Can You Forge Magnesium?

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My name is Alec Steele. I am a blacksmith, amateur machinist and all-round maker of all-things metal. We make videos about making interesting things, learning about craft and appreciating the joy of creativity. Great to have you here following along!
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[@zombiesue1054]

"Can you forge Magnesium?" If you don't actually like having eyeballs or fingers anymore.

[@websterri]

Na, he just had the temps WAY to low.

[@zombiesue1054]

I, too, would have my temp set way too low if the alternative was risking a bar of metal that spontaneously combusted into a fire three times hotter than a campfire that is near impossible to extinguish.

[@paintballplayer700]

My car has forged magnesium wheels, it’s certainly doable, just not in a garage shop as it has to be done in proper atmosphere and the product has to be passivated with special coatings to prevent ignition in an accident.

[@lukelun]

@@zombiesue1054 Yeah if theres one thing i know about magnesium, it's that it sparkles, can spontaneously combust, and can basically become thermite.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

They cold press forge magnesium rather than hot. These are presses the size of buildings capable of gigapascals! 😮

[@EnchantingCat8365]

The Density doesnt really correlate with properties like hardness. Thats because density is mostly affected by the mass of the atomcores, while hardness is mainly affected by the bonds.

[@vhaelen326]

indeed, look at at metals like gold and lead which are famously dense... and famously soft

[@ClawsOfAFreak]

Best example would be charcoal and diamond, both are carbon but one is very much harder to work with than the other

[@vhaelen326]

@@ClawsOfAFreak i mean yes, but we were talking about metals specifically because the topic was forging

[@ZoonCrypticon]

...and crystal structure.

[@countpoolnoodleiii99]

@@ZoonCrypticon And imperfections within that structure, as the cracks from working the magnesium to hard illustrated

[@amyshaw893]

0:20 "what metal isnt grey?"... Copper, brass, bronze, gold, to name but 4

[@Gamewaterv2]

Bismuth

[@rexmcstiller4675]

ok brass and bronze only because of the copper in it.

[@bl4cksp1d3r]

Well, Brass and bronze are alloys.

[@amyshaw893]

@@bl4cksp1d3r yeah, but they're still metals

[@colorona8456]

@@amyshaw893 They're not pure metals, they're metal alloys.

[@NoobNoobNews]

When forging magnesium, you have a one heat one strike opportunity. If you mess up the heat, it burns. If you mess up the strike, it burns. You need to put it directly into a press with a mold. Heat it, and then press it into the shape of the mold. Do not miss.

[@johndextersantos9541]

5:58 that transition into the sponsor segment is so, , , smooth 🤣🤣

[@fluffsquirrel]

😂

[@the.other.ian.]

You shouldn't be looking directly at the burning magnesium. It produces intense UV light in addition to visible light, so you can damage your retinas looking at it.

[@MihailDadun]

good thing I lowered my screen brightness 😎

[@dumpsterdave3710]

*corneas

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

Bump for visibility. Never look directly at burning magnesium fires without UV protection.

[@Roadiedave]

@@bartolomeothesatyr Welding metals too. my buddy welded on an exhaust for his car using the look-squint method and was only wearing a t-shirt. he survived the spalling, but he had the worst sunburn on his face and arms I'd ever seen.

[@Apropoetic]

@@dumpsterdave3710 If you are saying that to correct them they were right that it would damage the retina not the cornea. It could potentially cause scarring of the retina. That's essentially what the photocoagulation laser does to my eyes when I get treatment for diabetic retinopathy.

[@ehsnils]

If forging magnesium - heat it using inductive heating in an inert atmosphere and also forge it in an inert atmosphere. Burning magnesium is normally extinguished with special salts or dry sand, a D class fire extinguisher designated for magnesium would be preferred. Water can cause oxyhydrogen gas to be created and make things worse.

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

It takes a pretty big magnesium fire to break down water. The couple of ounces that most people are likely to burn _probably_ won't do it.

[@Percutien]

Technically, you can use gasoline or any hydrocarbon based fuels as they don't contain oxygen in their molecule, so it would turn from a metal fire to an oil fire which is easier to handle.

[@drthmik]

@@the_inquisitive_inquisitor the key word is _probably_ I know I wouldn't risk it

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

@@Percutien I like the way you think!

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

@@drthmik if you're only burning a couple ounces of magnesium, it will consume itself pretty quickly. After that you just have a regular fire to deal with.

[@112358d15]

Metals plastically deform by forming and moving imperfections called dislocations around the crystal lattices of the metal. The crystal structure of magnesium is hexagonal close packed (HCP). HCP metals tend to fracture like you saw because there is a direction in the crystal lattice in which it is very difficult for the dislocations to move, so the material will shatter instead of moving as you hammer it.

[@Culpride]

I don't know why but metallurgy is just cool.

[@Roadiedave]

In geology/gemology I'd call this Conchoidal fracture. Seashell like/scalloped. i noticed the dude's really shiny piece looked a lot like an arrowhead. Obsidian/flint/chert/agate are non/micro-crystalline silicon oxide Quartz that also has hexagonal structure. makes me wonder if you cooled Magnesium very slowly could you get a large single crystal like a quartz or sapphire tip.

[@bramweinreder2346]

@@Roadiedave which makes me wonder what happens if you quench it. Since it's so densely packed it probably won't do a lot, but if there's a reaction I expect it to be violent.

[@josevera5094]

It is possible with titanium/nickel to get single cristal turbine blades, i guess it could also work on magnesium ​@@Roadiedave

[@josevera5094]

​@@bramweinreder2346Magnesium cant be quenched (aluminium cant either)

[@Thesignalpath]

Next episode - can you forge dynamite?

[@kajatab]

you can put out a magnesium fire with gasoline. the gasoline burns at a lower temperature and eats up all the oxygen, putting out the magnesium. Then you just have to out out the gasoline fire.

[@TheTramil]

My favorite thing about magnesium, is that it does both heat and cold. Chips burn very hot, but a bloc transfer heat very very quick, and that makes feel cool to the touch. Love it.

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

I think part of my CPU cooler is a block of magnesium.

[@hammerth1421]

@@the_inquisitive_inquisitor CPU coolers usually are nickel-plated copper.

[@hornetf18]

@@hammerth1421 Or aluminum.

[@neralodinson6980]

@@the_inquisitive_inquisitor i think it would be a bad idea to use this metal for this use

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

@@neralodinson6980 why? Sounds like it'd make a great heatsink

[@3398halofreak]

@2:10 his theory falls apart when you look at how soft gold is and how soft led is

[@claudemiles9543]

Damm beat me to the punch

[@ojeske]

And how hard titanium is xD

[@michaelmason1659]

Also steel and hardened steel

[@PeriodicallyProlific]

And how hard diamond is

[@DejonckheereWard]

and how strong carbon fiber is

[@custos3249]

It filed worse because it filled the chip reliefs more. The saw has significantly larger spaces after the cutting edges that don't get loaded up as easily.

[@andrewdescant]

I was coming to say the same thing. The file teeth were getting gummed up by the magnesium.

[@rakninja]

all of these properties are why we use magnesium alloys for the armor of certain military vehicles. the burning is a design feature, allowing us to scuttle equipment so it does not fall into enemy hands. the softness means it's not the best armor, but the weight savings are pretty nice. as an alloy, it's really nice.

[@nickbz1303]

Love the “can forge” series. Deserves a playlist! Some easily accessible ones would be indium (mostly a gag episode given how soft it is), zinc, and the other iron groups (cobalt and nickel). You could try out some of the other light metals like vanadium and scandium too, but they’re probably a bit harder to get a bar of.

[@Birb_of_Judge]

An interesting fact about magnesium. After WW1 most of Germanys iron industries were seized as reparations. But they were allowed to keep the magnesium plants. Thus they had to specialize in manufacturing with magnesium, the Best way they figured out was with huge presses, because hammer forging often Leads to these kind of cracks Machine thinking has an amazing video on these huge presses

[@AlecSteele]

That’s super interesting!!!

[@Birb_of_Judge]

@@AlecSteele indeed it is

[@NicosLeben]

@@AlecSteele Go and visit it for us!

[@MostlyPennyCat]

​@@AlecSteele After the war America initiated the US Heavy Press Program for cold forging magnesium for the aerospace industry. You need to go see one, they are insane, the largest in the world in Tyson, the 100,000 ton press in Italy, owned by Giva.

[@richjonse]

Check out the video by MrGreenGuy. Petrol/Gasoline on a magnesium fire will extinguish it without the risk of explosion. If I didn’t have the correct fire extinguisher to hand, I think I’d rather try to starve it of air with sand.

[@nashthebaker9338]

Do Bismuth next. It is a REALLY pretty metal and forms cool shapes when heated and worked with, and will throw Jamie's idea of all metal being grey out the window!

[@ashe1.070]

The colors of bismuth are from the oxide layer, but only when it has a specific thickness (called thin film interference). The metal itself is grey. Copper and gold are the only elemental metals with strong colors. Though cesium is a silvery-golden color, and osmium has a slight blue hue. Most metals are silver to grey. Everything else is either an alloy, has colored oxides, or the color is from oxide thin film interference.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Yeah, all metals are weird like that, gold is apparently red?

[@nikkiofthevalley]

​@@ashe1.070Osmium is really expensive if I remember correctly, though, so you can't reasonably get enough of it to forge.

[@mcwolfbeast]

Can't really do bismuth easily because of its low melting point, I think. Also, it's extremely brittle. I can tell you right away one hammer blow will be a shower of pieces.

[@F0XD1E]

​@@MostlyPennyCat Gold is gold color. If anyone said it's red without an oxide layer or something, that's just not true. Like the old myth kids in school pass around that your blood is blue until it touches air

[@artor9175]

There was a titanium plant near me. Some time ago, they had a fire catch in a barrel of titanium milling chips, and the two guys nearby panicked and forgot their safety training. Instead of following procedure, they dumped a bucket of water on the fire to douse it. The resulting explosion lifted the roof off the building and shattered windows half a mile away. There were empty casket funerals, as there weren't even dental remnants remaining of the two millworkers.

[@tomaspecl1082]

My guess is that it reacts with water to form rutile (titanium oxide) and hydrogen gas. Then the hydrogen exploded. Or am I wrong?

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

@@tomaspecl1082 IDK about the rutile, but those metal fires can absolutely strip H2O into its component gasses.

[@davidh.6930]

​@@tomaspecl1082 magnesium and basically any -ium metal dies exactly that

[@amogusenjoyer]

A single barrel of water on a single barrel of tungsten? That's a pretty intense result for such a small quantity.

[@Johnrich395]

@@amogusenjoyernot really. We’re so used to things operating as they are intended to that we forget the incredible power that we have harnessed. A gallon of gasoline can move you around 20 miles, but atomized it can level a small building.

[@lecolintube]

1:53 🧡Again, “there must be a correlation between density and how hard it can be” … Lead, Gold heavy and dense, …easily malleable.🧡

[@wermiak8426]

7:06 sponsor end

[@Dr.LethalContact]

Having youtube premium gives me a skip button so I don't have to watch it 🙃

[@cmdrsocks]

Titanium and Magnesium need lots of pressure to forge - the USAF sponsored 50,000 ton presses to work these metals and their alloys for plane parts. The Germans used presses up to 30,000 tons during WW2 for Magnesium plane parts.

[@lysolmax]

Uhh. 50,000 tons? 100 million pounds? Maybe 50,000 psi

[@skurdibbles7913]

ive see a lot of footage from when they were making the wooden planes. saw a lot of "factories" from ww2. I've got to go back and look at the plane factories. My grandmother built tank parts for the Bendix corp in Iowa. some wild stories from her time, i was a welder too for a short time. My grand mother and great grandma were 5,1 and would do all the out of position welds. How they both lived to 90 is crazy to me as they used no respirators and the saftey was on par with 3rd world countries standards today. she took more than one person off an electrified environment. they had wooden hooks and 2x4s everywhere they had power running.

[@joseppedaia3673]

​@@lysolmax50 kt is right ;) There are presses with 540MN of force

[@alun7006]

​@@lysolmax yup, 50,000t. Google "Heavy Press Program"

[@johnlogan7706]

​@@lysolmax i just read an article about this. Russia built two 75,000 TON presses for titanium parts

[@TrenchyMan]

The "Elektron WE54" Alloy is about 91% magnesium. Pure magnesium would be way softer than this alloy here. Magnesium is soft enough to cut it with a knife kinda like wax-like maybe a bit tougher. More reactive as well. Apparently, the Yttriumin in the alloy gives corrosion resistance, meaning less oxidation/rust and harder to burn it. If it were to be pure %99.9 magnesium I doubt you can put it out with just water even if it's small in amount it would explode. If you like to know here are the contents I found for it. Element Content (%) Yttrium, Y 4.75-5.5 Neodymium, Nd 1.5-2 Heavy Rare Earths 1-2 Zirconium, Zr 0.4 Magnesium, Mg Remainder

[@JoshWebs]

To add to this. NEVER USE WATER ON A MAGNESIUM FIRE!!! The fire will split the water (H2O) into Hydrogen and Oxygen, resulting in an explosion.

[@PhoenixRaven-e3l]

I was wondering how much it would cost for a titanium domestic dagger

[@piccalillipit9211]

@@JoshWebs Its even better than that - look up 'Why Sodium explodes.. a new explanation!' Its crazy

[@angelfigueroa6825]

A common camping tool is a magnesium rod, which is essentially a chunk of magnesium connected to a striking surface. You shave off pieces with a camp knife and then use the flint to strike a spark that you use to light the magnesium to start a fire. Very flammable, but also soft enough to shave with a standard camp knife.

[@tahoemike5828]

I carry just such a fire starter on/as my key ring. You can actually scrape it with a sharp rock.

[@graeme.davidson]

Ford Kuga cars in South Africa were recalled when the they started catching fire and the magnesium chassis would burn and essentially be unable to put out.

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

Another common form of magnesium fire starter is basically a ziplock bag full of chips/shavings. You can light those with a match and they'll get your fire going.

[@Rosewayforge]

It just slightly different alloy than magnesium. Called ferrocerium.

[@nikkiofthevalley]

​@Rosewayforge Ferrocerium is used in lighters to strike the flame, it can be used as a firestarter but the thing they're talking about here is a piece of magnesium that you scape bits off of to use in place of kindling, to start fires even if it's wet.

[@owillypete]

also, Copper - Has a reddish-orange color. Brass - An alloy of copper and zinc, with a yellowish-golden color. Bronze - An alloy primarily of copper and tin, with a brownish or reddish-brown color. Caesium - Appears as a pale gold color. Bismuth - Can have a rainbow-like iridescent oxide layer that gives it various colors, but pure bismuth itself has a silvery white color with a hint of pink. Rhodium - Often appears silvery but has a reflective, mirror-like finish which can sometimes give off a bluish hue. Osmium - While generally grey, it has a bluish tint.

[@KrazyMitchAdventures]

10:14 Being Canadian, we use metric and American standard almost all the time with the older generations. Being a Gen X, I grew up with both imperial measure & metric

[@jackfromthe60s]

Being Australian- same. But the world would be a better place with only metric.

[@Njazmo]

Being Finnish, metrics is all we have, water freezing at 0C, boiling at 100C, cars are measured going 0 to 100, and metrics are divided by 10, not 8 or 16 or 12. If I want to use an 8mm wrench, it's nothing like choosing 3/8" or 7/16"... duh, imperial units are dumb, from a drunken sailorman that uses limbs and football fields as a measure.

[@Ma_X64]

Welding Mg usually requires AC. The mechanism is the same as for Al -- oxide layer needs to be crushed by the reverse polarity pulses.

[@schwuzi]

Think of gold and copper. Both much denser than steel, yet super soft.

[@Corvinus_swe]

Then for the truly extreme example of a dense but soft metal, there is mercury which is so soft that it is a liquid

[@eaoden8654]

​@@Corvinus_swe I'm not sure that's really comparable... Mercury is liquid because it has a very low melting point. That being said, I'm unsure of the hardness of mercury in its solid state.

[@EightOneGulf]

​@@Corvinus_swe .. But liquid steel is also very 'soft'

[@WaterZer0]

TIL Coppper is denser than Iron.

[@krpzapalkaplja6792]

lead

[@user-neo71665]

Firefighter here, when I was young we responded to a shop fire of a guy that liked to restore old VW bugs. He said he had about 8 old magnesium engine blocks in there. We stood back and just kept the fire from spreading. Wasn't any hope of us wasting time trying to put the shop out and saving anything with the supplies a backwood volunteer fire dept had (water). The dumb old coot found a dumber lawyer to try to sue us because we didn't try to spray water on it and save anything. Our lawyer had them both laughed out of the court room. Last I heard his insurance refused to cover anything because he never disclosed all the "dangrous" mag engine blocks he had stored together in a small space.

[@Blackwing2345635]

Play stupid games - win stupid prizes, I guess. I watch a guy, who is RC/jets/automotive enthusiast, and he is building his own formula-something car (a really small class, though IDK which one, I guess he will use it just like a track car) from scratch. Every time he is working with magnesium (turning wheels, for example), he clears the working area, has cement floor + brick walls, and does so like it is the last thing he is doing at his shop. Also some salt, but he doesn't believe it is reasonable to use because you need to get close to put salt on it, and specialized salt fire extinguisher is quiet expensive. He got something like two or three magnesium fires, but because of preciouses and awareness it just kept burning in a lathe tray without damaging anything each time. And a long ventilation needed, because of the smoke.

[@Llyd_ApDicta]

So how would you properly store magnesium engine blocks? In a crate full of sand? And maybe not 8?

[@Blackwing2345635]

@@Llyd_ApDicta first of all, sand is a bad idea - magnesium is so insane, it mogs silicon of oxygen and burns this way) Second - bulk Mg alloys are fine, chips are dangerous. Pure magnesium is pretty wild and could be dangerous even in bulk (though usually it is still ok if you are careful), but alloys are much more tame.

[@Llyd_ApDicta]

@@Blackwing2345635 According to Google dry sand is one of the options fire fighters use to extinguish.

[@RyanMartin1]

Chevy pickups often have magnesium steering columns. Copious amounts of water do extinguish them, and the fireworks are amazing, but don't be too close because they will ruin fire gear.

[@hannesaltenfelder4302]

8:36 yes and we lost the war

[@Hassanov.a]

This video is so cool to see since I work with these alloys on a daily basis, casting, extruding, etc. I work at a company that specialises in magnesium production here in the UK for all kinds of industries. We make the alloys mentioned in this video such as WE54 and Elektron as well as dozens of other alloys. We've made stuff for Porsche, Ferrari, Honda, and even the apache helicopter uses our alloys. And Alec you're right this material is incredibly difficult to work with and is incredibly dangerous but I really enjoy working with it. We need to use cover gas at all times to keep magnesium from oxidizing when heated, otherwise magnesium oxide gets in and you end up with crap material that lacks the properties required. Basically if you don't want something to oxidise, just take away the oxygen!

[@infestus5657]

Be careful with burning magnesium. Closing your eyes might not be enough to protect yourself from such a bright light.

[@user-gy7dx8qx3n]

Was this video live, and if not, you're talking to a past

[@thatawkardfeeling9076]

The Convair B-36 Peacemaker, a holder of many records had an airframe consisting of a lot of magnesium. This massive plane (230 ft wingspan, the longest of any military aircraft ever) had no fewer than 10 engines, 6 piston and 4 jets. The piston engines were of a pusher design, meaning they were at the back of the wing. This lead to several issues, as the carburator did not have proper heating, leading to carburator icing, which caused the engine to overheat and catch fire. While the B-36 had a solid saftey record for the time, crashes are inevitable, and the magnesium airframe burned very easily. It also was a nuclear bomber, and these problems did lead to a few broken arrow incidents. (Sry for the yapping, its just i like planes and magnesium is involved in the b-36 and the video) Sry

[@Vhill7299]

Cool info, thanks

[@lassikinnunen]

The deterrent system at the time was such too that a portion of the fleet were meant to be in air at all times so they did rack up flight time fast. Its a cool project, with the later modification of additional jet engines and all.

[@nathanielscholtens2812]

Interesting, thank you for enlightening me. I suspect you are autistic like myself?

[@pinkseagull7208]

never be afraid to yap about your interests on the internet!!!! thoroughly enjoyed this knowledge

[@Jezza_C_WT]

How does carb icing cause fires? Is it due to running too lean?

[@MrErViLi]

You can put out a magnesium fire. You need a special kind of dry chemical fire extinguisher designed for metal fires (class D), a lot of dry sand, or you need to replace the air with argon or an another inert gas (magnesium will burn in nitrogen too). Halon doesn't work BTW. Magnesium does not oxidize itself. But it will separate the oxygen from water and continue to burn, while producing flammable hydrogen gas. It's also an exothermic reaction (produces heat) that reacts faster as the temperature increases, causing a positive feedback loop and runaway reaction.

[@Ma_X64]

With sand it reacts too giving Si. And this reaction is also exothermic.

[@jono6379]

If you haven't seen it look up mrgreenguy he just did a very chaotic video explaining magnesium fires and how to put them out in a very unique way

[@Sam-ob4of]

Hijacking this; Explosions&Fire has videos about class D fires, watch them if you're interested/curious

[@MrErViLi]

@@Ma_X64 I have personally put out large magnesium fires with sand. It has to be dry though.

[@arieldahl]

wouldn't putting a magnesium fire in silicon-oxides result in it taring off the oxygen and burning itself?

[@jameswkirk]

My father used to tell me the story of where he worked in the 1950s, they had a huge machine shop doing lots of military contracts at the height of the Cold War. As a "Safety Lesson" they took a month's worth of magnesium shavings from all the lathes (he mentioned it was about a train car full) piled at one end of the parking lot and lit it up, burning 6 feet (almost 2 meters) through the asphalt, dirt, and stone. I'm sure they were very careful after that...

[@dvannunn]

I work with Magnesium Thixo Injection. Flux sand is your friend with this stuff!!!! and argon keeps it from reacting with air at melt temp!

[@dylanhollar6492]

I work in a magnesium foundry, and in order to melt it, you need an inert cover gas. Gets fun when that doesn't work

[@daviddrake5991]

You mean it is fun when it doesn't burn the foundry down too?

[@PhilipStubbs]

I did an apprenticeship at an aerospace firm. Whenever working on magnesium, you had to have the fire cart next to the machine. That was basically a huge fry powder fire extinguisher with a long lance nozzle.

[@orbitONhigh]

if you put a magnesium bar in vacuum chamber at a few hundred c it sublimate super fast and basically turns into swiss cheese . god that was a mess to clean

[@nikkiofthevalley]

Huh. Really low temp vapor deposition. I had no idea magnesium did that.

[@orbitONhigh]

@@nikkiofthevalley neither did we at the time we were trying to just melt it and cast it. and were like hey if we do it in vacuum there no air so it can't burn. but never got it to melt it sublimated away to fast. coated the inside of the chamber with like 1kg of the stuff took several days hunched over in that chamber scrubbing the walls with acid and water

[@beautifulsmall]

In the 1980's working at British Nuclear Fuels the fuel rods were made from magnesium. On bonfire night they would fill an aluminium dustbin with the swarf and light it. I remember vividly seeing the shadow outline of the crowd on houses 100m away. Way brighter than daylight in a full field and so white.

[@Jackal19x]

US Navy here with fun facts; a lot of aircraft landing gear components and such are made from Magnesium because of how lightweight and easy to machine it is- however this poses a unique danger to flight quarters crash & salvage teams as any aircraft accident can pose a risk of not only class-B fire (fuel fire) but also class-D fire (burning metal), and a class-D fire is fueled by self-oxygenating metal which means you cannot put out the fire. Only remaining measure is to jettison the craft into the ocean and let it burn itself out in Davy Jones' Locker.

[@feoginator9000]

The first rudimentary camera flash was just a small plank with a bit of magnesium powder on it that that the photographer would burn while taking the picture because it burnt so quickly and brightly

[@mtnbkr8480]

@16:20 Cooper and gold are not gray.

[@zanw.awesome3102]

leave my mate cooper out of this.

[@elliottcooper6205]

Ah yes... cooper. My favorite element. Jokes aside, absolutely, neither gold nor copper is silver or gray in any measure.

[@WeaselGreasel]

The fact that Alec isn't wearing a welding mask for the entire video surprises me, I would be really nervous handling magnesium like that ;-)

[@websterri]

Its not magnesium, its magnesium alloy. Even if it was elemental magnesium, you wouldn't have anything to worry about.

[@Schwuuuuup]

Also safety mustache engaged

[@voidseeker4394]

​@@websterriit gives off a lot of UV when burning, just like welding arcs.

[@websterri]

@@voidseeker4394 I didn't ask and I wasn't talking about anything that would be relevant to.

[@taso5309]

I used to repair alloy wheels, we were always told to beware Magnesium wheel because they were made for a small period of time and if heated up to straighten or repair you would burn the shop down.

[@jens3895]

As a scientist: No, density is not directly related to hardness. An example would be lead, very dense but not hard at all. The hardness of a material is mainly related to the type of bonds that hold the material together (covalent bonds or ionic bonds, for example) and, in the case of metals, the material composition and the associated structure of the crystal lattice.

[@Dank_Lulu]

Table salt for magnesium fires. The specialised fire-extinguishers (Class D if memory serves) for metal-fires (lithium, magnesium, titanium) usually sport either that or some other (really well dried) salt with no oxygen atoms in its molecule. The salt melts, coats the metal fire and strips it of contact with oxygen. Avoid baking soda (usual powder fire-extinguishers have that in them) or water, because the heat strips the oxygen clean off the molecule and you just fed live oxygen to the metal fire. And yes, table salt is hygroscopic so it will have some water from the moisture found in air so if you want, you could bake-dry some plain table salt and keep it in an airtight container for emergencies if you indend to machine spooky metals. Or just spend a couple of thousand pounds on a proper class-D fire extinguisher. And one more thing... AluMag powder (mix of alluminium and magnesium) was used in some unstable homemade thermite or explosive or something, I cannot quite remember, but shavings of those two together might be particularely hazardous. Source: trust me bro. (so do double-check) Please, do more fancy metals sometime! 🦾

[@mulgerbill]

Ally is hard to set alight and mean af after that. Not recommended on a Friday afternoon in a railroad workshop So I've heard...😉

[@ignasmaciulis1095]

"spooky metals" :D

[@ClaytonBrownMusicOfficial]

1:57 Lead is both dense and soft, so, to borrow a term, ‘bugger off.’ 😂

[@ybra]

1:50 Not really. For example both lead and gold are really dense, but also soft.

[@justinbanks1288]

Man you beat me by an hour

[@fletcherjacobs3688]

I believe it’s all kind of relative to the crystalline structure, but I haven’t studied metallurgy in sometime

[@EarMaster55]

Next time: Can we make a Damascus Magnesium Firesteel

[@TyBunker]

I've been away for a couple years and I've missed your content. Glad to see it's still the same great stuff keep it up

[@Z0u1Th3Sl0w]

Density does change as the atoms get closer together, thats why nuetron star matter is the densest matter in the universe prior to black holes. But Density can also be effected by the mass of the atoms themselves. That same Nuetron Star Matter is basically a singular large atom made solely of nuetrons. Magnesium isn't less dense because it has less atoms, its just that the atoms themselves are less dense, each carrying less mass than Fe, or Iron, Atoms.

[@craigdobson9068]

Not gonna lie, you look like a young Ned Flanders with that tash 😂

[@Synthetic-Chicken]

Remember being a Ford tech and we had a Ford Mondeo come in, had some electrical gremlin and ended up having a hard short on the block, the block was made from magnesium, once it started we just had to sit back and watch it, even when the fire team showed up, they just isolated it and let it burn too.

[@boriscat1999]

For what it's worth, I worked at a grey iron foundry in the US and we used Celsius there too (green sand using a DISAMATIC). I think it's fine once you go past a few hundred degrees in either system it starts to get kind of abstract and you should just stick with one system.

[@MrNanorex]

As a physicist and a chemist: No, the density of a material has nothing to do with any other characteristic (hardness, colour, how it will behave in a forge, etc). And even if you have just one material, you may have different "versions" of it, which may have widely different characteristics. Take Carbon for example: If you burn stuff like wood or coal, you get soot on your furnace. This soot is basically just carbon, really soft, black, basically no structural integrity. However, if you take this soot and put it into an environment with really high temperatures and incredible pressures, you get diamonds: The hardest material we know of and transparent. If we go back to metals: Remember tungsten? Really hard, heavy, incredibly high melting point. Now let's move a few steps to a theoretically similar metal: Quicksilver. Also really heavy, a liquid at room temperature and thus quite soft. (I have now information of how frozen quicksilver behaves). I could explain to you why it is like this, but not in form a youtube comment. And as a fellow blacksmith: Always think about the oxygen, when you work with hot metals: Of course you can tig weld, because you work with protection gas, which prohibits any oxide layer or fire. If you would have a method to both heat and work your metal in an protection gas atmosphere, you could use higher temperatures, which would make the metal softer and less likely to form cracks. But that is a lot of effort for next to no benefit.

[@dr.mcstuffins5977]

I'm American, after watching this video I will now forever measure in Freedomheit!

[@rexmcstiller4675]

Non grey metals? Copper, gold.

[@scarecrowforge]

Calcium, bismuth, brass as well

[@ashe1.070]

Most metals are silver which is technically not grey. Cesium has a silvery-golden color. Osmium is silver with a slight blue hue.

[@DankasorusRex]

Zirconium

[@ashe1.070]

@scarecrowforge Calcium is a grey-silver element. Bismuth is also a silvery grey, but when oxidized it displays a wide range of colors. However, those colors are from the oxide layers of varying thickness. The metal itself doesn’t have those colors. The oxide layers of titanium, iron, and others display that same property (thin film interference). Brass, and bronze are of course alloys that get their colors from the copper that makes up the majority of the mixture. So, there aren’t many elemental metals that aren’t silver, or grey. Just copper, gold, and cesium. Osmium does have a slight blue hue though.

[@SangosEvilTwin]

@@ashe1.070 Where did Alec say anything about elemental metals only as opposed to all metals (including alloys) though?

[@fyrelorde]

5:00 RIP your retinas

[@jamesmurphy3415]

I remember having magnesium Firestarters when I was camping ... and yes, they worked beautifully

[@DownundaThunda]

Density does not corrolate in any way to hardness. Two of the densest metals there are, Gold and Lead are also both soft enough that they are usually able to be deformed by hand at room temperature.

[@muxiku]

Magnesium carbonate is what is used as a laxative not the metal also it is use on some sports and claiming on your hands, as it pics moister very well.

[@alicewyan]

Magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) is also used commonly as a laxative

[@teardowndan5364]

Magnesium Hydroxide is another variant. It starts as an anti-acid, reacts with gastric acid to become magnesium chloride (+water) which is the actual laxative.

[@LegionPCMR]

So putting water on it causes a bigger and more violent fire because of how hot it burns. It rips the oxygen and hydrogen molecules apart from water.

[@Culpride]

Wich in the worst case can create an explosive gas mixture. Luckily the heat loss slowed the reaction enough to prevent it?

[@jn1211]

my grandpa was one of the first people to use magnesium in his race car frame WAY back in the early days of the north american racing circuits. he was a drag racing pioneer!

[@niceguy391987]

3:33 it makes very well sense, the magnesium gums the file up more than the aluminum

[@meatymoth]

I worked in a factory that made decals for RVs, boats, etc. I was shown, on day one, our ink storage room. I was told the fire dept is legally required to never come if a fire broke out ANYWHERE in the factory cause they used magnesium powder in every ink. "The whole building will explode if a fire breaks out anywhere. There is no actual evacuation plan because there's no exits close enough for you to reach safety"

[@ClaytonBrownMusicOfficial]

PSA: Please, do not stare at burning magnesium without eye protection like a welding mask; you can burn your retinas very easily doing what this guy was doing at 4:50

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

Bump for visibility. Eye protection is important!

[@Idlehandzx2]

I take magnesium supplements for sleep and I have wicked ass dreams when it’s in my system

[@Real11BangBang]

Every time you say aluminum it makes my American brain hurt 😂

[@mzaite]

Not as bad as the middle Pennsylvania guy who worked A&P at my school. he called it Am-mum-inum. I fully blame Pennsyltucky accents for that.

[@theBFactor]

Al loo min nee um 😂

[@sullenpuffin]

Apparently, when it was first discovered, it was named Aluminum, as Americans like to pronounce it. But everywhere else, Aluminium was adopted because it was more in keeping with all the other elements ending in “ium”

[@Sphendrana]

@@sullenpuffinAs an American, I love the correctness of keeping with -ium. Literally it makes more phonetic sense when compared to metals such as: Titanium, Rubidium, Thallium, Lithium, Cadmium, Radium, and my favorite, Osmium, to name a FEW. Ending in -um just doesn't fit for me 😂

[@sullenpuffin]

@@Sphendrana 100% agree!

[@tmdosu]

It also looks pretty cool when it dissolves in a boiler. Forgot to change it for 2 years once, because of the pandemic and it was completely gone.

[@sweepauto]

When Fahrenheit first made his thermometers he needed to calibrate the things anywhere. He used a mixture of ice,water ,ammonium chloride and salt. This solution stabilized at the same temp no matter the place or the room temp. That point became 0. Calibration using freezing water offers a lot of variables. How high are you? What’s in the water? What the humidity? Makes sense in context at the time. Not so much now.

[@tpeter4240]

You can actually put out most metal fires pretty easily with powdered table salt (sodium chloride) or baking soda, so if you ever work with other flammable metals, I’d recommend having a few pounds on hand.

[@hammerth1421]

In my university's chemistry labs, we just have buckets of dry sand.

[@tpeter4240]

@@hammerth1421 Sand also works great, but the reason they use salt commercially is that when the salt melts when it contacts the molten metal, it makes a crust around it and prevents oxygen from getting to it and re-igniting. Though, sand more than likely would work just fine for a smaller fire. There’s actually specific fire extinguishers for metal fires that are just pressurized tanks of super fine salt and/or soda that firefighters and certain labs use. They’re also like $6 grand if I remember right, which is kind of crazy if you think about it.

[@notacep]

can you forge depleted uranium 😊

[@garyotterson6100]

That segue into VPN was crazy

[@SatanSupimpa]

If the light hit the right angle, you can notice a mustache.

[@richdurbin6146]

I saw a video where a shop was hand forming a magnesium sheet body. The trick was to heat up enough to be malleable, but not ignite it. I think it was about a hundred degree range between the two. I looked up once, magnesium has a lower density (on paper at least) than carbon fiber.

[@bjornthorgudmundsson2781]

3:20 wood saws nowadays are made with carbide teeth so the sharpness lasts longer

[@Matt-ns2ty]

Hi dude I think might have mixed table saw blade and hand saw blade. Table saw blade have carbide teeth but regular hand saw are only hardened steel and just the tooth is hardened nothing else. Havé a Nice day

[@bjornthorgudmundsson2781]

@@Matt-ns2ty i wasnt mixing it up, as far as i know hand saws used to be just regular steel and you used to sharpen them several times to extend their life cycle now they are made from a harder material which i thought was carbide which you cant really sharpen, it doesnt have as long of a life cycle as the old style but last longer now that we dont really do our own sharpening anymore and would have to ship them to a sharpener If i got that wrong thats on me

[@Matt-ns2ty]

@@bjornthorgudmundsson2781 the thing is they are both hardened steel but old saw were hardened completely and heated again to be sharpenable. New saws are impulse hardened which means if I'm not mistaken that they use a high voltage on the teeth to heat it up and harden but the rest of the saw is not hardened at all. So the teeth are just as hard as a file but the back should be much softer.

[@funkaddictions]

At sea level, 0 C water freezes and 100 C water boils. 20 to 25 C is nice temp, 30C sucks. It's pretty easy. Freedomheit is all over the place, 33 F, 212 F, 68 to 77 F and 86 F respectively. You should put the kiln next to the power hammer so you don't run around with hot metal in the shop.

[@websterri]

Huh? Who asked?

[@funkaddictions]

@@websterri It's mentioned in the video. Did you watch it?

[@websterri]

@@funkaddictions F was, he was talking about F! You should listen better.

[@barfrost007]

If memory serves, Fahrenheit was designed using the thermal properties of brine (don't recall the concentration). Thus it correlates decently to human temps in whole numbers (since humans are mostly saltwater). However, beyond that bit, it doesn't scale terribly well, which if you're doing science, you very much want. Celsius was designed around pure water, so the 'human ranges' are smaller, but its very scalable, making it more useful for most other applications. Fun fact: due to technical limitations, 100F used to be the standard internal human body temp. Once thermometers got better, we realized that its closer to 98.6F; however it seems to possibly be dropping slightly in the modern age.

[@SangosEvilTwin]

above 20C is way too hot for me, personally.

[@jimmon89]

Fahrenheit is like a percentage of hot to a human 0F? "I'm freezing me bollocks off!" 100F? "I'm sweating me bollocks off!" 0C? "The water is freezing..." 100C? "The water is boiling..." they both have uses, but one is useful for knowing the survivability of people, the other for the stability of liquid water

[@nikkiofthevalley]

Celsius works well for measuring temperature in a way that's easy to work with, like for cooking or scientific instruments. Fahrenheit works well for measuring temperature of an environment that people live in.

[@FrancisR420]

That never has made sense to me. Why is 0°? Water freezes before then and we can survive way lower, why. Insert five tomatoes copy pasta:

[@jimmon89]

@@nikkiofthevalley that's more or less what I was trying to imply without coming out and saying it explicitly

[@FrancisR420]

@nikkiofthevalley ​​​​I don't think it is, it's more convenient for us because we grew up with it and then people are trying to intellectualize why it should be more convenient even though the other one works so much better, and we're kind of inclined to believe it because the part about metric measurements being inconvenient for us hits close to home. I don't think 0 to 100 degrees are useful for relating to the human body, 100° being almost body temperature is literally all it has going for it, ok good job gold star now what is the f*** is a degree Fahrenheit? Actually I'm going to look that up it probably is something, but I know a degrees Celsius relates to how much energy it takes to get a square centimeter of water to boil at atmospheric pressure based on BTUs which are based on candles Sounds pretty human-centric to me. Looked it up and it's based on An 50/50 ice Salt mixture what the heII does that have to do with humans or anything? Let's just get rid of Fahrenheit and we can make a new thing called degrees Nikkio where 100 degrees Nikkio is the actual temperature of the human body (because Fahrenheit got that wrong) and then we just use degrees Celsius as the units.

[@FrancisR420]

One thing tho, the American calendar system is based

[@Eremon1]

Alloys and metals have always fascinated me. How the properties of materials you'd expect to be similar yet end up entirely different from the smallest atomic differences will always be interesting to me. Cheers.

[@jamesspry3294]

The reason for the difference between the file and the saw is the rake angle. One will suit the material better than the other...

[@CaoticoFanegasO_o]

This is interesting because expensive car rims are made of aluminum and magnesium, amongst other less prominent metals alloys. If you look at the periodic table of elements, you have other metals to the left, which should mean that they are even lighter. There is a catch though, they are so reactive, they combust, or "violently oxidize" in the presence of moisture in the air.

[@aeroearth]

Magnesium corrodes wonderfully especially in salty atmospheres like on the deck of an aircraft carrier or on salted winter roads. Magnesium a) catches fire and b) burns under water. If you machine magnesium keep a bucket of dry sand handy with which to bury the part in. Interestingly same applies to titanium, which can also catch fire, as I found out..........

[@ClementCouture-um1el]

The canadian army snowshoe we use are actually made out of magnesium so you can scratch them a bit and have a firestarter.

[@jfirebaugh]

Some old cars had magnesium-aluminum allow transmission cases. I high school we has a machine shop with a foundry. We were casting aluminum and got some scrap transmission cases. When we threw in the magnesium alloy it was like a fireworks display coming out of the furnace.

[@edwin4846]

wow, lil Alec steele is growing up! I only tune in from time to time. Im one of those 'I preferred the old vides' guys. I remember you at Baker Street Forge, and now wow, looking much much older.

[@maverickpearson9212]

Not magnesium-based, but I was cutting a bar that was essentially a steel core pressed into an aluminium sleeve with an angle grinder over a lathe bed with tons of swarf and metal dust. The grinder caused sparks from the steel when it hit the core, and the aluminium chips mixed with the oxidized steel in the lathe bed turned into a thermite fire. Thankfully nothing exploded or popped out onto me, and there because it mostly just small pieces of dust and swarf it went out pretty quickly and did not burn the workshop down haha

[@coryshannon449]

2:47 Diamonds, quartz crystals, silica carbide grinding disks are an order of magnitude lighter than any steel, yet scratch and cut the steel. And steel is harder than lead, which is much denser. Hardness is not a property of mass but atomic bonds that form crystal structure. When you heat treat steel, you are editing these bonds until the hardness is suitable.

[@paulbecket7399]

I always liked the way you know you've annealed aluminium mark it with a felt tip marker and heat with a torch when the marker burns off you've heated enough

[@baarni]

Density of a metal is mostly related to the amount of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of each atom so the same amount of atoms of different elements can have vastly different weights.

[@fasfan]

Jamie: "What kind if metal isn't grey?" Everyone: "Gold"

[@HellOnFourLegs]

Milk of Magnesia is a white milky and minty solution that one spoon can have you in the bathroom in a few minutes

[@FixItHandle]

My dad worked at an aluminum factory, and they would heat the metals for alloys to dry them before introducing them in to the molten aluminum...because if not, boom...anyways one time a drying kiln ran away full of magnesium, burned through the concrete floor into the earth, they just kept covering it with dirt, nothing they could do! Burned for most of a week if I remember.

[@manythingslefttobuild]

Great video Alec and Jamie. Thanks for making this laymen working with different elements series.

[@JaggedFel621]

Magnesium's real benefit is the strength to weight ratio. Great for vibration test fixtures, where you don't want to add so much mass you limit what you can shake, but need the rigidity to impact the forces into your test article and an aluminum fixture just won't cut it. That said, it's become harder and harder to find machine shops willing to touch it due to the hazards involved.

[@DjClarky78]

There are different compounds of aluminium, and different heat treatment states too. You should do a video on this. It's crazy how much they differ.

[@KarmaCadet]

it would be interesting to build a forging setup that lets you keep the material at the desired temperature while forging. Something like an insulating chamber (dual pane with inner quartz glass) enclosing the workspace and tungsten dies. this would also allow for flooding the chamber with inert gas to prevent oxidation

[@jacemorse1060]

Hey I’m an elevator installer/service tech and I would love to see elevator wire rope Damascus steel in one of your projects. There are many types, sizes and grades to choose from. The first wire ropes were made of plow steel by John Roebling in 1841 where we got the first practical wire rope made from plows used in farming. this rope was graded PS (plow steel). It has been improved countless times and some later examples are grades IPS (improved plow steel), EIPS (extra improved plow steel) and EEIPS (extra extra improved plow steel). Love your videos for their fun and the skill, quality and care you put into your projects. Bless you and your family. 16:23

[@lukearts2954]

To avoid the cracks, it needs much shorter cycles, more heats. This is because of its low density and consequent low thermal capacity. I.e. it holds less energy. In contact with the high thermal capacity anvils, it loses that energy very quickly, and unevenly, which is the perfect recipe for cracking.

[@KGTiberius]

@9:23 Stelter callout in units made me smile.

[@ReignForever]

metals are basically a crystal, they have a "crystal lattice" pattern when you look close enough with a strong enough microscope. even though its lighter and less dense, its more prone to fracture and cleavage because of the way the atoms are holding the material together. may also be a contributor to its reactivity.