Awesome Rocks

We’ve seen artists make chains out of wood, chalk, and even a carrot. In this video from Michigan Rocks, he shows how he took a rock and made a short length of chain from it. He cut the stone into a cross-shaped block, refined it into three main sections, and then drilled and cut away the pieces using rotary tools. It looked like a lot of work – especially the polishing.

Artist Justin Bateman creates incredible images using rocks he finds on the ground. Collecting and arranging various shapes, sizes, and colors of pebbles, he creates the illusion of light and shadow in his portraits. You can view more of Justin’s works on his Instagram.

Modern rice cookers are made from metal and plastic, but traditional Korean rice cookers are made from stone. This fascinating video from Factory Monster takes us inside a company that creates the bowl-shaped cookers and their lids by cutting them from a 9-ton boulder. The English subtitles are quite entertaining.

We’ve heard of stoneware mugs, but those are actually a kind of ceramics. Ben from Natural Stones worked a solid piece of igneous rock into a vessel for sipping coffee. The process involved cutting the stone repeatedly to form a cylinder, drilling out its center, sanding, and polishing it. He also made the handle from stone.

What you’re looking at here might look like some delicious sushi, but you definitely don’t want to bite down on it unless you’re ready to chip a tooth. Japanese artist ha_ma_73 makes incredibly accurate sushi replicas by carving and polishing stones. What’s even more amazing is that those are natural stone colors, not paint.

No time to go to the beach? Creative coder Neal Agarwal’s online toy Rocks lets you enjoy a soothing oceanside pastime from the comfort of your computer screen. The browser-based rock simulator offers sounds of the surf and four virtual rocks for your balancing enjoyment.

A viewer wrote to the Hydraulic Press Channel with the hypothetical question of whether it would be possible to compress loose ash with enough force that it would turn into a rock. Naturally, they complied and dumped a bucket of moistened ash into a cylinder to see what would happen under the pressure of their 150-ton press.

Climbing rocks and boulders typically requires the use of all of your available limbs. But rock climber Johnny Dawes has such impeccable balance (and sticky shoes) that he can climb boulders and even a sheer rock face without using his hands at all. He looks quite dapper doing it in that tweed jacket.

Stop-motion animator omozoc created this amusing short film, in which he bakes a delicious looking cake. But this pastry isn’t made from flour and sugar. Nope, this recipe consists almost entirely of rocks. It sure looks yummy, but you might chip a tooth eating a slice.

Andy of How to Make Everything has long had an interest in extracting metals from rocks. In his latest video, he dug up some copper ore from an abandoned mine, and attempted to pull out a usable amount of copper via a technique called electrowinning.

Pennsylvania’s Ringing Rocks Park is packed with boulders which create a unique sound when struck with a hammer. The percussionists of Square Peg Round Hole decided to use the park to record an original song using only rocks and hammers as their instruments.

Work out like a caveman with these prehistoric style dumbbells, kettlebells, ropebells, clubbells, and gripbells made from hunks of granite. Their handles are made from Finnish birch wood. (Thanks Kema!)