Building The ULTIMATE Backyard Foundry

in today's video we're taking one of the classic king of random projects the backyard metal foundry and giving it a new upgrade [Music] [Applause] guys one of the biggest most famous projects that grant ever created for this channel was the backyard metal foundry he searched far and wide to figure out how we could make a foundry that we could build ourselves and could actually melt some metal down what he came up with was a metal bucket with various types of heat insulation and reinforcement on the inside over the years there's been several iterations and our most recent one that had the fire bricks and a little bit of a KO wall up at the top finally met its end after home and how many times did we use that a lot I think was her home for a while it was and so it is time to honor the original design and add in all of the upgrades we've been able to come up with grant was always thrilled to see how his design could be taken to the next level so that's what we're trying to do today we're still using the steel bucket we're still gonna be using the bricks and the cable but we are adding on to it we're gonna see if we can make one level better than we've ever made before so we've got our six gallon steel bucket and this is just from Home Depot comes with the lid and of course we're gonna be modifying the lid as well but pretty much every part of this process is very messy so we're gonna head outside with it and start making that mess all right as one of the primary sources of insulation we are going to be using these fire brick skin if you're trying to find these I recommend searching for insulated fire brick as bricks go they're fairly lightweight so the lack of density is actually a lot of what gives it its insulation you know air doesn't travel through or well and it doesn't conduct heat right through the solid parts of material we found that work really well I thought it does the problem is it's a little too thick it is we wouldn't really be able to fit any of those in there and then still have space for anything so we get to do a lot of cutting we're gonna cut these bricks into thirds and then we're gonna shape them a little bit to make them fit nicely into our bucket so we've got our fire brick for the bottom like last time we're gonna do we're gonna take one of these fire bricks we're gonna cut it in half that's gonna go down at the bottom of here and then we're gonna cut some more bricks into thirds and those are going to be what will line the sides if you're doing this it will probably dull your saw blade quite a bit I went and got a cheap saw this was like six bucks and I don't think it'll be good for much other than cutting firebrick by the time I'm done yeah all right I got marked up approximately where the edges of the bucket art this is the outside of course so I'm gonna take it in about that far and that should be the bottom check this is fitting oh yeah that fits as you can see there is a little bit of a gap and part of that is just because of the dimensions of bricks versus the dimensions of the bucket part of it is because the bucket is tapered and so it's really close to the walls at the bottom but even just one inch up the gap grows a little bit and so we're gonna use some cable and we have some refractory cement and we're going to use some of this as well to line pretty much everything this is going to be used to hold bricks in place and to cover up the edges of the ko wall in the bucket which should make it last longer and be safer in general now as these are right now if I recall correctly we can't quite fit them all maybe we actually can this this bucket might not be quite the same size as the last one and so if we can Lee we might need no no we got Wow yeah this is nice yeah this bucket is just a pinch wider than when we used for a last one so I don't think we're gonna have to cut down the sides of the bricks like I did which is gonna be good cuz that way these can even rest sideways a little bit and we'll have a lot more access to getting whatever it is we're heating up down within I think what we're gonna want is yeah k.will sort of like triangle slivers and then just a strip around but also in this section I'm thinking back behind it just like if we can slice it in half like we did with the bricks it peels yes yes let's peel it up and do some very thin pieces so will it here's some pieces of cable onto the back place the bricks and then we'll put triangular pieces in between every single one so that that way is double employed with the cable and then we've got the bricks closest to the flame paywall is ceramic not glass so well you don't want to breathe it touching it's not gonna do anything to you all right I've made sort of a wedge with a slight distal taper going down and I think this will fit pretty nicely in between the bricks so I just got to make five more of these I think this way it'll just kind of Oh fantastic yeah right in between filling gaps pretty nicely so then you'll just try and make five of those now this cement from what I understand it's pretty special because it is a little bit different than regular cement it's actually much denser and much better for heat so we're scaling this down just a little bit this is a 55 pound value it would need five pounds of water technically but we don't need that much so what we're gonna do is we're actually scaling it down to about 11 pounds we'll see how much that makes we should be good with that aha five-and-a-half pounds alright now gonna toss some gloves aren't so that's technically all the water we're using we have added more water than the instructions call for we're a little concerned about how much this is going to shrink as it dries I think it's gonna be okay we are doing things a little bit differently than what this might actually normally be used for so we're gonna let this dry for several days before we try and heat this up patching a couple little gaps in here I think we're ready to start adding it on so just start at the bottom and work our way up going for maybe a half-inch thick layer maybe a little less even I think less especially with the amount we've got here strew [Music] definitely meant for cutting thicker pieces of metal oh my gosh man oh yeah the kale wall is resting like right on the cement so that should be giving us a pretty good seal so just these are our gaps that's where the air comes out perfectly then as before our screws also work as little feet to keep it up off the ground a little bit and we want to make sure it's good and cured and then we have to do a slow heat so you may have noticed there aren't holes drilled into the foundry yet we've made sure we know just where the bricks are so we are going to drill those same holes using our same hole saw we're gonna wait until this is cured so we can cut through the metal and then the brick and then the concrete all kind of at once that'll be our feed and that'll just be when the concrete is dry and after we do that we'll hook the propane up we might just turn one burner on just slowly get that heating until we can hopefully get this to cure nice and evenly like a lot of water will cure and evaporate but chemically there will still be water inside until we heat it up to that higher temperature but we have to get there slowly so it doesn't crack so now it's time to just wait for a bit we'll come back later finish it up it's been several days and our our cement is nice and dry just as we were hoping we think that all of the water has escaped from it at least from a traditional level however we do of course need to add heat to really blast out of there at a chemical level so it's basically like firing clay it's just cement we're basically just driving the water out of it right now however there's nowhere to put our gas jets and we need to add holes so we've got our hole saw we're gonna use this we're gonna try and very carefully cut through hopefully it goes well without causing destruction this is basically every different style that you and grants have tried but we've combined them all into what we hope is like a super foundry this should be the brick that we're trying to get through right about there is gonna be the center now I am actually going to move over just a little bit because I'm gonna angle this and try and go in not quite 90 degrees perpendicular to the bucket but just a little bit angled because we like to have the Jets angled as they're going into the bucket all right we've got our pilot hole started there we go I'd say our aim is doing pretty good it looks like we're quite well lined up with the middle of the brick [Music] we are through the brick now and onto the cement I think the brick is thick enough that it's stopping our drill from pushing all the way through I'm going to try and get a screwdriver a chisel to break out some of the brick that I've drilled at least partially through does even get a little more clearance [Music] well this stuff is a lot harder than I was expecting to get through keep going see if I get any work actually before I do that I'm going to start drilling the hole in the other side because it's possible to what I'm doing now is going to ruin my bit and I want to make sure I can at least get through the metal on the other side while the bit still has some cut to it well I was concerned about whether or not I would still be able to get through this metal and I was right to be concerned I have basically direct this hole saw for cutting through metal at this point by trying to cut through cement so it's taking me like five times as long to do not even the entire job of cutting through the metal on this side so I may have to make a quick stop at the hardware store to buy a new one of these I think I can still get through this with this but to get through the rest of that cement I'm going to have to figure out what tool to use they may have something specifically designed for that at the hardware store and that's what I'm going to check out we've gone and got ourselves a new hole saw this one although it doesn't look or feel very sharp actually has diamond in it so it's designed for cutting through masonry should be able to get through our cement without too much trouble let's give it a shot [Music] that is fantastic man write to me the job right tool for the job don't use a metal saw to cut through cement it's just not gonna do it alright so now we've got the holes in it it's time to eat this up yes skill or gas hooked up and I'm thinking we're gonna start with the lid off only one burner open okay so it's just barely going minimum heat we'll let that run for 10-15 minutes till it gets up to a good heat and maybe put the lid on slowly turn the heat up open the second burn just slowly bring this heat up to get this to its cure temperature okay this has been running for about two hours gradually increasing the heat and we have a nice orange blow pretty much the entire inside right now which is just what we're hoping for so I think it's time we can kill the gas oh wow okay the radiating see it's doing is that like we've had warm boundaries like our founders are always very warm and you take the lids off but this like it was kind of chilly and then all of a sudden that came off and the whole thing is warm that is amazing at this point this is finished so we have our new updated foundry I think grant would be proud of this one I think so we do want to just add a little note some of the videos that we're going to be putting out next actually happened before we lost grant we've had them fully recorded and even edited if you see anything strange about timelines and stuff this video was probably shot after some of those and we are going to be continuing to produce videos and putting them out fairly regularly king of random continues it's what everyone wanted and so it's gonna keep happening thanks guys guys that's it for today but you know we've always got more for you to see you hit that box up at the top to check out our most recent video and we'll see you in the next one doc you then [Music]

Channel: TKOR

Views: 2,482,417

Rating: 4.9340076 out of 5

Keywords: backyard metal foundry, backyard foundry, soda can foundry, metal working, pop can foundry, the king of random, grant thompson, mad science, melting metal, backyard science, how to make a foundry, mini forge, how to melt aluminum cans at home, trash can foundry, melting metal and making stuff, calli, nate, tkor, random happens, thekingofrandom, blacksmithing, metallurgy

Id: rqgmVvtP944

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/AlamutJones]

Welcome back, guys.

[u/Deoxyacid]

Been watching this foundry evolve over the years. This is a very big symbol of how KOR has also evolved. A mesh of the old and the new. Thanks for continuing the legacy.

[u/Joeytk78]

What is the parts list for this?! I need to submit a budget for this project