CAN YOU FORGE A METEORITE!?

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the workshop it is fantastic to have you here because on today's episode we're going to see what we can make out of a meteorite first of all however the question is can we make anything at all from a meteorite and what can we do to a meteorite well ryan very kindly appears not only to have sent me an iowa state flag thank you but also a meteorite now i have never in my life before seen a meteorite oh my goodness this thing holy moly whoa that is a big chunk of iron [Music] so man this thing looks cool so i've got a couple pieces of documentation here that ryan also sent with it apparently this is a campo del ciello meteorite and these would have been found in argentina apparently the fall reached earth five and a half thousand years ago holy moly and apparently these meteorites are among the oldest things in the universe 4.6 billion years old whoa that's old now not only do i now know that but i also know though this is largely composed of iron obviously there's a lot of other stuff in these supposedly about seven percent nickel 0.43 cobalt a quarter of a percent of phosphorus 87 parts per million of gallium 407 parts per million of geranium germanium okay not the plant and 3.6 parts per million of iridium so the first thing i need to do in establishing whether or i should say what we can do to it is see if i'm going to be able to put it in the bandsaw which is going to require that it is not extremely hard so i've got a file and we are going to see if the file teeth will cut out see if the file teeth will cut the meteorite they will indeed looks like it can go in the bandsaw so naturally i'm extraordinarily nervous for many reasons one you know this thing is billions of years old i'm about to cut into it cool i don't know if i really can cut through it the top surface might be soft but it might be hard in the middle and it might snap a blade this whole machine might explode maybe we'll find alien larvae inside goodness gracious who knows all around it looks like it could be a sticky situation especially if there's alien larvae in the side so let's try and take a slice off of this bad boy make sure it's secure give it a clamp and here we go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oakley douglas this is super duper interesting we've taken off this tiny little slice and as you saw there are cracks in it it's it's it's interesting to see it's not all together um as one might have assumed and i want to see what it looks like once we etch it if you're a regular viewer of my channel you'll know all about etching it's firstly if you're not a regular viewer of my channel what is going on make sure you hit subscribe but if you're a regular viewer of the channel you do indeed know what etching is it is going into the acid and letting the acidity to where the metal and we can often tell if there are different parts such as in the damascus we have different alloys we can spot any differences in the composition of it in the edge and holy moly i'm seeing something this is cool whoa look at that that is very very interesting this is truly fascinating out of the edge you can see that there are many different colors that are being revealed here or colors or shades and that actually indicates that we have different materials within their different elements um things that are reacting differently to the acid and it doesn't look like at all an alloyed piece of steel rather this looks like there's different stuff in there and it's all randomly in there and it's not all joined together and it might mean that there is not a lot of structural integrity within the piece i still want to try working it so the documentation describes that there are bands of different minerals that'll go through these meteorites and there are also silicate inclusions too so this is truly truly fascinating but i think it's time to try and see what we can do to it first things first we're gonna hammer it cold [Music] [Applause] well oh yeah by the way i i i edited that i actually did dress up like this because whenever you're gonna hit something and you don't know what the composition is it could easily break at a very high velocity and hurt so i don't like getting hurt so here's what i observed when we hit it the first time it just dented it was relatively malleable we hit it the second time it broke apart and that's what that break looks like and a crack is further opened up in two more places as well as a chip falling off so what have i learned from this it's not going to stay together well none of it is together well as it is so i'm going to take a couple more slices and work my way back up the meteorite until we're in a little bit of a chunkier section we're going to hack off a slab and go into the forge and see what we can do when it's hot [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so it's just fallen straight apart that's no good straight apart there's got to be something else i can try look at that let's try another heat let's try some light hammering let's see what this will do [Music] [Music] so [Music] ah this is not staying together and it is not going well i'm taking as many welding heats as i can and their cracks are still there i've tried going this way i've tried going that way we've tried light blows we've tried heavy balloons oh gee where's this is difficult right so i'm going to keep hammering away on that piece to see if with more time we can forge weld it consolidate it and get it together i don't know if we can on that particular piece but i'm going to take another slice off i'm going to keep trying it we're going to see if we can try some new things we're going to see if we can do a better job you can call me stupid yes you can call me sheep you can say i'm lazy [Music] don't you dare say a single word or i will strike you where it feels holy moly i don't know what i'm going to be able to do with this i forge it out there are cracks everywhere it's super scaled what i want to do is i want to try and fold it and forge all the back together this thing here in the saw to nightmare to cut this cut has been going for an hour oh it's good timing this car has been going for an hour it's through but it took an hour bloody hell anyway holy moly can you see that can you see the little stirrations in it these kind of almost like scratch lines that run all the way down and then back across it's the craziest thing this is completely shocking i don't know what that is you can also see all the cracks on the top half of the piece again despite all that we're gonna put it in the forge anyway i'm gonna try and work it with the power hammer nice and gently see if we can consolidate together a larger piece and get it welded so we can start working it this welded amazingly easy it looks like that may be wrong it may not be welded but it looks like it just got together stuck together like butter right let's try the big piece already broke it so much black statement it's meant to be v for victory it's now alpha loser right so you know out of uh a hundred zero being failure 100 being success uh i'm gonna call that a pretty solid 97 right you know i really don't feel good about giving up the idea just does not sit well with me at all this is a billion-year-old a multi-billion year old piece of steel gotta be able to work it i've got to i have no idea if i can but i'm gonna try and keep the temperatures high i'm gonna try hammering it gently i'm gonna see if i can take one of the half of that second chunk of steel and see if we can consolidate it into something we gotta forge something [Music] [Music] [Music] ah it got set on fire [Music] [Music] this is an absolute nightmare material to work but it looks like there's a crack in the middle and i've just about got good material either side of that crack and i just want to try and forge it i want to see what we can do to it i want to see if it will work i want to see if it'll draw out and holy moly it's looking like it is there's bad material ahead of it there's bad material behind it but i was just able to forge that that's pretty cool that's very cool in fact i'm forging a meteorite i don't know if it's gonna work but i am forging a billion year old piece of metal a five billion year old piece of metal holy moly this is crazy oh yes it is moving just like steel it's moving just perfectly right here not got any issues i'm drawing out this little piece it's stuck it's it's working oh my goodness this could be a good result after a long day's work just praying there are no cracks that appear halfway through making it speaking of making it i don't know what i'm making i need to think about that but we're working it that's the most important part we're working it and it can be forged it's just that it can also crack but it can be forged the little piece is coming off here this is not good that's bad that's very bad [Music] okay let's see if we can round it there's a big old crack running your way down it that's the problem this doesn't look good it's just a crack that runs the whole way down the piece oh no it's a tough tough material to work i don't know what i'm gonna do it's getting very weak right there in the middle no yeah it's broken there i think the scale played some part there's no more strength right there okay this is still forgeable up here [Music] i do not have any idea how this is possible but i have been able to still keep forging how i don't know how is this not breaking apart there are cracks the whole way down it somehow i've been able to peen out a leaf from the thing it's unbelievable it's it's it's from space most of the thing is cracked yet i can forge it like normal metal despite the fact that when you etch it and you look at a cut off beats it's filled with cracks i have no clue what to say and i have no clue what to do what i do know is that there's got to be something more special than a leaf that we can afford from this meteorite it's got to be possible so make sure you subscribe because on tomorrow's episode here in the workshop i'm going to keep working on this meteorite and determined to make something awesome out of it can't wait to see then love to hear your comments and thoughts in there in the comments below please do drop us a like thank you to ryan for supplying us with this meteorite and i will see you tomorrow on the next episode

Channel: Alec Steele

Views: 6,562,600

Rating: 4.6224756 out of 5

Keywords: alec steele, alex steele, steel, alec, damascus, blacksmith, make, forge, anvil, mill, lathe, weld, tig, mig, engineering, blacksmithing, blade, bladesmithing, knife, knifemaking, sword, handmade, diy, craft, woodworking, forged in fire, axe, fabrication, art, meteorite

Id: Yr_5tIPP3dM

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Dennisbaily]

So basically, you need to be lucky and happen to find a meteorite without too much shitty random bits in it in order to be able to forge it properly.

So Sokka was lucky I guess ;)

[u/dayburner]

Not that original a concept really, legend says the original Bowie knife was made from a meteorite. Also the Inuits of Greenland got the iron from their tools from a meteor before they had access to iron from the outside world. Metal is metal even it is space earth.