How strong is it?

GLÓRIAS ALELUIA AO GRANDE EU SOU!!! JESUS CRISTO O GRANDE EU SOU nos abençoe!!!🇧🇷💚🇮🇱

That would make a lovely door knob.

Whats the water source?

This is seriously incredible, I hope you keep experimenting with this to see what's possible!

You can also make a stone sphere with just a drill and a hole saw. Roughly shape the stone into a spherical shape, then use hole saw to smooth it out and at final stage roll it in the hole saw by hand like when making a ball out of silly putty

I'm 56. I never knew before that i wanted to make a stone marble. Rabbit hole, here i come!

As long as you can control precisely and continuously a flow of hydrochloric acid you can create a surface smoother than a laser cut

A .31 inch hole saw because .31" is such a nice, round standard measurement. wtaf

Not in shape

Had no idea you could lathe stone

Well $#|+ you made that look easy.

What would be the maximum size of sphere you can make this way? I’ve been looking and this is the best I’ve seen so far but I’m wondering about size?

I am so loving this video now I need to try it soon

Excellent work...although it makes me suffer a little depending on the movements you make with the saw, the blade without any protection, take good care of yourself. I am a stonemason and I also rebuild very old stone walls, I subscribe to your channel. Greetings from a stonemason, from Barcelona.

Hey dude there is a pedophile advertising on your site

Oh cool a broken .... Tf is it?

I must confess that until i saw this, I would never have thought of obsidian as something to drink out of.

Dude, you're so freaking awesome; I cannot thank you enough for sharing these type of videos

Wow very cool, reminds me of the artist in Hawaii that cast the lava into molds. Man that video was a long time ago. The guy had to carry molds to the site them dip the ladle into the flowing lava. If memory serves he had to get special permission to even be there and have special training to be on the highly dangerous site. at least your doing casting in a controlled fashion. -MG

Ponder getting a life!

The youtube algorithm works. I had the same dream as you, after growing up playing Minecraft, and so I spent a fairly large chunk of time amassing a library of PDFs on the subject over a couple of years. Do know that I have never done this myself, all of what is below is book learnings. Sounds like you've read up on the basalt tile industry as well, so you probably already know most of this. I would suggest investing in a small (~$200) graphite crucible induction furnace to run further experiments with this so you can reliably go as high-temp as you want. For a little more money you can even get one which can both pull a vacuum and reach twice the temperature. The graphite will degrade over time due to the carbonates and any free oxygen, just like all high temperature crucibles, but they are cheap to replace and one will likely last you through all of your prototype experiments, especially with a vacuum furnace model. You really do want to be able to go a little higher temp than your current furnace is capable of (~1350-1450C) and that will make a HUGE difference in fluidity. The Soviets mastered basalt casting, since rock is the ultimate material of the people, and for them the Glassy Obsidian look that you are going for was considered problematic since it causes more contraction during cooling on larger castings. That's why natural obsidian is often fractured perpendicular to the direction of cooling. You get that glassy Obsidian composition when the stone is cooled quickly, like yours is here when it contacts the underheated (below 800 C) molds. If you hold the molds at ~800 C (with your laser thermometer!) for several hours before letting it cool you will get something that looks more like the rock it came from because the tiny crystals will have time to grow inside of the glass at medium-high temp, although obviously that's not what you're going for here. I think for the obsidian look you want the slow cooling setup you have works just fine, just play with preheating the molds to certain temperatures with a laser thermometer. The porosity is due to carbonates in the basalt powder itself releasing CO2 as it melts. The industrial solution to this would be either 1. pull a vacuum on it during melting (requires a new furnace) 2. melt it and hold it at high temperature well above melting point for a long period to allow the bubbles to rise to the surface and pop or 3. pour it back and forth in small streams at high temp (impractical for small scale batches). The mold itself sticking to the piece is a common problem with higher temperature casting of both metals and oxides (cast Iron and up), and the most common solution is simply to hit it with a wire brush polisher as post-workup. A much more reusable alternative for such high temp. materials is machined Graphite molds, or the graphite-powder+furan based molds that must be pre-baked in an oxygen free furnace.

You're not the first person to try. I think it was Backyard Scientist who tried on KZbin (and failed).

That stone looks like it overflowed due to capillary action. If your crucible had a lip on the inside it might be able to keep it from escaping.

Easily got my thumbs up! No stupid music, got to hear the actual sounds of the processes, real person narrated the video, and was very interesting to follow along to see what happened next. Thanks for sharing!

Solution: injection cast under vacuum pressure on a hot mold. No bubbles if there is no air.

Whoa whoa whoa.... All those people who go and mess with the lava, doing glass blowing and stuff on site, and no one has ever tried to cast it before??? 🤨 Bout time someone stepped up then! Good on ya bud.

the internet is working, cool information has reached me

Hello, You should consider using a flux. I don't know which one would fit for stone, maybe soda, borax, sodium silicate..., of even a substance that could lower the melting point (glass ?)

That's how the pros do it 💥🤙

Microwave kiln? May be able to achieve higher temperatures.

I have 10 kilos obsidian

Don't eat the casts

Dude thank you I hope you keep this going , so that one day we modern ppl can finally look down those ancient ppls whom been flexing on us with they fancy walls made of melted stone and oddly precise cutting of round things!!

so what if you put the mold inside the melting furnace instead. then there is no pour other than the stuff melting into the mold.

Let it bond to the porcelain mold then grind and polish. Building-up and polishing is a common technique in many arts. Like the enameling that is ground flat.

that's wicked as hell

Does this work with clear Quartz?

Watch diy foundry accidents and please get better safety gear

Excellent work. What kind of glue is being used here?

Humanity has probably been trying to cast obsidian since we started casting copper but no one that I know of has succeeded. Big congratulations and a nice job.

Love the concept. Other guys have tried casting obsidian on YT, but none with much success or scientific method.

You challenge someone to prove you wrong? What’s the point of that?

0:25 It would appear that you have created a thermo-Geopolymer, similar to what many current scholars imagine created many monolithic structures of such precise fitment.

Fossils are just stone age people casting stone sculptures

Seems to me that if the loss of heat is an issue, a larger kiln, or smaller amounts, would work best if you could have a means of pouring the liquid into the mold *in* the kiln. That of course is likely impossible. It's amazing how much heat is lost just removing the crucible from the kiln for a few seconds.

very cool butterfly ...or hot...fascinated to see how you go moving forward Thanks for sharing

I’m really amazed by this. But I do hobby metal casting and I’m a welder, and I’m thoroughly freaked out by your shorts and sneakers. A bead/drop of molten stuff will burn right through your sneaker and cool off between your toes. Burned a clean pinhole through my pants and into my underwear another time, right between my thigh and jewels. Now I just get wet while i do it. Seriously, have a bucket nearby and just consistently soak yourself while you’re pouring sparky molten stuff. The splatter just bounces off wet clothing or skin. Also boots are a must.

If you are able to perfectly cast obsidian, then you would have a breakthrough in cutting technology.

I'm not sure how I got here, but this is awesome. Keep it up!