I made an ant farm a while ago. I made it out of plastic and wood. And while it tecnically worked – it wasn’t good enough for me. The plastic was bulging at the center. The gap in the middle was too wide.. so once the ants burrowed I couldn’t see shit.

So here comes ant farm 2.0. This time I’m making it out of strip wood and two table tops from ikea (which was cheaper than buying sheets of thick glass).

I built the frame out of strip wood. By gluing it together. The thin pieces are 6mm thick – the glass is 5mm thick. The main length of wood I’m using for the frame is 30mm wide. So this means I can glue a peice of strip wood on either side of the frame, then one down the middle.. and the glass panels will fit neatly between them.

These peices of strip wood only act as a lip to stop the glass from falling off. They’re not holding much weight – so gluing is enough.

I glued the verticals with the glass in them – to make sure that they weren’t angled.

And happily everything fits good ?? I did a bit of wood filling, sanding, plaining.. and then put it on the wall. I cut a piece of wood the same length of the glass to make sure the gap stayed big enough.

Then the hard part. Putting the glass in. The glass isn’t light and I didn’t want to get fingerprints all over it (because they’ll be near impossible to clean off). So after a bit of a struggle and some help from Sarah I managed to get it in.

And there it is, all ready for the ants.