OT- Pretty cool- Ant hill art

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

If you have some scraps around and a melter you might give this a try :)
Mods feel free to move if more appropriate area is elsewhere

http://www.nola.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2013/12/fire-ant_colony_molten_aluminu.html

[reloader28]

Thats pretty durn cool.
I wonder if it would work on a normal ant hill.

[xs11jack]

That, my friend, is one of the most fascinating things I have seen in a looooong time. I used to make aluminum castings and would love to try that one.
Ole Jack

[AkMike]

Years ago I shovel a full sized shovel upside down into a big fire ant nest. The steel head was the only thing showing and I didn't push hard. I'd loved to have seen a casting of that one.

Neat Video

[jeepyj]

That is awesome!
Jeepyj

[JoeG52]

A good use for those zinc wheel weights.

[rattletrap1970]

Yeah... I had my doubts there fore a sec... Pretty darn cool.

[merlin101]

Last year I dug up something like that only smaller, A power line had fallen and was arcing on the ground and turned the roots and dirt into glass.

[Charley]

I'll pass, unless I run out of everything in my life to do. As far as other ants go, don't try it on a Harvester Ant colony, you'll run out of aluminum and never be able to pick the damn thing up.

[John Allen]

ok, when are we getting a separate forum for our ant hill creations.

[Mumblypeg]

What really got me was all the PRO ANT comments made on the site about cruelty to ants..... My God, these people have no life! ..... Other than that.... nice art!

[nvbirdman]

That makes me feel like emptying a few more beer cans.

[popper]

Cool. Like the gold fillagree you get after acid washing the quartz out. Saw a pic once of some ant-emologist casting of an anthill - that went several hundred feet. Now to figure how to get the alum. out of the back yard. I imagine alum holds heat a lot longer than boiling water. Puppy was out in the yard playing with a grass hopper today - after a couple inches of ice & 20F weather. Never seen that before either.

[TheGrimReaper]

Pretty amazing.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

what stuck me, more than the results, was the "thinking out of the box" that lead to the idea to do it.
I, am I'm sure many others, don't think of things like that, and I've been striving the last few months to shed the
cloak of mundane living and expand my horizons. My physical abilities may be diminishing, so its time to fire up the
brain cells more often.

[Charley]

I've seen things done similarly as a teaching tool, not as art. I suppose "art" is in the eye of the beholder, but that isn't art to me.