Making Iron Oxide with Steel Wool - Experimental
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2019
- Can I make Iron Oxide with steel wool for glazing? If firing steel wool in a kiln, pulverizing it, and testing it on glazes sounds exciting, then this video is for you.
One of those, "I wonder what would happen if..." type of experiments. All were fired to Cone 5.
I expected bright orange rusty metal after firing in the kiln, but as you will see, it ended up being black. I plan on doing follow up tests with other rusty metals, and perhaps even try firing copper wire to make Copper Oxide.
Leave me a comment if you have tried something like this.
Omg! I love this test. I’ve always wondered about this! Thank you for posting. Juli, Tucson, AZ
To create a perfect iron oxide you need to first ignite the steel wool with something like a nine volt battery or Butane torch, and then wait for it to cool. Be sure to do this outside as it gets up to 900 degrees Celsius when it gets going. After it cools, spray the wool with vinegar and wait about 5 min. After the five minutes make a solution of about 8 parts Hydrogen Peroxide and 1 part kitchen salt. Submerge the steel wool into the solution and wait for the reaction to finish. You can tell when it is done when the solution stops bubbling and it will begin to cool down. Afterwords strain the liquid through a coffee strainer into a cup. The remaining red stuff in the strainer is iron oxide. Allow for it to dry and your done! Hope this helps!
I need to try the method you mentioned.
Gonna try this
Has anyone tried this?
@@crisfer22 yes it works, but the amount of peroxide you need is probably three or four bottles of your standard 3%, or get concentrated 30% which i dont recomend at all. It can be dangerous at that concentration. They also imply that the reaction is complete when it stops bubbling, no that can also indicate that all of the peroxode had been catylised as well and not all kf the iron had been converted.
Depending on what you want it for, the recipe also called for using salt, ans you might not want soduim ions in your mix. If youre using is a ceramic colouring like in the video, them you definately do not want chloride ions either at those temperatures as the trace a,ount of salt will melt and possibly flake your coating, or react with your glaze or ceramic.
@@nunyabisnass1141 Wow! Thanks so much for that in depth answer! I'm a beginner at pottery and I love the diy kitchen science experiment options but I definitely don't know anything about the chemistry of it yet. You saved me time and a lot of hydrogen peroxide!
Btw, can you recommend any books or other resources to learn these kind of things?
Love the look of the green one!
Love your experiments. Very interesting stuff. If I had my studio I'd want to try things like this. We all learn when you learn and post about it. Please keep it up!
I did an experiment to make ferric acetate to replace ferric chloride for the foil saggar raku technique. The first step was placing steel wool in hydrogen peroxide to oxidize the steel and create rust. This worked well, you might give that a try if you haven't lost interest yet 😊 I enjoy following your exploration of clay subjects. Keep trying new things, we all learn from you 👌
Hydrogen peroxide. It didn't even cross my mind. Thanks!
Wynhill Pottery I would love to know more on how you did this to replace the ferric chloride. I would much rather use something else if it could be safer. Thank you
Teai Day - That was my reason for trying the experiment. I learned the method online from a teacher's posting of her class experiment to create ferric acetate using hydrogen peroxide, steel wool and vinegar. It worked okay to make the ferric acetate, but the product won't fume, so it doesn't come close to replacing ferric chloride which does fume during saggar firing. There was some nice rusty color that sadly wiped off, but what remained was a nice buckskin brown. Since it didn't show promise I stopped working with it.
thanks for sharing Justins Makery
The reason its not red i'm guessing is because its still iron. Iron oxide needs water & oxygen in order to form so having the oxidizing environment without the water as with the kiln is not sufficient to create the reaction and having the water without the oxygen is not sufficient neither as you saw from the almost complete lack of rust on the submerged iron wool.
The piece of steel wool that was semi submerged was in the perfect environment for rust to form with both water and oxygen present.
We can heat up iron even higher in a crucible and it still will not turn into iron oxide but instead will melt into smolten iron. I'm guessing the reason it doesn't oxidize is because of the lack of water. If you want a real quick way of making iron oxide put a little bit of water in the bottom of a jar, put in your steel wool, put on the lid nice and tight and then place it in a warm place like on a radiator or a stove. The warmth will cause the water to transpire and coat the steel wool whilst still leaving plenty of access for oxygen to also make contact with the wool. Crack it open every day or two to allow in extra oxygen and hey presto you will have a rust making machine.
Alternatively you can move to Ireland and forget to paint your tractor and when you get outside to drive it, it will fall apart from rust because that exact process is playing out on a much larger scale, transpiration creates thin layer of water on steel objects, oxygen is still able to make contact and hey presto, stuff rusts here like nobody's business.
What you desire is Iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (red rust), pure Iron oxide is black. The best method is to use electrolysis in salt water, water will provide both hydrogen and oxygen. Or you could just leave the steel wool in the salt water for an extended period with heat. Drying it and rewetting it in the salt water several times, exposing it to oxygen and hydrogen in the air.
There are other oxides of iron like FeO which is black, Fe3O4 (magnetite which is also black). You can try runing DC current trough a solution of salt using iron electrodes. This will produce a brown/black precipitate. You filter that, let it dry and heat it. I did that a few years ago and got a really nice red color. Another option would be to make some iron sulphate from and some copper sulphate. Then you can add sodium bicarbonate to the iron sulphate solution (this one should be green, but it oxidizes quickly and becomes brownish) and just dry the precipitate and heat it up. This method I haven't tried tough so I'm not sure how it would turn out.
Salt will speed it up.
I use "red" iron pigments in my glass fusing work. It is laser toner. I mostly use it for printing "in" the glass, laser printing on decal paper. It comes out "burnt orange" (same color as the university of Texas football jerseys, convenient for making art for ut football fans). You can get toner, a super fine black powder. The black turns burnt orange while firing, no oxygen required.
So if you just wanted the black iron oxide, I'm like 90% sure this is the same reaction you get when you ignite the steel wool with an open flame or a battery. But other people are making some pretty solid points about getting the red ferric oxide. I don't strictly need to worry about making my own red, since my craft guild does that, but having the powder opens up some possibilities...
Try hydrogen peroxide. It's water with extra oxygen attached. And maybe a dash of vinegar as an electrolyte.
A buddy of mine made a wood stain by dissolving steel wool in straight vinegar = = red stained barn ( bugs don't like to eat rust ) that looks great.Could you do the same but put magnets around the bucket then drain off the vinegar when the steel wool is dissolved? ( Just a thought) .Thanks for the show dude (;>)
i guess it is pretty off topic but do anyone know of a good place to stream newly released series online?
@Alfred Thaddeus i would suggest FlixZone. Just google for it =)
@Alfred Thaddeus Try Flixzone. Just search on google for it =)
They used to ebonise wood this way...steel wool in vinegar and paint with the liquid...
What a great experiment. I wonder if there are too many impurities in steel wool. There could be a wide range of scrap metallics that make the wool
I wonder that as well. I'm sure they aren't using the finest steel available. :)
Most steel wool have a ton of chromium and decent bit of carbon so that could've had something to do with it
Hi Justin, thanks for the videos and all your tests and ideas. I have an idea of my own! How about more in front of the camera time for you? It’s nice to hear you but let’s put a face to the voice!!?
Hello, my name is Justin. I am a wizard who throws darts at a periodic table and then says- I can make art from that!
Further proof- art wizard wand @ 5:57
If we add Hydrochloride acid than it increases rate of reaction
Soak in vinegar then discard the steel particles and pant the brisk ware with the solution.
Thank you. I will try that.
I put the bisque iron dust in glaze. One video I saw put the iron particles in the clay
What happened when it was put into the clay?
Hey,
I think you could get more rust by spraying vinegar on the wool
That is a good idea. I'm going to try that tonight. Never occurred to me.... Thanks!
Justins Makery, mix salt, vinegar, and water. Cook the steal wool and grind it like before then submerge it in the brine. You’ll have very very very thick oxidized iron. Barn red.
Try soaking in vinegar to enhance the rust
Now he is giving water to steel wool...
Its gonna grow!
7 wed sep22
Hello very nice work 👍 well done, please activate the translation, my greetings to you 🌹
You have made black iron oxide instead of red.
I know this post is quite old, but the process described by @W.Neil .Appleby is how to make iron acetate. Iron acetate and iron oxide are different chemical structures due to one being decomposed by a concentrated presence of oxygen in the surrounded environment (as in the case of electrolysis) with some hydrogen (H) to initially bond the oxygen (O) to the iron (Fe) then ideally stripped to an iron oxide such as, but not limited to, i.e. (Fe₂O₃), if the hydrogen is not stripped from solution then you have an iron hydroxide such as, again not limited to, (FeHO₂), notice the hydrogen presence now, with a lower iron and oxygen levels. Both look similar to each other in their various forms, the oxide form is preferred by manufacturers because of its ease and simplicity in chemically breaking the bonds to make soluble in solution and creating emulsions, whereas the hydroxide version require a more elaborate method to break the bonds because of the presence of hydrogen (H) and if not done properly can become a gummy mess. Now compare this with an iron acetate i.e., (C₁₄H₂₇Fe₃O₁₈) notice now we have carbon atoms in this element, that is because in the case of iron acetate we are simply dissolving the iron (Fe) with an acid, i.e. vinegar (as mentioned above), which originally was thought to be food safe, although later found not totally true, and was mainly used as a chemical stain for wood that contained higher concentrations of tannins, especially hardwood such as oak etc. I hope this somewhat explains the differences between the various elements discussed in this post, of course there is a lot more to it than explained here, but I tried to keep it as short as possible and hopefully provide a better understanding. In short the elements discussed above and asked about within this post are chemically different and will react differently compared to each other i.e., iron acetate is soluble in ethanol has a Melting point: 190-200 °C, iron oxide is not soluble and has a Melting point: 2,849°F (1,565°C), iron hydroxide is soluble in water if ph is not 7 (neutral) such as pure distilled water and has a Melting point: 275°F (135°C).
Also in the video I noticed you asked if anyone knew why the material was not red or brown. I don't know if you found out why by now, but just in case you didn't. There are many reasons why, one could be the lack of oxygen (in the case of using a kiln) which has the effect known as decarbonation (or decarb for short) which is a forgers nightmare, which occurs when metals such as iron is heated in an oxygen free environment such as a container that semi sealed (small opening at the top) causing whatever oxygen that is in the container, forge, or kiln to escape or used as fuel. If you ever made charcoal you understand what I mean. When we make Iron oxide in the laboratory for pigments and pyrotechnics, we simply heat it fully open to the environment, no kiln, no forge, just on top of a large furnace which causes the iron (we used powdered iron) to reach around 400°F and fans blowing outside (filtered) air onto the heated metal. The conversion starts almost immediately (within about 10 mins. or so) and we produce around 24 tons a day using this process for as long as I have worked there and even before that (since opening in 1861 for use in paint). Also take note that pure iron oxide is a dark grey to almost black and this is made in a closed system evacuated and continuously flooded/flushed with pure oxygen and a very small amount of hydrogen at the same temperature as above then openly reheated in a similar fashion as above to remove the hydrogen but without the fans because the fans cause the iron oxide to further decomposed to give that red to brown color that so many people are familiar with. It depends on the color your trying to achieve determines which process, duration of time and so on. All in all it is quite simple, heat it in the presence of oxygen. It is that simple. I see a lot of videos out there, especially on UA-cam, where they make more out of this then is necessary. Could you imagine how much this stuff would cost if you used there supposed processes they claim to use, which most of the time produces results that are not what they claim. I see it a lot. After all at the end of the day it is just rust and how much would you pay for rust when you can get it for free. That is actually a real quote from a sign where I work.
I hope this helps someone. J.R.
Interesting! Thank you for such a detailed comment. I appreciate it.
@@JustinsMakery Your very welcome. Sorry if I went a little long though. Hope it helps.
@@JustinsMakery by the way your channel is awesome!
Thank you for taking the time to explain the chemistry reactions, I have learned a lot, you must be a chemist.
@@villiasimpkins4820 You're very welcome. I'm glad it helped you. Yes over 40 years now.