It is amazing what heat water cooled copper can resist.

From 1990 to 1996 I used a “vacuum melt arc furnace” to make compounds and alloys.

This type of device is kind of a cross between
an “air arc”,
a vacuum chamber,
and a 4” thick pure copper plate with water cooling holes drilled through it.

I could strike a 100 amp electric arc through a tungsten electrode hitting the copper base plate and melt nearly anything.
The vacuum prevented oxygen from burning the copper and the water cooling prevented the copper from melting.

I could react pure chemicals together to make alloys,
then use the electric arc to “push” the molten blob into various shaped molds in the copper,
where it would cool into an ingot that in several shapes: buttons, rods, squares, hemispheres, triangles, etc.

I reacted all the “rare earth metals” with pure carbon to make rare earth carbides,
and later I reacted rare earths with the expensive “carbon-13” isotope.

On special request in 1991 I replaced the normal tungsten rod with a carbon rod and created “soot” with the electric arc that we scraped off the copper and dropped into benzene.
The benzene turned red,
indicating “buckyballs” had been created.

Amazing what water cooled copper can resist.