Resin Casting of Giant Brown Bull Ant Nest - Brooloo 20180901 - First Attempt

so uh so why are we back here again stephen because someone bit off more they could chew rubbish someone or some two [Music] hey we're back we're casting out nests but we've left the furnaces at home [Music] [Applause] all right come down this way and this this is what we're going to be casting today so this is a brevanoda nest which has been disturbed unfortunately but i'm going to try it anyway and right next door to it right next door to it we have another little sucker here we go some more bullets i forget what they're mesia and something a roller so yeah we're going to try both of these nests [Music] [Applause] good [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] hey [Music] so [Music] good [Music] plenty of action down here [Music] all gone that's about 30 liters we put down the hole we only did one hole that is one big sucker of a hole and it's not full and it's not full yet what all that wrestling's gone down there and again and again and again and again and again nearly 30 liters of resin in the hole so you see those two drums on the back of the truck yeah so we've emptied one of them and half of another one that's awesome you know you know what the next challenge is you're getting it out getting out of the ground it's going to be tangled up in that roots i hope you got a d6 to get them out no no we've dealt with that before yep that's what the trailers for yeah you guys got real set up here haven't you mate we've been doing this for years [Laughter] i do you pour some down the other hole i know we really actually want to cast that one so we'll do that one in aluminium when we're here next time yeah yeah and then we can excavate them both at the same time [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] b [Music] [Music] so [Music] it so why because i love the yeah they're really stones um chris any comments well good thing we cast the present when we did because in eight weeks these guys are connections it's just amazing i'm really looking forward to getting the resin out now see what we can find [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well this is amazing but this is disappointing we've been here for the whole day trying to wash that out excavate it out and it's gone nowhere we've got half of it here that's not nowhere that's half i would say that's more like two-thirds but at least half of it's still in the nest yes in the hole in the ground whatever i'm tired it's been a long day i've been digging out other things you've been digging out that all day the ants have won this round the weekend is over and we've got to get back to our normal lives but uh we'll uh we'll be back yeah so uh so why are we back here again stephen because someone bit off more they could chew relish some one or some two so some one some two some someone was warning the entire time about how we didn't have time to do that oh yeah yeah oh we could do this one this one this one this one and those two yeah no that was basically the conversation are you sure we have time chris i think i think i remember someone saying to you well as far as i recall the reason why we came back is because somebody didn't finish digging out the resin casting yeah why are we back here because someone didn't finish pulling out the other aluminium one [Music] that's ground [Music] my level definitions i've got two more two more to find before i can release it and then we'll have this one out of the ground let's see how we go [Music] got a very grippy no handle [Music] so [Music] you [Music] so third entrance oh the one that didn't feel hey it's out of the ground muffins oh man see here's another one went back up here is our world's largest ginseng steven well this was a thing here's a thing here's a thing yeah this is our resin casting we finally got it out of the hole and what a hole it is i can attest to the many hours of endurance persistence perseverance insanity thanks phil that was going to come afterwards ah bill oh nice such a home it is such a hole so uh the next task is to get the loose dirt off of it so then and then we need to clean it that's the hard job that is the hard job this is gonna be a lot of hours we're up to about 20 hours and just getting in this hole and i'm estimating a couple of hundred hours to try and clean off the embedded dirt dirt off the surface this is whose idea was this that would be yours chris rubbish on the nose people are encourageable all right now we need to get very technical overlying narrowly infernbale beds and here we have a semi-consolidated mass but through the persistence of these guys and their highly uh sophisticated equipment they will laser jet blasted fall off and vaporize it into a plasma you'll be left with this perfect mold unseen before by human eyes that's it bill we'll we'll employ you again you can say that again without the kid screaming in my experience that's not true all right while i clean off the loose dirt let us talk about the next steps for this project the thing that is immediately obvious is that this section of the nest is far heavier than 20 kilograms this is due to the extra resin cemented dirt on the surface the end goal of this casting is to have a cast that has dirt on the bottom of the chambers and tunnels and polished transparent resin on the tops so you can see all the inner workings of the nest the problem is how can we remove this dirt without damaging these internal features and how thick is the cement of dirt anyway and how do we make the top surfaces fully transparent so we can clearly see through them and lastly how do we do all this as cheaply as possible without spending a decade doing it the first step we took was to soak the smaller pieces for a week to see how much dirt would come off there was more loose dirt than i thought there would be but still significant amounts of cemented dirt remained on the surfaces next we tried soda blasting because soda is softer than sand while soda blasting is able to remove the dirt the problem is that the small stones are very hard and the soda cuts around them and into the resin this removes the resin much faster as the resin is much softer and creates a curtaining effect the resulting surface is very uneven and the soda blasting is not controllable as a consequence eating too far into the tunnels and chambers this technique is only effective on thin layers of dirt which then yields a clean resin surface but it is neither smooth nor transparent so we went back to the pressure washers again we tried two different options with the pressure washers first up was a narrower jet which worked well on the smaller pieces from the side of the nest that was not filled completely but it did not work on the large piece of the nest so we got a bigger more powerful pressure washer and as we were moving the casting we snapped it looking at the brake gives us some important information firstly the cemented dirt is about two centimeters thick you can also see veins of resin running through the cracks in the dirt secondly the break happened through an ant and you can see half the body here and the other half here you can also see the place where the head was embedded into the resin leaving a head-shaped depression behind these ants have very tough heads and not surprisingly when you look like this so ants weaken the resin thirdly we can see some interesting material here which is not part of the dirt structure and can only be something introduced by the ants and lastly we will not be cleaning this part of the nest the bigger more powerful pressure washer was too powerful and damaged the underlying resin while removing the dirt the smaller pieces did have a slight difference in casting technique and we were able to clean a number of them back to the resin these pieces then became our experimental pieces for polishing trials [Music] the technique we have settled on is to make the top surface smooth with a dye grinder and then use sandpaper to make finer scratches finally we used a wax polish to bring the surface to clear and transparent and of course a final wash to remove the waxy polish given the size of the nest in its shattered state we've decided to learn from this experience rather than continue on it's not a failure if you learn something right but not only did we learn about how to cast in resin we also learned something about these ants as well with this piece from the very bottom of the nest we can see that the ants have taken bark and dirt from other stratas and placed them in the very bottom corners of the nest this is present in other chambers of the nest as well at different depths we also found a chamber with many ants that seem to be resting at the bottom of the nest we can see the ants organizing larvae into different sizes or ages with distinct areas of small medium and large larvae with very little mixing remember that the ants are doing all this underground in the dark in the future we want to have another attempt at casting in resin but it seems that australia is either on fire or drowning both of which take a toll on ant populations and prevent casting so until we cast again please subscribe like and share the video if you have any suggestions for us please leave them in the comment section

Channel: Australian Ant Art

Views: 545,095

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Id: p1hiODbmP8k

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022