styropyro

new short vid

I felt like breaking out my monster vacuum tube tesla coil, so I made a quick short vid about a strange property of it

upcoming stuff

I decided to start recording a squirrel vid because, well, why not? ophelia is popular on my shorts channel and it's been a couple years since i've posted about her, so I think it's about time for an update. plus, i'm slowly befriending some of the other squirrels here as well.

On another note, I'm going to attempt a patreon only live stream soon. I ordered some parts to make streaming from my camera possible so assuming I can get that working, i'll let you know when I plan my first st...

health updates

It's been a wild past couple weeks between round two of testing and open sauce. I got the liver biopsy 4 days before flying out. It sucked, and still hurts, but I'm glad it's over with. When I was in recovery, one of the nurses heard me talking and ran in and asked "are you styropyro??" 😂

I got the results when my second flight to open sauce was taxiing on runway. as expected, the biopsy didn't actually diagnose the problem, but it did show that the extent of chronic liver damage is...

sounds and sights on the farm

First off I want to thank everybody for the incredible outpouring of support after my recent vid. It's going to take me a long while to get through all of these messages!

I've mentioned the 17-year cicadas both here and in that vid but I wanted to share what it has sounded like at my place the past few days. It is so unbelievably loud outside. The funny thing is that once the cicadas quiet down with the sunset, then the tree frogs start going wild and making a bunch of noise as well! T...

channel/health update video

I really hate putting this kind of personal drama on my main channel but I've come to the conclusion that it's better than not posting anything. Most of the stuff in here I've already told you guys via text posts over the past few months, but I also added a bit about some cool nature stuff I've been enjoying.

I will continue giving updates as I get them, and I'll get back to the extreme projects regardless of the news I get. I just want some sort of answers before returning to the reg...

hunting tornadoes in a historic outbreak

Something I've wanted to do for years was to drive out to the plains and experience a big tornado outbreak. I'd always consider it when the forecasts looked promising, but I'd never actually make the commitment and go out. However, my current medical nightmare made me realize I should be prioritizing bucket list stuff. So, I took a trip out to the plains when the weather pattern looked like it would favor tornadoes. I got a bit more than I bargained for, because one of those days ended up pro...

updates and new videos

I finally saw the liver doc and I really like him. He ordered some more tests and imaging. The blood work didn't give any answers so now I get a liver biopsy next week. I get to have a piece of my liver ripped out while I'm awake. yay. Last week I had my "fibroscan" ordered which doesn't tell me why I'm sick but estimates the severity of the liver disease. The date came and I fasted all day for it according to the instructions, but when I got there, they tried giving me the wrong scan. It tur...

aurora

Aurora watching was incredible to say the least. I about had a heart attack when the sun finally dropped far enough below the horizon to reveal that the entire sky was filled with lights. Honestly I botched most of my opportunity to film and photograph it but at least I got this nice time lapse after a round of clouds moved through. I'm really hoping for more opportunities like this as we approach the peak of the solar cycle!

updates

I'm sorry I've been bad about posting recently. I've done quite a bit of traveling (for me anyway) and I also spent a bunch of time planning for a big collab that ended up not happening. Also, the uncertainty of my current health drama has kinda made it hard for me to get in front of a camera and do the normal thing right now. All of my medical imaging was normal so that's good. I do have blood markers for liver disease however. I've had those for over a decade, but I tested negative for all ...

400W handheld laser progress

I decided to use an old radar gun to house this new laser, just like the 100W blue laser I built back in 2020. Going for quadruple the power in the same space brings up some significant challenges however. Nearly every millimeter of space inside the radar gun gets used. Most of my time spent so far is playing tetris with the batteries and drive circuitry. 

My design process for electrical projects is quite flawed really. I typically start building a circuit before having the schema...

big laser arrays finally arrived

The arrays for my 400W handheld laser project finally showed up, but the packaging used wasn't exactly adequate. They were tossed in little bags and placed in a tiny box that got crushed on the way over here. The arrays themselves do look to be intact though, other than the tabs being bent a little bit. Now I have nearly everything I need on hand to finish the project, however I've been too preoccupied with other stuff to make much progress. That should change this week though.

These ne...

"dangerous people" panel at Open Sauce

Last year I did a panel with the Backyard Scientist, Colin Furze, the Hacksmith, and Electroboom at Open Sauce 2023. We talked about our dangerous projects as well as our visits from federal agents. This talk finally got published so here's a link to it! FYI I will be going to Open Sauce this year as well! 

change of plans

I started attempting some of the chemical formulary experiments but ran into some failures. I'm sure I'll be able to make some of them succeed by tweaking the recipes, but in the meantime, I got distracted by the newest high power laser diode arrays on the market. My last giant handheld blue laser was 100W, and the new arrays can be pushed to 200W. However, I don't want to stop there. I want to splice the beams from two of these arrays together to make an absurd 400W handheld blue laser. It's...

new storm chase vid

I recently chased a rare february tornado near my home and made a quick vid about it. The tornado itself wasn't all that impressive, but the storm was quite beautiful and the event was unprecedented for my area given the time of year.

meteorology was my dream career, but the irony is that if i had become a meteorologist, I'd have less opportunities to go document weird and interesting storms like this. 

chemical formulary part 5

I think I'm going to do part 5 of the chemical formulary series for my next video. I've picked a nice set of experiments to try so far, and I've already began ordering a bunch of chemicals. At this point, I've made it through the first 10 volumes, and although I've began reading past that, there's a good chance this will be the last episode of the series. The recipes get more sane as they become more recent, and I've already tested most of the low hanging fruit already. I will say that even i...

enormous vaccuum tube

I guess it's time I'll admit to this fairly irresponsible impulse purchase of mine a while ago. This is a soviet tetrode rated for 80kW of output power, and if it's like every other soviet tube I've used, it'll be able to do substantially more than that. This beast weighs 33kg / 73lbs. The dream project for this is throwing my full 100kW power hookup at a "demon circuit" based on this tube. However, this is quite uncharted territory and would be quite a challenge to pull off. An easier projec...

ophelia visit

oh also, enjoy this quick clip of ophelia visiting me on a cold day 

choosing the next video

I'm not the type of youtuber to have a calendar planned out with the videos I plan to produce. Usually I spend some time after finishing a video just exploring other video topics. The current top contenders for the next video are either a "lightsaber" build based on my bank of car batteries, a huge "demon circuit" with a 100kW vacuum tube, or simply the 5th episode of the chemical formulary series.  In the meantime, I've been confined mostly indoors due to the recent winter storms and co...

new video! upgrading a laser welder into a directed energy tower

Patreon early viewing of my new video! This video ended up way longer than I was expecting, but that seems to be the trend with my videos recently. I was able to get in quite a few experiments in this one. My only complaint about it is that it's probably the least colorful video I've made. The laser is invisible and the forest is asleep so most shots are lacking in color. Hopefully the extreme range and power of the laser makes up for that.

Now for the daunting task of cooking up a thu...

pyro laser target to celebrate the new year

not exactly a difficult target to ignite, but certainly a fun fire filled one :p I wonder what's the chance YT will let me keep this part in the final vid lol 

shot a hole through firebrick from 70m away

The new optics finally arrived and the upgraded telescope has been built. Once I got it focused, it was clear that the power density was substantially higher than the last scope. At this point, the limiting factor isn't the optics, it's the wobbly tower and mount the laser is sitting in. The laser spot is way smaller than that hole makes it seem, but it's so hard to keep it perfectly stable that all the holes I shoot into things from this distance end up big. I think I'm going to call this go...

failure and first shots in the tower

today was super foggy, and i was bummed because i wanted to take distant shots and figured the fog would ruin the beam. i got in the tower anyway, and decided to run my camera in nightshot mode and see what it would look like. sure enough, the beam was quite visible, which was surprising to me considering this wavelength is on the fringes of what my camera can pick up, but I guess 2kW of light can make up for it.

now for the story of the tele cope: it blew up and what you are seeing h...

tele cope

I wouldn't have expected to spend two days mounting four lenses but that's the "fun" of DIY optics. see how the telescope is bent in the first pic? that's intentional. thus the name, tele cope.

let me tell you, the inside of that telescope is ugly, even for what I make. I had to shim the optics near the head because the beam exiting the welding system is not straight nor is it centered. I opened up the head to try aligning that, and found that the optics in there were already shimmed w...

video updates

i wanted to share some stills from the first part of my video:
1: cleaning rust (its actual intended application)
2. glass "fulgurite" made by melting sand with the laser, and then illuminated by a cyan laser
3. burning through a chain of mirrors
4. burning tungsten which makes a ton of blue and violet light
5. kitties inspecting tower parts
6. assembled tower

Today I've been fine tuning the telescope attachment. It has been a nightmare to get it in focus and aligned...

fun with directed energy

I apologize for the lack of updates, I've been spending way too much time in the forest recently. I have gotten a good start on the next video though, and today I finally received the lenses I needed to build a telescope for the 2kW fiber laser I've mentioned earlier. The expanding lenses here are rated for a whopping megawatt per square centimeter, so they should be able to hold up to the insane power of this laser. I'm hoping to pull off some distant shots with the system. To top it off, I'...

2kW laser welder

After watching the Backyard Scientist's video on his laser cleaning and welding machine, I decided to take the plunge and order a similar one. The buying process was sketchy to say the least. I had to wire $10k to China and I never received a working tracking number. However, after a few months of waiting, it arrived (mostly) intact. Unfortunately, there is no manual with it, and I learned the hard way that the machine allows you to pick operating parameters that destroy the head nearly insta...

slow motion

Say I collabed with somebody with a very high speed camera. What experiments would you want to see done?

In other news, I apologize for the lack of posts recently. I needed a break after the car battery vid because that one was a lot of work. In the meantime I've been planning out some projects trying to decide which one I want to do next for a video. I really want to get another vid out before the end of the year because my upload schedule is looking pretty shameful! It's just so har...

new chemistry short early viewing

I was in the mood to make a chemistry short so I decided to try a very dangerous penny experiment. Since I've already dissolved a whole penny in acid, as well as the zinc core of a penny, I wanted to complete the trio by try dissolving just the copper plating (without damaging the zinc). This turned out to be quite difficult as zinc is the more reactive metal under most conditions. I attacked the copper with a polysulfide solution and then cleaned it up with cyanide. It sure took an impressiv...

car battery vid is finally here! enjoy!

Here's the completed car battery video! I hope it was worth the wait!

camera damage

the car battery vid has been finished for a while but i'm currently waiting for sponsor approval to be able to show it to you guys! to be fair, they probably need a full legal team to go through some of the experiments and jokes lol. it is by far the longest video i've made at nearly 40 minutes.

i trashed the outer lens on my camcorder but I was able to find a relatively cheap replacement lens for it. too bad my nice sigma lens doesn't have the same replacements available.

anoth...