wood branding iron propane

for this video i’m going to show you howto convert a few fistfuls of empty bullet casings, into a decorative set of multi-purposepaperweights. using a bit of styrofoam, a little ingenuity, and a whole lot of firepower. to start this project, you might want to checkthe legalities of making these “artfully disguised” paperweights, where you are.

wood branding iron propane, brass knuckles are banned in quite a few places.and if that’s the case where you live, then don’t make your knuckles, out of brass. alright, let’s kick things off, with fewhandfuls of bullet shells. i salvaged these brass casings from a localshooting range, so there aren’t any bullets

in them, and you can tell the primer’s beenfired as well, which is important. now let’s fire up the “mini metal foundry”i showed you how to make in a previous project, and toss the empty shells inside, to get themwarming up. now a lot of people have asked whether thisimprovised backyard foundry can actually get hot enough to melt brass, and the answer,is yeah, it’ll melt brass no problem. in-fact you can melt copper, silver, and evengold without any trouble at all. and the best part is, you can do it on propane. propane burns clean, costs less, and meltsmetal way faster than charcoal does. but you do need a specially designed jet-torch, tobalance the fuel-to-air ratios, and make it work properly.

this is the design i came up with, and i’llshow you how to make this “gas blaster” torch, in another project video. now it’s only been about 8 minutes, butpeeking inside the foundry, you can see that amazingly, the brass casings have alreadymelted down, and liquified completely. that’s really impressive, considering themelting point of brass is around 1,700âºf, and the foundry was cold, when we startedless than 10 minutes ago. the liquid metal is bubbling because brassis a mixture of copper and zinc. and at these temperatures, the zinc is starting to boil,and vaporize right out of the mix. we don’t really want that to happen, butluckily, there’s an easy way to stop it.

i went to the dollar store and picked up abottle of cockroach killer, which you can see is actually just 100% boric acid. if we sprinkle a generous amount of the whitepowder into the soup of molten metal, we can sit back, and watch it do the dirty work forus. boric acid helps clean the metals by absorbingimpurities, and helping prevent new oxide layers from forming on the surface. and if you put it in before you fire up thefoundry, it’ll melt your metal even faster, and help keep the zinc from boiling off aswell. ok the crucible’s full and everything’scompletely liquified, but before we pour the

metal, it’s a good idea to scrape any gunkoff the top, and clean it up a bit. i typically use a pair of old steel tongs,for skimming the slag, but you can use anything you want as long as it’s made of steel,and you don’t ever plan on using it, for anything else. i went ahead and poured these liquified bulletshells, into a beat up old muffin tray, then knocked the ingots out and let them cool,into a stack, of mini brass biscuits. now to transform these heavy metal muffins,into fistfuls of defensive jewelry, we’ll need a styrofoam cutting template, like thisone i made in photoshop. if you want a copy, just check the description,and download it for free. glue the paper template to two layers of dollarstore foam-board, then carefully, cut it all out.

a cool trick to cutting the finger holes,is to simply heat one of the leftover casings and push it straight into the foam. with just a touch, you’ll see it melts perfectcircles, all by itself. an even better way to slice foam, is witha hot-wire foam cutter. like this one, i made from cheap and commonly available materials. this “styro-slicer” uses electricity toquickly and accurately trace the edges of paper templates, without cutting the paperitself. that means you can use styrofoam to make justabout anything you can think of, so watch for how to build the “styro-slicer” inanother project video.

ok now that we’ve got our foam knucklescarved out, the next step is to glue two styrofoam risers to either side of the base, and buryit in a bucket of sand. i filled a small trash bin half full of commonplay sand, then gently nestled the foam knuckles, down into the loose layer on the top. from here, all we need to do is add a bitmore sand, to fill the bucket the rest of the way, then give it a little shake, so thesand levels itself out, exposing the foam risers at the top. now we’re going to need a way to funnelthe streams of molten metal into the foam risers, so try packing a little wet sand ontop, then shaping it into little craters, a couple inches deep. do one for each side, and with that finished,it’s time to transform our styrofoam investment, into solid brass.

remelt the brass, then carefully pour theglowing hot liquid into one of the craters, where you can see, the extreme heat vaporizesthe foam in an instant. this allows liquid metal to flow down andfill all the empty spaces. and if you quickly, and carefully pour the other side as well,you’ll have a much better chance of success, on the first try. the metal only needs around 5-10 minutes tocool down, so feel free to pull it out and take a look. just be careful not to touchit, because it’s still extremely hot. i cooled mine in a bucket of water, then choppedthe risers off with a hacksaw, and just like that, we’ve got ourselves a crude, but verycool looking, brass casting. now just for fun, i wondered how this thingwould look cleaned up a bit, so i clamped

it in my bench vice and worked it over a fewtimes with metal files, and some fine grained sand paper … and bam, there it is. just like that we’ve got ourselves a smoothand shiny brass paw, which for some reason feels really comfortable, and strangely empowering. this piece of defensive jewelry has a reallynice weight to it, and because it was designed to fit my hand, it really does feel amazing. but it’s important to note these aren’tintended to be used as weapons. instead, i like to think of them more as multi-functionalpaperweights, buffed to a mirror finish, and designed to occupy my workspace, as “dangerouslyelegant decor”.

now just to push the boundaries a little further,i stopped by an alternative clothing store, and picked up a spike studded choker collar.so i guess you could say things are getting pretty serious. let’s unscrew six of the aluminum spikes,and screw them into the brass workpiece instead, just to make the whole thing, look absolutelymental. the six holes were drilled using a 5/32”bit, then tapped with a #10-32 thread so i could secure each of the metal spikes tightlyto the brass. it’s beautiful, it’s dangerous, and it’sincredibly durable. and to go one step further, i went ahead and made another one, the exactsame way. well now you know how to transform a few handfulsof scrap bullet casings into a custom pair

of fancy, and dangerously decorative, solidbrass paperweights. they are a lot of work to make, but the feelingof creation and accomplishment, is all worth it. by the way if you’re up for another challenge,try making my “mini master sword”. i cast this “golden sword” from styrofoamas well, and you can find the template for how to make it, it in another project video. well that’s it for now. if you liked thisproject, perhaps you’ll like some of my others. check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com