This was supposed to be a fire ant colony cast but apparently the ants built their colony down into a major intersection of ground squirrel tunnels. Most of the aluminum flowed right through the colony and into the larger ground squirrel tunnels, leaving only a small part of the ant colony casted. It's too bad that I wasn't filming this one because it would have made a great video. I poured a large amount of aluminum into this one (22.4 lb / 10 kg). Normally that would be enough to significantly fill a colony of this size and have some aluminum backing up close to the ground surface if not into the surface mound itself. So, I thought it was a little strange that I wasn't finding aluminum structure near the ground surface as I started digging. Eventually I hit one the large aluminum casted tunnels fairly deep in the ground. It looked a little bizarre though and I really couldn't tell what it was until I pulled the cast out of the ground. It was interesting. Casting colonies had become a little routine and boring at that point so it was exciting for something different to happen. For scale, the cast is 27 in (69 cm) left to right in this picture. The ground squirrel tunnels were around 1.5 in (4 cm) in diameter, minimum.More pics/info for this cast here: www.anthillart.com/castings/064/Answers to the questions I anticipate getting: yes, I'm rehashing old content to distract from the fact that I haven't posted a new video in months and no, ground squirrels were not harmed in the making this cast. New videos coming soon!tl;dr molten aluminum > ant colony > ground squirrel tunnels > weird cast
Anthill Art
This was supposed to be a fire ant colony cast but apparently the ants built their colony down into a major intersection of ground squirrel tunnels. Most of the aluminum flowed right through the colony and into the larger ground squirrel tunnels, leaving only a small part of the ant colony casted. It's too bad that I wasn't filming this one because it would have made a great video. I poured a large amount of aluminum into this one (22.4 lb / 10 kg). Normally that would be enough to significantly fill a colony of this size and have some aluminum backing up close to the ground surface if not into the surface mound itself. So, I thought it was a little strange that I wasn't finding aluminum structure near the ground surface as I started digging. Eventually I hit one the large aluminum casted tunnels fairly deep in the ground. It looked a little bizarre though and I really couldn't tell what it was until I pulled the cast out of the ground. It was interesting. Casting colonies had become a little routine and boring at that point so it was exciting for something different to happen. For scale, the cast is 27 in (69 cm) left to right in this picture. The ground squirrel tunnels were around 1.5 in (4 cm) in diameter, minimum.More pics/info for this cast here: www.anthillart.com/castings/064/Answers to the questions I anticipate getting: yes, I'm rehashing old content to distract from the fact that I haven't posted a new video in months and no, ground squirrels were not harmed in the making this cast. New videos coming soon!tl;dr molten aluminum > ant colony > ground squirrel tunnels > weird cast
7 years ago | [YT] | 1,223