Alright everyone, welcome back to Cody's Lab So today I want to try mining some iron Now of course the first thing I've got to do is find some iron ore Now, most people think of what Iron ore is a reddish-brown rusty-like rock. Well that's true about the banded iron deposit, 'round here in the middle of Utah you don't find that very often In fact, the most iron-rich rock I know of is right here that I'm standing on So point down here? This is actually a fairly common rock in the area but this is the only place I know where it outcrops Let's break off a chunk of this As you can see it's white and a little bit gray so there's not any obvious reddish-brown coloring to it. But if you bring a magnet next to it it sticks to a magnet What you basically got is the white silica rich rock with little specks of magnetite in it Magnetite is of course black and, very magnetic So this rock right here will be our iron ore, which I'll try to extract iron from So to get the magnetite grains out of the rock the obvious answer is that I need to crush the rock into a powder and sift them out but, I'm sort of lazy and if I don't have to I prefer not to spend all day crushing rocks so we've just come down the hill a little bit into this area where you've got some eroded alluvium here and this is the same type of rock but mother nature has done all the work of crushing It up so all I've got to do is screen it out a little bit and use the gravity separation to extract the magnetite All right there, it's gonna have a lot of iron We're back, closer to home, I've got my mom's flour sifter here and I'm just gonna sift out the larger bits of rock they still have a lot of iron in them but you've also got a lot of silica that I'd have to get rid of so we're just gonna toss those away. I want the tiny pieces of magnetite that are just on their own You know, now that I got it like this I might actually be able to pull out iron with the magnet it picks up a lot of dirt with it though so I think we're just gonna continue with the washing idea get it all wet! get it into a nice slurry Now the heavy magnetite will sink to the bottom Whereas the lighter, silicon-richer stuff just kind of flowed over the side There, you can see the iron poking through now Look at that, ain't that lovely? That's what you get from digging into the bottom of an old stream that's flowing through iron-rich rock Is that the same as the black sand that you get when you're panning? Yeah, the black sand is usually a mixture of hematite and magnetite This is probably mostly magnetite though Just because of the rocks it is from Tell you what, let's spread it out underneath of water and use the magnet now, it's a way to purify it, without getting too much of the dirt stuck to it you can see, now it has just got a bunch of tan mud. A little bit of black specks left over because the hematite really isn't all that magnetic So now I need something for the iron oxide to react with to give its oxygen away to form iron metal Now that would be a thermite reaction if I were to use aluminum but carbon is far easier to get and far cheaper, plus the reaction won't be quite so vigorous so this here is some partially burned coal from our household fireplace and this is essentially coke, which is what they use industrially I'll just get a couple of pieces of this here We'll break them up a little bit Well that'll be our carbon source, our reducing agent so now for flux we need some limestone I've got a large chunk of limestone right here You can see the little animal shells in it, those are calcium carbonate which will react in the furnace to create calcium oxide which will make an excellent high-temperature flux for the iron to keep it from further oxidizing into the air I probably don't need much So here's our limestone which I'm just gonna crush up using my little pestle and mortar Okay, there's that. Now let's crush up the impure carbon coke I could probably also use charcoal, it's basically the same thing okay, that's actually probably all I need right there Let me get rid of the rest of this don't need it So there's our iron recipe Magnetite, crushed limestone, little bit of carbon - mixed together It's gonna be a little wet at first but the furnace will dry it out no problem Just to cheat a little bit, to make things easier for myself i'm gonna add in a little bit of soda ash This will help react with any residual silica that may be there to make it more fluid, basically turn it into glass I never could get my homemade furnace working, I maybe come back to this but for now I've got an induction furnace to play with See this thing has a very high frequency magnetic field switching, which is very powerful and that causes an eddy current in the metal, it's basically like a short circuit in a transformer that'll cause it to heat Up That oughta melt steel. So let's put our stuff right in here Just like this Pour that stuff in there All right, looks like just about right for this size of crucible Let's get the big generator going, let's heat that up Here's the data plate, you see it's a twenty kilowatt generator Up to 62.7 amps. On multiple phases Well, we've go our cooling water spilling out Let's turn this on Okay, so we've got 260 amps oscillating at almost a hundred thousand times a Second This thing will get warm real quick *engine running* There we go, it's getting red-hot It'll be white hot by the time we're done Now we're cooking You can see the carbon dioxide coming out as the iron oxide is reacting with the carbon so it is making iron metal The question is: Will it be liquid or will it be a bloom If I poke out a little bit and stir it I can get the metal to come together into a single glob Because I'm worried that it's gonna be dissolving away my graphite crucible Let's see, do I still have a nail? So, I don't think it has melted the metal yet but I think I have got it to come together into like a solid chunk of iron in there I can feel something solid Let's let It get a little hotter, maybe it'll melt Oh! I wasn't recording okay try again. Look at that, you can actually see shiny metal down in there That almost looks like silver melting! but I know it's iron I think it has melted Did it melt your nail?
- It's starting to -The nail is still there, but it was trying to melt it There's a blob of metal on the side of it -There's your metal, right there Is it welded it to it?
- Yeah, it's welded to it All right, I'm gonna pour it out Are you gonna put it in there?
- Yeah Okay, let's go ahead and turn that off let's pour it out There it is! looks like it came out separate from the slag -Can you tilt it into the Sunshine?
Yeah -There we go We've got some glass on top of it there Now, find out if you have metal Something broke out, you might get out of the sun so we can see Oh yeah, you've got metal there A little lump of iron It's probably cast iron because of all the carbon Look at that That's out of the ground Oops, there's a piece It's warm Yeah, it's definitely brittle - Cody what just happened there?
The magnet is stuck to the anvil Got it! Okay Let's see, some of these cooled off a little bit It's iron! There we go, I made iron from a rock Yeah so, it breaks Well, that's about like cast iron so it wouldn't make a very good knife, would it? Not until you worked it a little bit
- yeah, I know Yes, you could blow oxygen through it like the bessemer steel process and make it into steel right now it's just iron There you go Hope you all enjoyed, i'll see you next time! It looks like there's some like tape or something that's.. Let's see if I can get that undone All right
that's fucking wild. to think we had to go through an entire AGE of picking up shit from the ground, tossing it into a furnace and seeing what came out.
at about 8:50 in the video I swear he was going to douse himself in molten iron...
if bob ross came back as a geologist.
This guy rocks
I can't believe this guy. I mean, he goes up a mountain and takes a piece of rock from it. Imagine if everyone did that.....there would be no mountain left. This is an outrage!
This guy has a million subs for a reason. He's a genius jack of all trades!
Cody helped me aqcuire a love for bees after once being desperately afraid of them
If he enchants that pick he'll get more resources.
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