2/13/2006: Splashing molten metal as folk art

I wish this shot were larger. It would be much cooler-looking if it were about twice this size. But the most amazing thing is what the guy is doing: he's splashing molten iron into the air.

He's only wearing a wet sheepskin coat to protect himself, too. It turns out this is a folk art called "Dashuhua", and it's performed here to celebrate a lantern festival.

ppl do strange things

Cool picture.

I wonder where you get a bucket of molten iron? I assume the festival is not held inside a steel mill.

The steelworkers are NOT gonna like this.

Xinhua - English Version has a little more information and a small slide show:

Oh! This is China! No OSHA worries, then! Carry on!

(the lantern festival bit really should have tipped me off, but it didn't.)

hmmmm.... 'art' these days.......

WaPo.

I don't think workplace health and safety would allow that here...

You can get a very similar effect by throwing a snowball into a pot of molten metal. The steam explosion can empty the pot. One guy put an ingot of aluminum into a pot without properly warming it. When it got hot enough to turn the moisture inside the ingot to steam, we got an aluminum coated ceiling plus aluminum rain. Only the guy loading the pot was nearby and his burns luckly turned out to be minor. The metal went mostly up instead of at him. He got a few pieces of rain on his head which gave him some unusual bald scars.

Lead too.
Found another WaPo picture.

You can get a very similar effect by throwing a snowball into a pot of molten metal. The steam explosion can empty the pot

I do Lots of work at a few steel mills in this area , I can atest to Aluminum poping with moisture , and I have see some one throw a full can of WD40 in to a slag trough ,
big boom !!!
But the All time best I have see was a LARGE slag pot dumped in the winter at nite , oh did I for get to mention that the operators had put a full gallon jug of water in the hole where the moltent slag was dumped , follow me here , cold ground , moltent slag and a jug of water , the slag covers the water that super heats and the steam has no where to go untill the slag gives way from the pressure , I was about 1/2 mile away and had to duck flying stuff , HELL of a lite show and a BIG BOOM !!!

OSHA would be appalled. But it does sound cool. From far away.

I will try and get pics of them dumping slag Minus the water jugs ( Yes the saftey dept made them quit ), after one nite , one cold and snowy nite when I55( the MAIN N-S coridore ) was shut down because of snow and ice , they dumped a bucket of slag ( with a jug of water under it ) , Yes it was a big resounding BOOM !!!( I was there ) So big infact that the rescue squad ( from town) came running because they thought that with THAT big a BOOM some one was SHURELY Fucked up , after the 5th fire truck left it was desided that THAT Would NEVER Happen again .
But DAMN !!!!!! You should have seen the light show at nite in the winter !!!!!!