Makin' Metal (part 2) "Turning up the Heat!"

So this time we bought some fire bricks, and pulled out the weed-burning propane torch.  This was the way to go!  We need something a little more fixed and secure - the bricks were just stood up on end and were a bit shaky... but it got HOT.

Feeding the cans in was quick.  A brick on top really made a significant difference, too.

In minutes the kiln got very hot.  Our welding gloves warmed up fast.

Again, the ingots turned out nice.  If you zoom in you can see the crystaline structures on the surface of the ingot.  We used a bigger muffin tin for this pouring, too.

Again, melting down cans left a bunch of junk.  We did a lot to skim off the junk from the top before pouring the ingots.  Keeping a bucket of cold water handy was useful and our safety precaution.

Our next step will be to do something useful with the aluminum.  We are also going to find a better source for aluminum to melt - we melted down ~100 cans to get a few big ingots, so it takes alot of time and effort.  We did add Boric Acid to the metal, and it foamed up on the top and seemed to help pull the junk away from the aluminum... but we aren't sure if it also made more of the foamy junk metal or not.  We'll see.  This has been a lot of fun!