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Personal projects / Materials & heat
Homemade carbon crucibles
Experiments with lightweight carbon crucibles and small metal-melting trials.
Open the numbered review →Crucibles and copper sample
Photos 70–71
Photo 70 · No date found
Experiments with homemade carbon cruciblesI explored making lightweight carbon shapes from organic mixtures heated with very little oxygen, a process called pyrolysis. The resulting pieces could be fragile, but I tried them as crucibles and insulation. I also experimented with graphite-flake additions, hoping to make the material heat directly by induction, without establishing a successful result for that approach.
Photo 71 · No date found
Melting copper in a test crucibleA test in which small copper-wire offcuts melted together into a single bead in one of the crucibles, heated with a gas torch. Watching the bright, shifting surface of the molten copper was a memorable part of these material experiments.