loving the rounded corners. I really like those compared to just square.
Bullion was very focused on that bird like he wanted to eat it. I bet they rarely land in your yard, if at all. Ingot was super chilled out in this video. I hope he's alright.
That slow motion shadow coming down the wall was awesome before the smashed ice. Also, the camera rotating around the finished bars is a really nice touch.
Take care and see you next week. 💙✌️
That fan knows that if it doesn't behave its motor is going into the forge.
I like the rough bars like these too, the more character the better
Fantastic video as usual Mate so entertaining my favourite you tube channel
More priceless than all that metal... Bullion and Ingot.
definitely the cleanest garage floors
Hey bugstackd. Love your channel. Been waiting patiently for this slag melt. Hoping for a melt from the vaccume chamber of mysteries and wonders.
17:37 bird sayw hello:D
I'm not sure which we love more, the slag/dust melts or the dumpster-dive days! 😅 And ooh! I actually know what that bird on the satellite dish was! That's a wally wagtail!!
I love it when he find some food in a random space in the garage. It’s hilarious
Excellent as always, love this channel . Would love to see you make a silver bullet, like in the movie of the same name , never know when you might come across a werewolf
I don't know why, but slag and dust melts are more satisfying than other ones.