Huge Molten Aluminum Fire Ant Casting. Biggest One Yet! Casting #25

I hate this. not even wearing flip flops..... smh

ALL the ants were harmed in the making of this video.

Imagine aliens coming here in a huge spaceship and pouring hot metal over an entire city just to make a gnarly statue out of it.

As an old time foundry metallurgist, who's been burnt a few times, you really do need to apply more caution and personal protection, molten metal is very unforgiving if you wind up wearing it. Your multiple pours are producing cold shuts, which will be mechanically weak. Aluminium being a relatively light metal will be ejected from a mould very easily if any moisture is present. The expansion rate is 1600:1, which will produce an explosive ejection, so may I suggest a moisture meter to determine ground moisture before you perform a pour. Also the highest fluidity aluminium alloy will have silicon, and typically a 11 to 12% silicon aluminium alloy is ideal. Old VW and Porsche cylinder heads are a good example, but any aluminium automotive casting with intricate thin walls or fins will be in this alloy range. Trying to open up the entries to the ants nest will assist in filling the voids beneath quickly and provide you with a stronger base connection. Lastly rather than trying to level out the base with aluminium, have you considered using an epoxy resin which will adhere well and be self levelling and easier on the display furniture, they can be coloured as well.

The size of these nests are making me realize how much I was underestimating my garden enemy.

The volume ratio between liquid water and steam is 1600x, not 17x. Some of my dad's coworkers discovered this when they failed to redo the lining of the iron furnace at the foundry and something like three tons of molten iron at approx 2800F burned through the lining, the reinforced concrete, and then into the 60F water jacket. The ball of iron went through a ceiling 40' above the furnace and landed back down on the furnace deck that was a foot thick and made of steel. I was only in 4th or 5th grade at the time, but Dad ended up working 16+ hour days for most of a year putting that all back together again. I didn't work there myself except for a couple of summers in high school and college, but the furnace deck was noticeably warped. Steam explosions even at the lesser molten aluminum temperature are absolutely no joke.

When the kid burning the ants with a magnifying glass grows up

I live in Florida. I'm a sculptor. I made a habit of pouring my leftover epoxy resin down fire ant mounds. The result—you can see every ant and every grain of sand. I had a few of them sitting around when an orchid grower friend of mine noticed and demanded that I sell them to her. She made orchid presentations with them and they became her most popular seller. I was busy with other things, so she bought resin and made them for herself. Different species of ants work too. The organic look works really well with the orchids even though it's not really organic. Ha! I enjoyed your video!

You should cast the aluminum piece in a square clear resin so it stays in one piece and can be turned back rightside up. It would require quite a bit of Resin with a longer hardening time but I think it would look super cool once done.

How do you know they are not Fire Uncles?

The shape of this one is almost like a small ever green tree you see at the door of people's homes. It's lovely

I literally just watched you melt and pour aluminum for a half an hour and enjoyed it lol congrats on that

Imagine you’re an ant and just casually strolling the streets of your city… then a molten aluminum wall rushes towards you 😄

Not only is this fun to watch, but I think your repeated emphasis on safety is super underrated.

Fire ant castings are my favorite! Not just because they are very intricate nests but also because I really do not like the little buggers.

I think that when you're pouring molten metal atop molten metal in less than pristine conditions, it might be a good idea to drill some small one inch deep holes in the base prior to each application, so that the metal has something to bite on.

It looks like someone trying to move a LEGO UCS Millennium Falcon - A very delicate situation

Fascinating. I live in south west Florida, and fire ants are a big problem. Love to see the intricate shapes of their tunnels. No wonder they are impossible to get rid of.

very cool! It's crazy that the molten aluminum stays in liquid form long enough to travel that deep into the ground.

When I was a kid, in the fifties, I had a lead casting kit with molds for Civil War soldiers and another mold to cast cannons. It was great fun, and I never got burned, but looking back, between the chance of burning the house down, of horribly burning myself, and working with lead fumes, it was a terribly dangerous hobby. I still have it somewhere, and a bunch of soldiers and cannon, but I’d never fire it up again.