https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/ruobojvc
An incredible metal structure is made by pouring molten aluminum into a fire ant colony. The resulting cast is huge, weighing 17.9 lbs. and reaching a depth of 18 inches.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/nevtkncp
A fairly large fire ant colony is cast with molten aluminum. The surface mound of this colony was not built up very high, probably due to the recent cold weather, but from the area of it, it seemed to be a large colony. I melted around 25 lb of aluminum, lost a few pounds due to spillage in the furnace and ended up with a cast weighing 18.7 lb and a few pounds left over. The depth of the cast is 20 in, making it the 4th deepest of the fire ant colonies I’ve cast.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/xmuadedl
This is an aluminum casting of a fire ant colony which was built around a log. The log can be partially seen on the left side of the hill but most of it is covered by the dirt of the surface mound. Aluminum was poured into two holes made in the hill on each side of the log.

I anticipated removing the log, which is what I did on my other video involving a colony on a log, but I took an informal poll of my Facebook followers and 99.9% said “Keep the log!” This added quite a bit of work to finishing the cast but I do like how it turned out,

The log is around 4.75” in diameter at the biggest end. One end of the log is in decent shape while the other was showing a lot of rotting, I coated the log with an epoxy made by Totalboat which is said to help preserve rotting wood (we’ll see).

The cast turned out 10.9 lb in weight, a max width of 15” and a depth of 11”. The base board is a 12x9.5” oak with a medium brown stain and polyurethane finish.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/zmbvzcjp
This is the possibly the craziest cast I’ve ever attempted and definitely the most challenging. This is a field ant colony (species Formica pallidefulva) with a single entrance tunnel right up against a large oak stump. Around 22 lb of aluminum was melted and it ended up taking around 10 lb to fill the colony tunnels. I didn’t know how exactly how to go about getting the cast out but I knew 1) I can cut wood and 2) I can dig dirt. So, how hard can it be? Turns out, it can be really hard.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/ghjemzhv
It took 10 days of cutting and digging but I finally got it out. I had cut down to dirt around the wood the cast is in and it still wouldn't budge. I noticed the last piece was a roughly vertical root a few inches in diameter running into the bottom of the colony. It was out of reach and would have required many more days of work to get down to where I could cut it. So instead, I chained it to the truck and broke the root enough and tilted the wood chunk enough for me to cut it with the chainsaw and remove the cast.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/bkdbrgig
This colony was on the side of a large stump. I poured the aluminum on Friday and have been slowly getting it out ever since. Still a ton of work to do. I'll post a full video of the casting and uncovering when I'm done. (sorry for the verftical video I made it for tiktok/yt shorts)

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/tqdcvjin
Part three of the three fire ant colony aluminum casting session. You may notice in some of the other videos, dirt is piled over the colony. This helps to prevent the aluminum from bursting through the side of the colony. You may have also noticed that this wasn’t done for the last few casts and they turned out alright. Well, it finally happened on this cast; the aluminum burst through the hill at 00:30. Luckily, it didn’t mess up the cast overall and I only missed a small portion of the above ground mound. The spilled aluminum started a small fire but no worries, there’s always a water hose close by when casting and the fire was promptly extinguished.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/alceagsc
Part two of the three fire ant colony aluminum casting session. This one produced lots of smoke during the cast which made it difficult for me to see. Like a true professional I persevered and finished the cast with perfection (other than spilling a little bit of aluminum). It turned out pretty nice! Part 3 coming soon.

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/iapjxelk
In this video I cast a cluster of three fire ant colonies with aluminum. This is the first cast of the three. I had expected these to be fairly small and was surprised by the size of all of them, especially this first one. To dig their colonies, the ants remove dirt while digging underground tunnels and use that dirt to build the surface mound. In general, larger fire ant colonies have larger surface mounds but this can be deceiving. Rain can wash away the dirt of the mound leaving a large colony with a smaller-than-expected mound.

This is Anthill Art Cast #117 and reached a depth of 14.5” (37 cm) and weighed 9.9 lb (4.5 kg). More pictures can be seen here: https://www.anthillart.com/castings/117/

https://3speak.tv/watch?v=anthillart/qzihlirj
I melted about 24.6 lb of aluminum to cast this large fire ant colony; however, something went wrong and only about 4 lb went in before the aluminum backed up into the pour hole. I usually refer to these failed or partial casts and it can happen for multiple reasons. In this case, it hadn’t rained in quite a while and I think that the tunnel walls had become dry and crumbly, allowing dirt to fall away and block the tunnels. Even though the colony wasn’t completely filled, enough tunnels were filled that it made an interesting cast.