Massive Aluminum Anthill Casting #22

welcome back everybody we got a pretty big fire ant nest here we're going to cast using some molten aluminum fire ants are an invasive species so i have absolutely no problem with getting rid of these guys molten aluminum is probably the quickest and most painless way to take care of these guys safe for the environment too a lot better than using poison and stuff like that so now here i've got a dam of sand around the anthill this sort of stops aluminum from flowing out over the yard and it also builds some head pressure that way you get a more complete casting a little tip if you guys are trying to replicate this what you want to do is if you've got long grass effect like here you want to go around and sort of tap in the edges or else aluminum can find little paths where the grass is holding up the sand here and you'll flow out underneath you'll lose a lot of aluminum that way and you won't get a good base here so here's why you always inspect your crucible before you use it i got a big crack running down it and you can sort of see it on the inside here as well so it's cracked all the way through i've already used this one and i was hot expands it might be okay but if you pick it up and it fails you've got a bunch of molten aluminum in there hanging over your feet even if you have protection ppe it's still going to be a bad day if this thing drops all that aluminum so i'm gonna keep this one though and in the future i might do a video where i melt down lava rocks and make actual lava and i got a new crucible over here i already fired it once before but i'm still gonna take it up slow just because i barely use this one make sure drive off all that moisture all right so i've been letting it uh heat up pretty slowly i've got it throttled down here i don't want to last this newish crucible with full heat after i haven't used it in a while so i'm letting it warm up relatively slowly it's still pretty hot in there but now it's starting to glow a little bit uh so it's nice and warm so i'm gonna go ahead and ramp up the heat melts always make sure to preheat your metal if you dump a piece of metal in there that's cold it can freeze up all your metal causing your crucible the crack it can also have a little bit of moisture on it which can cause a small steam explosion combined with molten aluminum which is not good since mold aluminum everywhere uh at best it just messes up the inside of your furnace at worst uh you get aluminum in your eye you go blind so always make sure to properly preheat your metal and also your mulch same thing can happen uh where the aluminum can explode basically it will get sent flying everywhere so this right here is called dross and it's all the oxides from the aluminum and then it can also be it's a contaminant like dirt and oils and stuff that just floats to the surface this off right here is clean aluminum so i'm just getting oxide so now i'm gonna heat it up a little bit more and pour this so yep this is a big one it took all that aluminum so i'm gonna go ahead and quickly melt down some more try to get it to fuse up huh oh and here is the second one [Applause] and i'm gonna do like a half melt to finish off that base there but the casting should be complete basically now i'm just going to make the base look prettier all right here's the final four i'm not gonna dross this one all right just because it's going on the top and i can do a better job while it's on top of the inhale and that's all there is to it now i'm gonna spread out the face a little bit better using my tongue make it look a little neater around the edges and then i'll finish up the surface a little bit better now i'm going to let it solidify and once it solidifies i can take the hose to it pull it down the rest of the way and start digging her up look at that glass reflection there that's incredible so here i'm going to dig a sort of large hole next to the casting and then slowly work my way towards the casting that way i don't damage it and then i'll work my way a thin little line around the entire casting to get rid of any roots and stuff that might be holding it in uh i've tried just prying it out of the ground a few times before and it's worked a couple times and hasn't worked a couple times so i'm just gonna play it safe from now on i think and i want to try to do the safe way of digging a hole next to it and working my way in so now i know where the tunnels are i can work my way a little closer at the shovel i don't have to worry about chipping a piece like this i would have chipped if i had just gone straight in you all right so i've got it i'm starting to get it free here that's pretty deep um so i started doing my small little circle around the whole thing uh trying to find where it's hooked into the wall and that sort of stuff and i just use the hose for it it's a pretty fast way to do it it's almost like a pressure washer [Music] this all right i think it's loose so i go ahead and try and lift it out without breaking it wow look at that now the trick here is trying to flip it without breaking it broke it a little bit but yeah just a little small chunk came off i'm happy with that wow look at that that's a crazy one all right go ahead and start cleaning this off so and we'll go ahead and clean it off the rest of it [Laughter] so right here there was a root that went all the way through the cast but it was rotten inside so it's completely hollow the aluminum filled it up and it sort of left this aluminum tunnel is completely straight through the casting it's even a little bit uh detached from it it's only attached like one point somewhere in the middle here so wiggles as if it was completely separate but still pretty stuck in there the rest of the casting is pretty neat though all the way up at the top here wherever the roots get really thin in the ground because this is actually the very bottom of the anthill the aluminum vaporizes the little tiny roots and makes these really small structures here they're like super thin almost about this a little bit bigger than the size of hairs it's incredible how much detail you can get out of this so you

Channel: Nolan’s Anthill Castings

Views: 2,765,171

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Id: 2WLirCtwBZs

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021