Casting a subterranean carpenter ant colony with molten aluminum. I haven’t done many casts of the colonies of this species and have only posted one video of these back in 2014. I started out planning to cast a fire ant colony and then using the leftover aluminum to cast this carpenter ant colony. The fire ant colony cast failed and I was left with way more aluminum than was needed for this colony, which only took about 3 lb. There were no other fire ant colonies in the area so I spent quite a bit of time pouring the remaining 20+ lb of aluminum into the few ingot molds I had available. It was getting pretty late into the night by the time I started digging so I was rushing and being sloppy with the digging and the filming. The attempted fire ant colony cast was for a university professor who wanted a few casts for research so I was a bit disappointed when that cast failed. All was not lost though, and I got a decent carpenter ant colony cast and a video worth posting.

This is an older fire ant colony casting video that was never posted. More colony casting videos were planned for late last year but the weather would not cooperate when I had time. I'll definitely be doing colony casts this year plus a few more ideas I've been working on.

Captions were added to the video to answer two common questions:

1) Why does the hill look like you just piled up dirt?

There is a layer of dirt placed on and around the hill to stabilize it and plug any holes. It doesn't happen often but occasionally aluminum will burst through the hill or come out of a foraging tunnel near the hill.

2) Why does the aluminum look like it's not moving?

The air cools the outer layer of the aluminum, forming a film. The aluminum is still flowing beneath the film.

About 19.3 lb of aluminum went into this fire ant hill and the finished cast is about 12" in height. Not bad. More info/pics here: https://www.anthillart.com/castings/070/

In this video, a cast is made of a fungus farming ant colony (Trachymyrmex septentrionalis) using an aluminum alloy. If you’ve seen my other videos, you may have noticed that each species of ant has a very distinct colony structure. Fire ant colonies have a dense network of tunnels with many small chambers whereas carpenter ants usually have a single tunnel leading to just a few large flat chambers. The fungus farming ant colonies have one of the most unique structures of all the colonies I’ve cast. These colonies have very large bulb-like chambers in which they actually farm fungus for food using plant matter as compost.

The colonies are easily identifiably here because they deposit the excavated dirt in a crescent-shaped mound a few inches from the colony entrance. There are a very large number of these colonies here. You could easily find 50 colonies per acre.

These colonies are very challenging to cast. They have very narrow (1/8 to 1/4” in diameter) tunnels leading to the large bulbs. During past attempts, the aluminum or zinc hardened in the tunnels before the chambers were filled. This time I used an aluminum alloy which maintains its temperature longer and has lower viscosity. That did the trick.

More pictures of this cast at: https://anthillart.com/castings/107/

A timelapse of a fire ant hill on a log being collapsed by rain and then being rebuilt by the ants, twice. The playback speed varies throughout the video but it’s somewhere in the ballpark of a few 100x normal speed. The audio is normal speed recordings I made during the timelapse.

This is an interesting fire ant colony, being built directly on top of a large rotten log. I don’t see them built like this very often so I had to get a timelapse of it. It’s not as dramatic of a collapse/rebuild as my last timelapse video but it turned out pretty cool.

I setup the camera taking pictures at fixed intervals and waited for the rain. Shortly after they rebuilt, more rain was on the way. So, I setup for a side view shot of the next rain (0:24). After they seemed to be done rebuilding the second time, I left the camera running night to keep shooting, thinking they may build some more. Sure enough, after dark they came back and built some more (0:40).

An aluminum snowman is made using a snowman shaped piece of styrofoam. The styrofoam is packed in casting sand (Petrobond) to create a mold. When poured into the mold, the molten aluminum vaporizes the styrofoam and fills the mold. This is known as lost foam casting. Holes are then drilled and tapped to attach common hardware such as screws and bolts to make the features. It’s a little weird, I know, but I wanted to do something with sand and lost foam casting, so this is what I came up with.

I’ll make some more ant colony casting videos soon.

Halloween Special: Carving a styrofoam pumpkin and casting it with molten bronze. I just finished it right before posting in order to get it out on Halloween at midnight (close enough) so no time to write a long description as I usually do. Maybe later. Let me know what you think.

Pouring molten aluminum into an under ground yellowjacket (wasp) nest. I’ve been waiting to make this video for a long time. If there is a hole in the ground, I’ve considered pouring aluminum into it. An underground yellowjacket nest is an obvious one, but I haven’t seen one in my yard, and in a suitable place to pour aluminum, since I posted my first video.

For those who don’t live around these, yellowjackets are a very aggressive wasp that build large nests in the ground and deliver many painful stings to anyone who disturbs them. I have experienced this myself several times. They hurt and can kill people who are allergic. Needless to say, you have to get rid of them if they’re in your yard.

I melted around fifteen pounds of aluminum and all of that went in. You can see in the video that it didn’t quite fill the cavity completely. It looks like the paper nests were pushed up by the molten aluminum, so near the end I was just pouring aluminum onto a stack of paper wasp nests. I don’t think pouring more would have done much other than push those high enough to block the entrance, without adding much to the final cast.

Soon after starting the pour, smoke from the burning nest built up pressure inside and burst through the ground. It looks a little more dramatic in the video than it actually was. It did startle me a little bit, I’m not going to lie, but I wasn’t in any real danger.

Spoiler: Yellowjackets don’t dig the holes they inhabit. They build nests in holes made by other animals. I knew that going in, and expected this would be an old ground squirrel hole or something similar. It actually seems to be built in an abandoned field ant colony. See my past videos to see a casting of a field ant colony. Yellowjackets don’t dig, but my understanding is that they can push the dirt around, which is why it’s more solid than an ant colony. I remember seeing a field ant colony in this area in the past and the entrance hole looked similar. I could be wrong about the species of ant but that long tunnel on the side was definitely made by ants and not a yellowjacket. The general shape also resembles an ant colony, although it has been altered by the yellowjackets and/or some intermediary animal.

This is from a timelapse taken over 15 hours of a fire ant colony before, during, and after a heavy rain storm. There was about an hour and a half of very heavy rain which collapsed the anthill. When the rain stopped, the ants poured out and spent many hours rebuilding the hill.

I setup my DSLR camera to take pictures with a timelapse trigger just in time before the rain started. I’ve tried this a few times and usually something goes wrong, either the rain doesn’t come or it rains but the ants don’t do anything afterward. This time it worked out perfectly.

The beginning of the video up until it stops raining is at 420x normal speed then it changes to around 720x normal speed. I included a few real-time clips took while the timelapse camera was running (1:40) so you can see how slow of a process it actually is for the ants.

Navigating the tunnels and chambers of an actual fire ant colony. This is a 3d scanned model of an aluminum cast of a fire ant colony. In the video you'll first see an animation simulation of running horizontally across the hill of the colony from one end to the other (0:38). Next, the simulation stats at near the original ground surface and travels to the bottom of the colony (1:57). I spent a lot of time running through different parts of the colony when making this video and think this is a good representation of the different structures within the colony.

The surface mound and higher portions of the below ground portion are mostly just tunnels, packed closely together. As you go deeper, the tunnels become a little more spaced out and larger chambers start to emerge.

Keep an eye on the bottom right for a projected map showing the current location within the colony, which switches from above view to side view at different points. Occasionally in the video, I show the location map closer in a split screen view to highlight interesting parts of the colony.

See the other videos on this channel to see the casting process.

Pictures of the aluminum ant colony cast used can be seen here: http://anthillart.com/castings/062

I used program called 3D Slicer to process the scan data (DICOM files) into a model of the ant colony. Then I imported the model into another free program called Blender to make the animations. I don’t know how such amazing software can be free but I appreciate the work they put into the programs and they deserve a shout out.

This is the first time I've made a cast with brass. The result is not bad but melting brass is a pain so I probably won't use it too often. I definitely don't see being able to use it for ant colonies since it takes so long to melt even a small amount. Also, the higher temperature causes it to react far more violently when it hits water than aluminum.

I believe this is a bolete mushroom. A few of these were in the yard and this was the best one. I don't know the exact type of mushroom this is. I don't see these very often and haven't since. If you know, tell me in the comments section.

See the cast page for more info and pictures: http://www.anthillart.com/castings/095

In this video, I make a cast of the inside of a fish skull with molten aluminum. I caught this 29 lb black drum a few years ago off the coast of Dauphin Island, Alabama in the Gulf of Mexico. I've had the skull displayed on a cabinet in my shop for a few years and recently thought it might be cool to cast it in molten aluminum.

Hopefully, it's clear in the video what I'm doing and why but if not, here is a detailed explanation:

I can't just pour aluminum into the skull without preparations because it would spill out of the eye sockets and other openings. In order to prevent that from happening, I'm going to encase the skull in plaster before casting. That presents a new problem, because the plaster would fill the skull and leave nothing to cast with aluminum.

To get around these problems, I sealed off all of the exterior openings with tape, except for the spinal cord opening which will be where the aluminum flows in. Then the skull is filled with wax. The solidified wax acts as a barrier to keep the plaster out of the skull.

Next, the tape is removed and the skull is encased in plaster which will keep the aluminum from bursting through the skull while the it hardens. The plaster mold is then placed into an oven to remove the wax, and as much moisture as possible. You can see in the video that there was still a bit of moisture in the plaster which is why it bubbles so much.

After the wax is removed the aluminum is poured in.

I was actually surprised that this worked so well. I wasn't sure if the skull would burn up too quickly and ruin the cast. It worked though. The coolest part is the brain cavity, which has two circular loops jutting out. Check it out on the website if you can't see it well in the video:

http://anthillart.com/castings/102

Pouring molten aluminum into a seashell to make a cast of the shell cavity. The shell is sealed with wax first. Then it's embedded with plaster to keep the aluminum from spilling out in case the shell cracks from the heat of the aluminum. After the plaster cures, the mold is placed in an oven to remove the wax. This is similar to the lost wax casting process. Once the wax is removed and the plaster is dried, aluminum is poured into the opening. It turned out surprisingly well, with all of the shell being filled and only minor cracking visible.

Mounted to a walnut wood base.

More pictures of the finished cast can be seen here: http://www.anthillart.com/castings/094/

This was my first attempt at casting a mushroom with molten metal (zinc and aluminum). I've put out two mushroom casting videos so far which I actually did after this one and they turned out much better. While my first attempt was not perfect, I thought it was pretty interesting and the finished cast turned out great.

I actually first got the idea to make mushroom casts when I saw this mushroom. I thought it looked really cool, like the mushrooms in Super Mario Bros with specs all over (amanita) . I grabbed some plaster I had lying around and poured the mold without really having any idea how I would make the finished metal cast. As an amateur with plaster, I didn't mix it good enough and the form I placed around the mushroom was insufficient and allowed the plaster to pour out as you can see in the video. No biggie though, you live you learn.

I experimented with different ways of getting the mushroom debris out (picking at it, heating it, washing it) and in the end I didn't get all of the mushroom out of the mold the first time. I also didn't dry the plaster mold enough (which is why it bubbles so much). I tried to use molten zinc first, thinking that would work better because it's more fluid, but that didn't work out very well. Mainly because I didn't have enough of the mushroom debris removed.

Upon breaking the plaster mold open after the zinc cast attempt, I realized that the mushroom was not fully cast. Many days later I was inspecting the broken plaster pieces to see if I could figure out what went wrong, and I had the idea of piecing the mold back together and trying again. There were many large pieces still intact but I still had to patch several parts with new aluminum.

Anyway, I cast the mushroom and it turned out pretty awesome. Most people I show the casts to say this is the best one.

This was the first one that I cast in plaster, but I actually cast another one with metal first just as a test. You can see that one here: http://www.anthillart.com/castings/081/

After I saw that one turned out good, I decided to go ahead and cast this one. You can see more pictures of this cast here: http://www.anthillart.com/castings/083/

This aluminum fire ant colony cast is the largest of the five cast session and the largest one (by weight) that I have done so far. I was able to get a great cast of the above ground portion of the colony too, which isn't always the case.

This one, and the others in the five cast session, was a colony built in fairly dense clay. It took much longer to wash off the thick clay than is shown in the video.

This is part 2 of a casting session in which I cast five fire ant colonies which are in close proximity to each other. Casts 1 & 2 of the five can be seen in Part 1: https://www.bitchute.com/video/YNNs7NIiVwlW/

Part 3 is here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/bzNtK6lN5l3m/

The finished cast is #076 and you can see more pics and info on the site at http://www.anthillart.com/castings/076/

Here are the last two casts of the five aluminum fire ant colony casting session. I thought that attempting to cast five colonies in one session and showing the result, regardless of the cast quality, would highlight the difficulty of doing casts; however, 3 of the 5 are probably among the best casts I've ever done. So, I guess I'm just getting much better at doing this.

The fourth colony cast turned out great. Like the others in the session (except the 2nd), I captured a large amount of the above ground hill, which is very difficult normally. It turned out 20.5 lb. This one was on display at the La Habra Children's Museum in California.

It was very late on the third night of casting and digging, and I was honestly dreading doing the final cast. After finishing the fourth cast, I shined my flashlight on the last colony to assess it and realized that I had stepped in it. At first I was relieved that it was ruined and I couldn't possibly cast it. Then, the idea of casting the shoe print came to me and I just couldn't call it a night without giving that a try. The shoe print looked cool with the classic converse tread pattern. I had to basically recreate the shoe print in place with sand, and build up the edges so that it would cast properly. I also broke up some sticks and spelled out "AHA" (abbreviation for Anthill Art) on the shoe print that would "inscribe" that in the final cast. I shined up the final cast and painted in the AHA. While not a professional cast by any means, but I think it turned out pretty cool. It will make a cool little wall plaque for my workshop.

The finished ant colony cast can be seen here: http://anthillart.com/castings/077/

Part 1 is here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/YNNs7NIiVwlW/
Part 2 is here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/l4N8cyhQN5Qf/

I thought it would be cool to do a few ant colonies at a time, and show the result even if they didn't turn out that great to highlight how difficult casting can ant colonies be. But I actually got really good results. At least three of them are some of the best I've ever done and one is the largest I've done so far.

The place where I am standing at the beginning of the video is the exact location of the cast in my first video https://www.bitchute.com/video/1Px5prnRduDt/

The second one didn't turn out that great. I used the remaining molten aluminum from the first cast because I didn't think it was going to take very much due to its small and washed out appearance. I was wrong and the result is very thin and fragile tunnel casts with a small solid portion deep in the ground.

Part 2: https://www.bitchute.com/video/l4N8cyhQN5Qf/
Part 3: https://www.bitchute.com/video/bzNtK6lN5l3m/

This is the largest fire ant colony cast to date, by mass and depth. It was on display at the International Design Biennial in Saint-Étienne, France from March 12, 2015 until April 12, 2015 as part of the Form Follows Information exhibit.

This is Cast #072, see pictures here: http://anthillart.com/castings/072/

I've made a few of these mushroom casts and this one of the better ones that I've made so far. I've been waiting to post a video of this until I got a really good cast. This mushroom looked awesome and the casting went very well, but the back side of the mushroom was starting to decay and split on the back. It split even further during the plaster casting. Another problem was the small cracks that developed in the plaster after it was dry. I put tape around it to keep it from breaking open during aluminum casting but it wasn't cracked enough that it was coming apart. I doubt the tape was even needed, because the plaster was still very solid even after the aluminum pour. A small amount of aluminum did flow into a crack in the plaster near the top, which you can see when I break open the plaster cast. I grinded that part off later.

I set up my camera first and left it taking pictures of the mushroom while I got set up so that I could see how much it was still growing. The resulting time-lapse animation was so cool that I included it at the beginning of the video. The short animation is from pictures taken over 45 minutes, and shows that the cap is still opening fairly rapidly. The plaster pour was about 30 minutes after the last picture, and you can see in the video that it has opened even further by pour time. I also left out the long and tedious process of removing the mushroom debris from the plaster cast.

The detail captured in the cast is amazing and more than I ever expected to get using this method. The raised warts all over the cap, the gills under the cap, and even some of the ring on the stem (remnants of the veil that initially covers the gills) were all cast fairly well.

You can see more pictures of the finished cast and original mushroom at http://anthillart.com/castings/091

I'll be posting all of the mushroom casts (some with videos, some not) at http://anthillart.com/mushrooms

Casting a couple of mushrooms with molten aluminum. These are my early attempts at doing this and while I made a few errors, they came out looking pretty cool. The main issue I had was getting the plaster dry enough to prevent steam from coming up through the aluminum and ruining the cast. I now have a much better drying method which I used for the mushroom cast in the other mushroom casting video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/HIX2UJMNHwnS/

See all of the finished mushroom casts at http://anthillart.com/mushrooms

This is the first video showing the casting of a field ant colony with molten aluminum. The resulting field ant colony cast is impressive, being more similar in size and complexity to a fire ant colony than the small and simple colonies of other species that have been posted. This is Cast #071 and it is 17.5 inches deep and weighs 10.4 lbs. (45 cm, 4.7 kg).

The colony has a single opening with a series of wide flat chambers beginning just below the ground surface. Deeper in the colony, two long tunnels extend from the wide chambers and have smaller chambers spaced along the lengths of the tunnels. The tunnels are on average around 0.5 inches (1.2 cm) diameter, which is much larger than those of a fire ant colony and more similar in size to the tunnels of a carpenter ant colony.

There are several names for ants in the Formica genus (wood ants, mound ants, thatching ants, and field ants). I prefer to call them field ants and it fits the behavior of the ones I have observed since they mostly nest in or near open areas and I have yet to see any in wooded areas. These particular ants have been identified as being in the species Formica pallidefulva.

You can see pictures of this cast and other details at http://anthillart.com/castings/071/

This is the first cast that I have made of a colony built by this species of ant, which I have identified as belonging to the species Aphaenogaster treatae. I usually prefer to identify ants by their common name for the videos but as far as I can tell there is no common name for this species. At first glance they look similar to other ant types. I had to use a microscope to view the smaller features on the ants and a taxonomic key in order to identify the ant species. Above ground, these ants generally make a single colony entrance which is easy to find early on by the small pile of discarded dirt surrounding the colony. Eventually, rain washes the dirt away and all that remains is the small hole of the colony entrance.

The basic structure of this colony is a single entrance tunnel, leading to several wide chambers stacked closely on top of each other, then a long tunnel leading to a wider pad-like chamber at the deepest point. The cast is fairly small compared to the others that I have done, but is a great illustration of the uniqueness in colony structure that each type of ant creates. Finding new ant species and discovering their colony structure is what really interests me in doing this, and hopefully that comes across to you in the videos that I post.

The finished cast is displayed upside down from its natural orientation and is 6.5" deep and 8" at its widest.

More pictures of this cast at http://www.anthillart.com/castings/066/

Casting a fire ant colony with molten aluminum. The aluminum pouring got a little sloppy on this cast and the grass caught on fire, but the cast turned out amazing. Be sure to check out my other videos to see the casting of larger fire ant colonies as well the casting of a few other types of ant colonies.

This is a medium sized cast compared to the other fire ant colonies that I have done. The final cast is 14.8 lbs., 13" at its widest, and 12.5" deep.

See more detailed pictures of the resulting display at http://www.anthillart.com/castings/061/

In this video I cast a winter ant colony with molten zinc. Winter Ants (Prenolepis imparis species) are very active in the winter and usually have a single colony entrance with a long thin tunnel leading to pad like chambers fairly deep in the ground. I was not aware of this type of ant until I started this project and they first caught my attention last winter, being the only ants that were actually active at near freezing temperatures. The are also known as false honey ants.

The tunnels are very narrow, being only around 3/16" in diameter on average. I used zinc on this cast because it tends to stay in a liquid state for longer than aluminum, so it can really flow deep through the deep and narrow tunnels.

The final cast is 40" (3'-4") deep, which is by far the deepest colony that I have cast so far. The chambers are fairly small being only around 3.5" at their widest. The final cast is mounted on an oak board with supports for the cast at various places along the cast. The narrow tunnels broke in several places when I was digging it up, so I had to mount it in a way that pieced it together and used glue at several places.

See detailed pictures of the resulting display at http://www.anthillart.com/castings/058/

This is the second Anthill Art video showing the casting of a fire ant colony with molten aluminum. The colony in this video is much larger than the one from the first video (Cast #043), taking in 24.6 lbs. of aluminum which is 6.7 lbs. heavier than Cast #043. The final cast turned out 17" deep and 19" at its widest.

See the description on the first video for information on the red imported fire ant and you'll see why I prefer not to have these ant hills in my yard.

See more detailed pictures of the resulting display at http://www.anthillart.com/castings/057/

A cast of a carpenter ant colony is made using molten aluminum to fill the tunnels and chambers. The resulting cast consists of a main shaft with long, irregularly shaped chambers extending outward and mostly concentrated near the colony entrance. If you've seen my fire ant colony casting video, I think you'll be very surprised at the amazing difference between the colony structures of these two types of ants.

The finshed cast has a very strange and interesting shape and is 31" deep, with a max width of 18", and a weight of 3.5 lbs.

Until I started this project I was under the impression that carpenter ants only lived in wood. When I first noticed these ants with their underground colonies, and identified them as being in the camponotus genus (carpenter ants), I was pretty surprised. Some carpenter ant species do nest in the ground. The ants that made this colony are from the species Camponotus castaneus.

When this cast was made, there were many of these colonies in the area, with the ants becoming very active at night. This particular colony appeared to have no activity so I assumed it to be abandoned. Upon casting and digging, it appears that there were no ants in this colony.

See some detailed pictures of the resulting display at http://anthillart.com/castings/042/