Water dropped blobs.
I made these at a cookout at the farm to amuse some guests, by pouring just-molten zinc into a large stainless steel mop bucket (which I got at the closing out auction of the Lincoln Developmental Center in Lincoln Illinois, which was at one time the world's largest mental hospital, in case you're interested). The nodules are needle sharp! I poked myself on them as did the guests. When they first came out of the water they were bright and shiny, but unfortunately being zinc they did not stay that way: This picture was taken just a couple of days later and as you can see, they are already starting to turn dull and gray.
The shapes you get from water-dropped metals are quite variable, from rounded aluminum blobs to stringy lead ropes. It also depends on how high above the melting point the metal is: For example if you heat aluminum to well beyond its melting point before pouring into water, it fragments into almost a powder when it hits the water, while if it's just barely molten, you get smooth round nodules. This zinc was just barely above its melting point.
Source: Marco's Scrap Metal
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 20 July, 2003
Price: $1/pound for scrap zinc
Size: 0.75"
Purity: >90%
|
| 
|
|
