How they Build Giant FAKE reptile cages (cage Reveal pt/ 2) for snake & gators + Man Made rock work

[Music] You'll never guess the places that I've been. You never guess the places that I've been. Cuz everything is like a dream. Yeah. But only in the dream that I live in. Never going to let the day begin. Cuz everything is like a dream ever. Only in the dream that I live in. Oh, wake me up before you go. And I just make this my own. Oh darling, please just let me sleep. Give me my dreams. Hey man, where do you want this? You know, Max, I think I can handle it from here. Yeah, I got it. Don't worry about it. All right, guys. It's kind of I mean, maybe it's me, but it's kind of weird how one thing leads to another can lead to another. And that's exactly what happened in today's video. I went out to Detroit to hook up with my buddy Brian cuz I just wanted to shoot a video on my foxes and bring it to his audience cuz he's huge in the reptile community and animals in general. And while we're there, we're just visiting and he's starting to tell me his story about how he's building these giant reptile enclosures. And I kind of had this aha moment. I mean, I know, not kind of, I actually had an aha moment. And the process he's talking about is he actually makes artificial rock work out of rhino lining or a dural liner and then impregnates it with stone dust, right? And a 4x8 sheet of this stuff will maybe weigh like 20 lb. And I looked at Brian and I said, "Can they can this guy make artificial rock work like this stuff you see behind me? You see my house here? I did about 2,000 square ft of this stuff. And I hated every minute of it. I worked on my house artificial stonework for at least 2 months. And I scraped the skin right off my fingertips trying to install this stuff. If I could have instead of taken a sheet and just boom boom boom popped it up and been done a wall like that right there that you see, you can do a wall like that in 15 minutes. I would have bought that stuff any day of the week. And so one thing leads to another. I end up flying down to Texas to meet up with this guy. But before we do that, let's go see what happens in Detroit at Brian's place. I come to Detroit. I never expect to hold an alligator like this. I You know, I think Florida, not Detroit. This is awesome. Look at his tail is all the way down to my legs right here. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, he like has free range of this, right? So, he can just Does he ever just go out on the floor? He doesn't come out on the floor, but yeah, he climbs up. He hangs out on the ledge. He comes up here. Yeah, he hangs out on the ledge. He comes up here. He climbs. Yeah, he just keeps just got the brain. Every now and then we will literally put him on the floor just so he can wander around. But uh other than that, he just hangs out. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty cool, huh? I mean, you know, some people have pet dogs and cats, you know. Not me. I have pet alligator. A pet a pet about 5 foot. Oh, yeah. Five five and a half foot. Yeah. A baby, you know, pet, you know, 8 to 12 foot. All right. So, next we're going to meet Lucy. If I was going to describe Lucy, I would say she's a permanently pissed-off python, which is kind of like describing my 14-year-old daughter in a way, minus the python part. All right, so we obviously have Lucy out. Now, the thing is is that I'm letting her kind of wear herself out for a minute before I bring Stanley in cuz she's actually grabbing and she just shed. So that means she's about 30 days away from laying eggs and she's a little cranky right now. So I want to wear her out a little bit. Make sure she's completely fine. So that way when Stanley comes in, he has a good experience and doesn't get bitten. I know. I'm like out of breath. She's like wearing me out. I'm trying to wear her out, but she's wearing me out. Okay, girl. You're doing good. You're fine now. So, any minute she's going to be at a point where she's going to calm down. Brian's idea of calming down and my idea of calming down are not the same thing. If turning around and getting ready to try and bite you is calming down, well then, yeah, this snake's perfectly tranquil. A couple folds here. Number one, we want to wear her out, keep her moving. Number two, we always want to keep her head to a point where she's not coming back on us. And as long as her head is going straight like she is now, I don't have to worry. As soon as her head ses up and her tongue starts staying out, like really rapid movements, then I know I'm in trouble. And about 13 seconds after he just gets done saying that, we get to see exactly what he's saying. We're fine, son. It's just when she starts to tense up and tighten up. What happens with retix is they'll go from being your friend to fighting you in a second. Just the way and you can just tell the movement in her head, the way her eyes will kind of change and shift. See, she's starting to s a little bit. So, that means she's got good. It's okay, girl. It's okay, sweetie. Okay. Wait, hang on. Just uh I leave that alone for a second. I have right here. No, you're okay. All right. Uh, yeah. I give that to him. [Music] See her tail moving? That's a bad sign. I'm going to just leave her here for a second. Just from where that python is sitting, I'm not really sure what part of Brian's body he should be worried about. And instead of us worrying about it, we're going to hop on over to Texas. Now, if you really want to find out how the rest of that story goes, go visit him at his channel. It's the video's up. It's on over there. So, go check him out over there. But Brian and I are going to head from Detroit down to Texas to meet the guy that makes this insane artificial rock work. This process is really cool. I mean, it's cool. [Music] All right, guys. I just landed in Dallas. Uh, I came down here because Brian invited me down after I was in Detroit with him at his place and he was talking exactly about this Australian dude over here, right? His name is Stu and he owns a company called Universal Rocks and they create some phenomenal works of art. Literally works of art. But that's not the important thing. The important thing that really struck home to me and may strike home to you guys is what he does is not yet really optimized for contractors, but it could be. So, we're looking at taking these universal rocks which are used inside zoos and uh public displays and creating them for for facades on buildings just like you see right there. And the reason we want to do this is because you can take a 4x8 sheet, weighs maybe 15, 20 lbs. You can't cut it, you can't tear it, you can't rip it, but you can put it on a wall in 25, 30 minutes. Tops. Tops. That's if you're drinking lemonade and watching an episode of Gilligans Island at the same time. So, we're going to look this over real quick and then I'm going to be installing it at one of my places and showing you guys just exactly how it goes. So, I'm taking you along for the uh entire ride all the way from Texas back up to northern Minnesota and then into my bathroom. Well, actually, it's going to be my shower. You're going in the shower with me. That's right. We didn't have a shower at all in this cabin, so Frankie and I decided to build one that felt like you were walking into a cave. We added a 10x10 room on and then put double shower heads into the room. We vaulted the ceiling and put a skylight in it. And then we also put an exterior shower head in it. Now, we do have a shower head on an exterior wall that's got a separate shut off. In the winter time, we can disable that. The main shower head's on the interior wall. The stone that you see is actually made out of rhino lining and then it's actually covered in stone dust and it's molded off from a real rock wall. The flooring is exterior composite decking because it can stay submerged indefinitely and this room is probably going to be pretty wet for long periods of time. And the lighting that we put into the walls, that's actually by a company called Inlight and it's designed to be outside. We're using it inside. [Applause] Okay, so we're going into Sea Life, which we have one of these right in my neck of the woods, but we're looking at the one in Texas. And Stu, what did you do here, Stu? They did an extension with a rainforest section upstairs. So, we did um all these enclosures upstairs. Okay. So, Stu, did you do this? No. Okay, good. [Laughter] All right, guys. We're inside one of the exhibits that Stu has put together using his rock work. I want you guys to see how authentic and how real this stuff works. You guys got to remember this is made out of Dural Liner. This is made out of basically the same stuff you stick in the back of your pickup trucks. The animals can't scratch it. They can't wreck it. The whole backdrops and facades are made out of this. So all of that and they put these in with animals that are meant to do damage to it. Okay. Well, here's a great example. I'm looking at a waterfall that that's fake rock work right there. Okay. So, this is all fake. Constantly being beat by water would definitely wear it down. And then you put a shortnose Cayman on top of it. And you know that you're going to have some wear and tear on that rock work. And it's submerged underwater as well. I'm excited about how this can be applied on job sites. I really am. See, it's this stuff is designed to withstand the sharp claws of an alligator. I mean, there's one right now resting on his rock work. I've actually taken a knife and sliced it. And you can't cut this stuff. So, it's going to be perfect for a home, perfect for a business. You did all the rock work everywhere. Stu, you did all this? Yes. Inside and out. They built the cages. They built the cages. We just did all the decorations in and out of the tank. In and out. Okay. So, this was my cement banging tree. But this looks like real rock. Come in a little closer, Brian. Okay. [Laughter] This is not real rock. That's how real this looks. You can't tell this apart from the real thing. Now, this is designed, this area specifically, Stew designed. So when a a kid runs up and he sees the fish and he goes, "Oh, like this, he doesn't hurt himself." It's designed to give. Yeah. So, the difference between this part over here where it's really gy and kind of cushiony, like you can see here, it doesn't give at all. And the only difference there is actually that like expandable foam stuff that you use like in, you know, sealing a window. You blow that on the back and it actually makes it rigid instead of giving like the other part. And you can also use that same stuff to make it three-dimensional. Exactly. To contour. Exactly. And we're going to be showing you all of that. Plus, we're also going to be talking about how to seam it, what to do and what not to do. some of the common mistakes you make when you're trying to install this stuff. And trust me, guys, if you were ever going to take on any DIY project yourself, this is the kind of stuff you want to use because it's very forgiving. And once you get over that minor learning curve, it's pretty easy for anybody with any artistic talent to take this up and actually kind of go crazy with it a little bit. Absolutely. You started out as a landscaper. Yep. Absolutely. See what the hell happens when you start playing with rocks too much. You know what really happened is when I was 20, I came over here drinking beer and chasing chicks from Europe for 6 weeks and went to Disneyland and Disney World. Okay. And that's got and I looked at all the theming and I'm like, "Wow, then we got to learn how to do that." So, it took me about 5 years and then I got a guy to teach me. I paid him to teach me how to do cement rocks. Yeah. And then about 5 years after that, I I was quoting on building the Rainforest Cafe in Sydney and all the theming there. And uh anyway, I didn't get the job, but the company that did was doing it out of a similar system brought from America. Okay. And uh the next thing you know, I'm into that. I'm like, and and so then you started with rocks, but sitting right next to you, Steu, vines. Is vines. Vines. Yeah. Trees. Yeah. So, a little bit of everything cuz you're basically an artist. No. Well, the materials enable you to mold anything almost. So, if you see something you like, you could mold people's faces. You can mold anything. Then you can reproduce out of that that out of lightweight material, which is what we've been doing for 21 years now. So, we're going to go back to your shop and check things out. Yep. Where we actually get to see this stuff before it gets installed. Absolutely. Yeah. See you there. [Music] It's coming from the streets and it's popping from the speaker. He keep on asking what's that time that pulls your sneakers. Can't control your head. Swing it up and down. Believe it. If you got it, don't you stop it. Raise your hands and keep on rocking. [Music] change. See what happened. I want to change. [Music] Oh. [Music] let me down? All right, guys. We're going to cut the video right here, but we're not done with this topic. If you look at this stone fireplace, I installed this myself and it took me about two weeks and I wore all of the the skin off my fingertips doing this. I would have traded this artificial rock work for this stuff any day of the week. Plus, on top of it, this weighs at least 1,500 to 2,000 lb, which is a tremendous amount of pressure on the foundation of my house. If it was fake rock, it would probably weigh about 300 lb. a huge difference in weight, a huge difference in labor savings. That's why I'm so excited about this process. And so, we're going to be touring this factory a little bit more, understanding exactly what goes into the process, and then we're going to go up to northern Minnesota, and I'm going to show you how I actually built out that cave in my bathroom that you were looking at earlier. It's really simple, really fast, and this is stuff that I want to bring to you guys. When I get excited about something, I want to share it with you. And so I'm also going to set up some links in this video down below so you guys can get more information.