This morning was what some people might call an average sunday morning. I woke up late, went for drive, had poptarts and a coffee… yeah pretty dull. At some point an idea entered my head. And, i tell you when i get ideas weird stuff starts happening.
Like every american college guy out there i happen to have built a full on blast furnace in my back yard from dirt, a piece of pipe and a hair dryer. Very Mcgyver, i know. However the thing had never actually run. I tried lighting it once but weather intervened and never got around to trying again. I ended up just carving the original project from aluminum rather than cast it so i really didnt have any purpose to fire it up. It happens to be that inventive, so i made up a project. So i get the furnace lit, cast a small aluminum cannon, before moving on to my real project.
The furnace began to burn hotter, the larger chunks of anthracite coal turning to pea sized super fuel. so i decided it was time. I packed the crucible full of basalt. Yep, that’s right, rock. In a matter of minutes i had home made lava. Working with this was so hot that i was burning myself through welding gloves at the end of too foot tongs. But nevertheless i persisted and art was born. From the fires emerged sculptures cast from molten rock(Which will be for sale on my etsy account: see end of this post).
Through it all the furnace gained strength until it became a runaway miniature hell. It was so hot my dense graphite crucible that is rated to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit began to melt. Looking into the fire hurt my eyes. Moral of this story is : never underestimate the power of a hair dryer and a piece of pipe.