Can You Forge Tungsten?

The slight forge ability makes me think that Alex should definitely come back to this in the future with some special equipment. Hotter forge, better PPE

By adding tungsten to already melted steel - not only a physical, but also a chemical reaction occurs, where the two metals start mixing before the tungsten fully starts melting, effectively lowering its melting point. Edit: "Chemical change" is a better term here than a "chemical reaction".

$800 is a Steele

15:27 you made your hydraulic press cry😅

@14:41. "Steel(e) always goes in the rear...." 🤣🤣

I love Alex warned us not to do this at home, as if the average person might have a massive power hammer knocking about and a £1000 cube of Tungsten XD. Great videos, entertaining as always xxx

I puckered super tight when the cube shot out of the hammer at 16:13. Good golly, how are you still alive kid?

14:00 don’t do this at home puts away hundreds of dollars worth power tools and block of tungsten that I totally have

Making a tungsten axehead would be awesome

As a general rule of thumb most metals can be "hot worked" at around the same temperature that they can be sintered or annealled. This is usualy around 0.4-0.6 times their homologus melting temperature (the absolute temperature measured in kelvin). For tungston this would be 1205C-1944C so you should be pretty close. Some metals like lead are at this temperature at "room temperature" so they can be "forged" at room temperature of colder. This is the temperature where the kinetic energy of atoms due to their temperature becomes large enough for them to jump out of their lattice sites and diffuse throughout the crystal. Defects start anihilating and new crystals nucleate and replace stressed crystals (recrystalization) to lower the free energy of the metal by releiving stress and making "brand new" crystals with no imperfections. Tungston melts at a very high temperature but it is pretty chemically reative (it isn't stable as a reduced "pure" metal) and quickly reacts with gasses in the atmosphere. When it reacts to form oxygen the tungston oxide created has a much lower melting temperature and the molten oxide drips away exposing more metal to react with the air. If you've tried tig welding with no gas you will see something like this. When you put tungston into molten steel it will make a liquid at a pretty low temperature compared to its metling point. This is because alloys of things will generally "melt" at lower temperatures than pure things. For example salt dissolves into water in small amounts at room temperature, but pure salt melts at about 800 degrees celcius. Iron with different amounts of carbon melts at different temperatures and the lowest melting point is about 4% carbon at about 1200C (which we call cast iron because its so easy to melt). In general this is true because the increase in configurational entropy from additional solute is greater in the liquid phase then the solid phase (liquids are more random than solids this is why they exsist when you heat stuff up and everything starts moving around, adding different types of chemicals in makes it more random and so an alloy will be liquid at a lower temperature). Unless the mixture forms really strong bonds between atoms like sodium and chloride melting at the previously mentoined 800C when sodium would melting in a hot cup of tea and chlorine would be a gas in a deep freezer. Would be interesting to so the tungston welded in thinner peices (even steel is hard to weld when its that thick). Polarity of the welder would be important to keep the electrode from melting while the workpeice melts.

alec out here pioneering dwarven hand forged items lmao nice

Seems like you should make something which takes advantage of its unreasonably high density. Like a very small but oddly heavy peening hammer? An automatic touch mark stamp, so like an automatic centre punch but using the high mass of the tungsten as the internal hammer to really whack the end in hard. In industry, you commonly use tungsten as a bucking-bar to hold on the back of rivetts as you form them or for panel beating.

📍 Tungsten micro folding knife 📍 Tungsten shavings in a steel Damascus 📍 Tungsten logo marking stamp 📍 Tungsten hammer 📍 Tungsten sword Pommels! The extra weight counterbalances an extra long sword.

Can i forge tungsten or "I dont know how to get my steam hammer working soooooooooo try something".... LOL Love it ALEC!

13:32 I actually screamed. That could have marked you for life. It's insane that your immediate reaction was just mad laughter. You are terrifying

A little more info on the tungsten carbide cutters! The tungsten carbide is actually a powder, that is then mixed with often a cobalt or nickel based metal alloy powder. This mixture is then pressed into the shape of the tool, being a cutting insert or end mill, then sintered. This results in whats known as a "metal matrix", in this case, one with incredible hardness and heat dissipation.

I'd like to see it being made into a tiny anvil, but an axe head or a knife would be nice too. Though I think it could be big enough for multiple things

Clearly I cannot, better question is can you

I believe the tungsten dissolves into the steel at high temps. Like CO2 into water (soda) or acetylene into acetone.

you can't show us this magical material without making a knife out of it, please at least attempt make a tungsten knife for us.