Blacksmith gets fed up, proves 9/11 jet fuel argument wrong

[Rogue 9]

I know we all know this. But there's a difference between telling someone that steel becomes extremely malleable long before it melts, and showing them that.

As long as I'm on the subject, I'll toss in a shout-out to R.K. Owens' excellent video series on the subject as well.

[Elheru Aran]

That's been making the rounds among my blacksmith/sword-making friends on FB. Good show.

[muse]

A forge isn't burning jet fuel and he said that it was actually hotter than burning jet fuel.
Therefore his demonstration is invalid.

What do you say to that?

[Rogue 9]

A forge isn't burning jet fuel and he said that it was actually hotter than burning jet fuel.
Therefore his demonstration is invalid.

What do you say to that?

Immaterial. The conspiracy theorists' claim is that the steel of the World Trade Center melted, that it had to melt for the building to buckle, therefore thermite charges. While marginally hotter than jet fuel (relatively speaking), the bar is still nearly a thousand degrees cooler than the melting point of the steel; it's an effective demonstration that steel can buckle well short of actually melting.

[LaCroix]

I've been telling the same thing for years - people actually do shut up nicely when I mention that I'm a blacksmith and how this all works...

[Isolder74]

I've been telling the same thing for years - people actually do shut up nicely when I mention that I'm a blacksmith and how this all works...

The big point is the lack of understanding how metal works. The "Theorists" claim is that the "official" story is that the steel melted, when that isn't it at all, and jet fuel can't do that. The sad thing is that you don't need a forge to see how this is wrong, any campfire gets hot enough to show how steel can weaken when it gets hot.

[LadyTevar]

*APPLAUDS*
Of course, now the truthers will say it wasn't really steel... or that the steel in his video wasn't thick enough. Anythin to deny the fact that he just took their main argument and blasted it with a Sunkiller weapon.

[Zaune]

I dunno why they have to make it so complicated anyway. Isn't it much simpler and more plausible to suggest that the FBI, CIA and/or various other three-letter agencies knew the attack was imminent but intentionally let it happen because the Bush administration needed a convenient smoking gun to justify their political agenda?

[Lord Revan]

I dunno why they have to make it so complicated anyway. Isn't it much simpler and more plausible to suggest that the FBI, CIA and/or various other three-letter agencies knew the attack was imminent but intentionally let it happen because the Bush administration needed a convenient smoking gun to justify their political agenda?

I'm guessing it doesn't make the goverment look "evil" enough for their tastes, these people are hardly rational after all.

[Captain Seafort]

I dunno why they have to make it so complicated anyway. Isn't it much simpler and more plausible to suggest that the FBI, CIA and/or various other three-letter agencies knew the attack was imminent but intentionally let it happen because the Bush administration needed a convenient smoking gun to justify their political agenda?

The "towers were rigged for demolition" "theory" is one of the simpler ones. The more complicated ones involve drones rigged with 757-shaped plywood disguises, flamethrowers and air-to-air missiles.

[Sky Captain]

Why conspiracy theorists put so much emphasis on controlled demolition? If the towers had remained standing as burnt out wrecks would it had changed anything in how US reacted to attack? Death toll probably would be quite similar because those trapped in upper floors would have died in fire anyway since escape routes were blocked with debris and fire. US probably would have freaked out and overreacted to attack even if terrorists had only smuggled bombs on board and blown up those hijacked airliners without causing other damages.

[Isolder74]

Why conspiracy theorists put so much emphasis on controlled demolition? If the towers had remained standing as burnt out wrecks would it had changed anything in how US reacted to attack? Death toll probably would be quite similar because those trapped in upper floors would have died in fire anyway since escape routes were blocked with debris and fire. US probably would have freaked out and overreacted to attack even if terrorists had only smuggled bombs on board and blown up those hijacked airliners without causing other damages.

I think that it is mainly because they want to latch onto the visceral image of the towers collapsing. This is probably why they tend to focus so much energy on the collapse of Building 7 over those of the twin towers as those still do have the damage from their aircraft to more easily poke holes in their argument. Building 7 has the ability for them to pretend that it wasn't damaged to start with and they have pictures of the undamaged north facade to parade around to try and convince people that the only explanation is that it fell from a controlled magic demolition using their magic thermite charges. Never mind that they will never show a complete film of the collapse but only start their videos when the north facade finally starts to drop and never mind that the building was fully involved with massive fires on multiple floors unchecked for hours. The timeline of events mean nothing to these people. When they do ever acknowledge the collapsing of the east penthouse(which they almost never do), they usually follow with claims about it not being enough damage to cause further collapse. They love going after and knocking over the straw man of the substation saying that it had no effect on the collapse, ignoring the structural compromises that building the tower over it required and then try to say that nothing short of explosives could compromise those cantilever truss spans.

I've seen it before, they've taken Gage and a few other of these nuts and had them watch a steel beam become a noodle over a puddle of burning jets fuel and they just simply say the demonstration is invalid because they didn't place a reconstruction of a section of the floor over the fire. All this proves is even if they did, they'd just weasel themselves another reason to ignore the results.

[jwl]

*APPLAUDS*
Of course, now the truthers will say it wasn't really steel... or that the steel in his video wasn't thick enough. Anythin to deny the fact that he just took their main argument and blasted it with a Sunkiller weapon.

From reading the comments, there seems to be two main arguments they put across:
1) Whether steel beams melting is necessary for the building falling is irrelevant because according to them there is eyewitnesses accounts of molten steel or steel found which looked like it had been melted underneath the building.
2) The demonstration is not realistic to the situation in 9/11 because there the beams were larger and the fire was going on for a shorter timeframe than the beam was in the furnace.

[LaCroix]

The molten steel could in part be explained by a chimney effect:
A huge fire will cause a lot of air sucked in - the fire in the vicinity of that air influx will burn much hotter - this is how a furnace works.

Normal charcoal would burn at around 7-800°C. By pushing a LOT of air into it, I can get it up to easily 1300°C.

Why I know this? Because I have done it. Every blacksmith has done that on occasion, by mistake. Mistake, because at 1250°C, the carbon in the steel itsef catches fire. Yes, the steel is starting to actually burn. Once that happens, you will get liquid steel, and might even have steel dripping down from the object when you pull it out. Any steel object subjected to such a draft will look molten, as that's what did happen... Give it a big enough fire and a unlucky channel of draft, and some beams might actually partially melt.

[Isolder74]

*APPLAUDS*
Of course, now the truthers will say it wasn't really steel... or that the steel in his video wasn't thick enough. Anythin to deny the fact that he just took their main argument and blasted it with a Sunkiller weapon.

From reading the comments, there seems to be two main arguments they put across:
1) Whether steel beams melting is necessary for the building falling is irrelevant because according to them there is eyewitnesses accounts of molten steel or steel found which looked like it had been melted underneath the building.
2) The demonstration is not realistic to the situation in 9/11 because there the beams were larger and the fire was going on for a shorter timeframe than the beam was in the furnace.

The problem is that the molten metal that they like to site was coming from a corner of the building in an area that included a massive battery back up system(lots of lead). To make it better it's also where a good part of the plane's aluminium parts ended up both of which melt at much lower temps then steel. This was happening at the peak of the the fire right before the building collapsed.

The second problem is that most of the so called evidence they put forward of molten metal is blatant manipulation of photos taken during the rescue efforts of firefighters inserting lights inside cavities in the ruins looking for possible survivors. As for some minor area with pooled metal, we can just go back to the light metals that the fire could easily melt all about the effected areas of the building.

Of course it doesn't matter to the truthers whether or not there is a valid reason for the stuff. All they are after is a chance to pose a begs the question moment to supposedly raise doubt in someone's mind.

Edit: autocorrect changed truther into truth…yay!

[jwl]

I figured that the "molten steel" they were talking about was probably another metal that they assumed was steel. I didn't know about the thing LaCroix mentioned though, that is interesting.

[Me2005]

The molten steel could in part be explained by a chimney effect:
A huge fire will cause a lot of air sucked in - the fire in the vicinity of that air influx will burn much hotter - this is how a furnace works....

Shoot, you don't even need to get into this kind of stuff. Find an image of a wood/steel building where the steel beams melted over the wood in the fire, like this one:


Steel looses nearly all of it's strength between 700 and 1,000 degrees (it goes plastic), and it's a great conductor of heat so it heats up quickly. Wood burns if it gets hot, but only the outermost layers - it's self-insulating. The unburned portions still have their full strength.

Basically, steel looses all its strength if it gets hot, wood may burn if it gets hot but remains strong until burned through. That's why you see that foam on exposed steel, and that's what got blown off the WTC in the initial impact.

[Isolder74]

You don't even have to go that much into it, either.

There is the case of the McCormick Conference Center fire. A building with a open floorplan truss roof caught fire on the convention floor. Said fire was only burning the temp structures of the convention that had just closed a few days before when an electrical fire started in one of the broom closets and moved out onto the convention floor. About 30 mins after the fire was reported, the roof collapsed onto convention floor right on top of firefighters fighting the fire. Since the design of the floors of the Trade Center almost match the roof I think it's fair to call the matter dead and buried.

[LaCroix]

These beams were only bent - you could restraighten them and reuse, no problem

I talk about actual melting - as in becoming liquefied and bubbly and drops dripping off it. That's what happens when you "burn" steel in a furnace. The end result is a blobby bit of pure iron, all carbon lost (burned off).

That's a whole different thing - it cannot happen in a mere fire, you need a constant high volume stream of oxigen, as it does happen with the chimney effect. Basically an accidental blast furnace.

[Isolder74]

These beams were only bent - you could restraighten them and reuse, no problem

I talk about actual melting - as in becoming liquefied and bubbly and drops dripping off it. That's what happens when you "burn" steel in a furnace. The end result is a blobby bit of pure iron, all carbon lost (burned off).

That's a whole different thing - it cannot happen in a mere fire, you need a constant high volume stream of oxigen, as it does happen with the chimney effect. Basically an accidental blast furnace.

It's not likely that they could just be straightened to make them usable. Not only have they been heat damaged, they also have been stressed. It's most likely you'd have to retemper the steel to make it usable again. Those are also solid beams, and a truss span will fall apart in a similar fire due to uneven expansions of the various elements.

[LaCroix]

It's not likely that they could just be straightened to make them usable. Not only have they been heat damaged, they also have been stressed. It's most likely you'd have to retemper the steel to make it usable again. Those are also solid beams, and a truss span will fall apart in a similar fire due to uneven expansions of the various elements.

I-beams are made of mild steel (iron with less than .35% carbon, no other alloy elements) - you can't really temper them. Unless they were exposed to very high temeratures (above 900C, where you could expect the carbon to burn off), simple heating, straightening and reforming to their original dimensions would make them already annealed, 'tempered' and in their nominal state.

Of course, you would want to melt them down and recast them, for it is easier to do that way, but it could be done if you had to.

[SMJB]

I dunno why they have to make it so complicated anyway. Isn't it much simpler and more plausible to suggest that the FBI, CIA and/or various other three-letter agencies knew the attack was imminent but intentionally let it happen because the Bush administration needed a convenient smoking gun to justify their political agenda?

Because that doesn't fulfill the emotional need that conspiracy theories like this are proposed to fill. The whole point, on a subconscious level, is that the idea that that the most powerful nation on Earth was brought to its knees by twenty assholes with box-cutters and plane tickets is just too scary to accept. The idea that there were hundreds or perhaps thousands of people involved in a conspiracy that perhaps goes back decades and uses super-secret cutting-edge materials and technology is much more comforting, because at least that would mean that it requires something like that to hurt us the way we were hurt on 9/11.

[CatNadian]

What if some theories are true...you can't actually believe the official explanation of the authorities,i'm definitly not an expert in buildings,but shouldn't the building have collapse differently,since it was not a controlled demolition,and fallen sideways on some of the surrounding buildings?

[Rogue 9]

What if some theories are true...you can't actually believe the official explanation of the authorities,i'm definitly not an expert in buildings,but shouldn't the building have collapse differently,since it was not a controlled demolition,and fallen sideways on some of the surrounding buildings?

No. The twin towers didn't collapse directly into their footprints, first of all (see WTC 7), and the core support construction of the towers meant that in the event of failure of the core most of the structure would collapse inward. We're not talking about chopping down a tree, here.

[Captain Seafort]

Moreover, AFAIK when a controlled demolition is carried out on a big building, it's set up to fall sideways, so that those doing it know where it's going to land, rather than trying to drop it vertically with the risk of it going all over the place (as happened with the towers).