- Guys, take a look at this.
Look at how absolutely gorgeous it is.
Mike, can you hold this snake for me for a second?
Oh wow.
It's amazing.
The thing I love about this water bowl is the fact
that it has a deli cup that actually fits right into it,
and Jessica actually made it.
But before we talk about this
and what we're gonna do to replicate this,
I actually wanna show you how this whole thing began.
For a bunch of years, we have been using these deli cups.
This is basically just a coupling, right, like this,
and then the deli cup goes right in here.
That way you can just either recycle this deli cup
or wash it out really quick, replace them.
But to be honest with you, they don't look all that good.
And what I mean by that
is when you have a display like this,
but you have a white PVC cup, it doesn't actually blend in.
It's not very naturalistic,
and we're trying to do everything
as naturalistic as possible.
Hence, the reason why Jessica actually spent some time
and figured out how she could coat this
with either Universal Rock or I've got another thing,
so later on in the vlog,
I'm gonna show you a way to do it without Universal Rock
to make it look as natural as possible,
but it was a lot of work.
Even a traditional bowl like this,
which is just a dog bowl
we use to actually feed Chicken Strip,
it just doesn't look very good, right?
It doesn't match this naturalistic thing.
We're gonna take a look at how Jessica did it,
and actually try to make it as simple as possible.
So, I'm gonna take you guys on a step by step process
of how I'm gonna do this,
but the first thing we have to do is we know
that the coupling itself is a little over four inches,
but we have to actually measure the other part,
which is six inches right here.
Now this right here is actually Universal Rock,
which is this right here,
and it's wrapped around a deli cup like this, right?
So, what we have to do
is actually make a little bit of a template
that's gonna make this really easy.
So, let's go and cut some wood.
Things you're gonna need for this DIY project.
Great foam, $3.99.
A PVC coupling, about five bucks.
Some scrap wood, hopefully laying around the house.
And if you take the Universal route,
this is gonna cost you about 10 bucks,
but again, it is optional.
So, the hardest part about putting the Universal Rock
around that coupling was to keep it in place
while you foam and it actually adheres, right?
So, we have to make a template.
I came up with this idea that's pretty simple,
but keep in mind I might mess this up,
or, if you're doing something like this,
you might mess it up a couple times.
Don't be afraid to try,
because eventually you will perfect it.
So, now I have the frame, and I've got this.
I'm gonna put a top and a bottom to it,
and then I have to figure out
where the hole is gonna go,
cut the hole in the center,
and that'll be kind of my jig
for actually making a bowl to screw this down.
(screws squeak)
Now, I just have to find the center here
to each of these things.
So, I've got to go over five and three-quarters on this one,
five and three-quarters on this one,
and that should be my center point there.
We are all set.
That is where the hole needs to go on this side.
Flip it over.
Do the exact same thing on the other side.
(drill spins) Woo hoo.
This thing is actually a six inch hole saw.
So, what I'm gonna do is just see
where my hole is to start with.
(drill spins)
So there it is.
There is my actual template here.
Now we can get started on the actual fun part.
Remember me talking about making mistakes?
Well, guess what?
I wanted this to go in here.
There's a little bit about a gap here,
so I should have actually made this thing,
that is five inches tall,
I should have made it a little less than four inches tall.
So, I'm gonna have to disassemble this,
cut down the two by fours, and make this four inches tall,
so that when this goes in there,
the actual Universal Rock actually has something
to go against.
So, again, you make mistakes, and you fix them.
(upbeat music)
Looks like Mike is actually sleeping on the job over here.
You getting some rest, buddy?
Actually, I think he's actually feeding Tyson.
By the way, if you guys don't mind,
you could go over to Reptile Army.
Right now, everybody that buys something
from reptilearmy.com
is gonna get a personal video thank you from me,
so go over to reptilearmy.com.
Mike, you can rest.
See, sometimes mistakes aren't a big deal.
Looks even better than the first time.
Now, I put this in here.
Perfect. I love it.
I don't mind that it's a little bit up,
because I actually want the lip to be a little bit down too.
This is actually perfect in here
and, hey, it all worked out.
Now we actually have to figure out the circumference
of this hole so that the Universal Rock
can go all the way around it like this, right?
And how do we find the circumference of a hole?
Takes me back to geometry.
Pretty simple.
It's actually the diameter,
which is six inches, times pie, 3.14,
which is 18.84.
Now, we don't have to get that technical here.
We know that 18.84
is a little over 18 and three-quarters of an inch,
so I'll just go ahead
and cut this 18 and three-quarters of an inch.
Just a little bit longer than that,
and that should make my entire circle around here.
Well, thankfully, I have an entire pile of Universal Rock,
but I know you guys probably don't.
So later in the vlog, I'm gonna show you
how to do a coupling like this,
where you can use it
for a water bowl without the Universal Rock.
(knife cuts)
(can hits wood)
Trust me, you're gonna want gloves.
So, in theory, this should be about the right size,
the right length and everything like that.
And, if it's a little bit off, it's okay,
because it's supposed to be natural.
So, natural things don't have straight lines.
See how it's kind of wavy.
I want that, right?
Coupling right in the center,
and you just wrap this around.
See, this is where smart people are smarter than me.
Is that I didn't think about the fact
that there's the width of the actual material.
To be totally honest with you.
I don't mind that it overlaps like this.
Now, I would give you one piece of advice.
Use a piece of board or cardboard or something like that,
'cause Great Stuff gets on everything and ruins everything.
I'm not really that unhappy with this, to be honest.
I want this to be a little bit further over.
Now, we've got kind of a good round circle.
We make sure it's pressed all up against wall.
It doesn't really matter if this is the top or bottom.
You see how the top is gonna be a little bit jagged.
I like it actually.
I don't mind that at all.
Right. Now, we're gonna set the bowl in here like this,
and we can always trim this later. Right?
That's the beauty of this whole thing
is that it's not permanent. Right?
So, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna actually start
at the very bottom,
and I'm gonna start Great Stuff foaming all this down here,
all the way down at the bottom first.
Go right around in circles, and fill it all up.
You can manipulate this around a little bit.
It's gonna expand a little bit too,
but we're gonna trim that all off once this dries.
It's gonna take a few hours to dry.
I'm gonna go right to the top here. Right?
So that the bowl will actually sit
and be concave just a little bit.
And there you go.
Now, it's just a matter of,
again, when I come back with a knife,
I'll trim all that off,
trim this down, and then we'll actually seam it
and make it look really good.
For this, this is perfect.
So, that's how you would make the water bowl for now.
I'll show you how it kind of really dresses up
when we're done, but for now we're gonna let that dry.
Let's go ahead
and look at a coupling if you don't have Universal Rock.
Let's say you don't have Universal Rock.
Great Foam can work perfectly well without it too.
This is where it's gonna get a little bit dirty, guys.
We're just gonna go ahead and foam the entire thing.
So, here we go.
All the way around.
Get everything all foamed up.
All right.
Gonna just kind of do some little up here and there.
Make sure I've got coverage all the way around.
There's a little bit more needed right over here.
Woo hoo. I know it doesn't look like much,
and you're probably saying,
Brian, you're absolutely outta your mind.
I'm telling you, this one's gonna look really cool too.
It's gonna look different than the Universal Rock one,
but it's still gonna be very functional and pretty awesome.
So, now we have to just wait a little bit
and do some other reptile work.
- Oh, Tabasco. The joys.
As you guys know,
Tabasco has been going through maturity.
We all know that he beat up Sriracha,
and he's still very territorial.
We're gonna see what happens.
I mean, I don't even know.
Are you in a good mood today, or are you in a bad mood?
Because you look like you're in a bad mood.
(vacuum runs) Hey.
Hey, don't you hit me with that tail.
Don't do it.
It's so weird.
Like he goes from just being in his normal,
oh, I love everybody,
to like this Jack wagon of an iguana.
He's doing pretty good.
No. (vacuum drowns out words) my fingers?
You did, didn't you?
I'm just letting him smell me.
I'm gonna beat you up.
Oh no, I want love.
I'm gonna beat you up.
Hormones. Am I right?
Don't do it.
I'll scoot over.
I'm putting dirt in.
Dirt. Bunch of dirt.
No, no.
You're such a good boy.
I know I moved you, oh my goodness.
How could I possibly touch you?
Forgot the stepstool.
OSHA!
♪In a world of OSHA violation. ♪
And there goes McDoucher.
He wants to come get pets and love and snuggles,
and then there's that side of him,
where it's just the chemicals in his brain are like,
oh, I'm the biggest, I'm the baddest.
I'm the only one in this enclosure.
This is my house, my territory.
- Can we get this out of the mold?
Looks like it's actually not too bad.
So this stuff expands a lot.
And it came out. Look at that.
So, obviously, all that expansion right there,
what we're gonna do is just basically,
first off, kind of take all this foam off here.
Little foam that came out here, just pop that off.
Basically, it's just a matter
of doing a lot of cleaning up.
All around here.
Comes off pretty easy, to be honest with you.
Oh, don't stab yourself.
You start to see this taking a little shape now.
Get all the foam off the actual coupling itself,
'cause we are gonna paint that.
Then you can take a little wire brush like this,
and just kinda wire brush all this stuff off.
(brush scrapes)
This is basically the-
again, we're gonna seam all this up here in a second,
and then the cup just sits right in here like that.
So, now you can actually remove the cup.
Again, you can recycle this.
You can buy new ones.
You can wash 'em. Do whatever you want.
Kind of looks pretty cool. Right?
But once we seam it up,
it's gonna look way, way better.
That's the next step,
and I'll show you how we do that.
But before we get onto the seaming,
I'm gonna show you that this white inside here
we wanna actually color with some spray paint.
The clear plastic cups you're gonna see in there,
you're gonna see through, and you're gonna see the white.
We don't wanna see that,
so just gonna do a quick spray of this.
Hide all of the white,
and that's that. On to seaming.
Next step, we're just gonna actually
put a bunch of silicone all around here.
I prefer to use the dark one,
just 'cause it's a little bit better,
and I'm just gonna kind of coat this entire area here.
You say, ah, that doesn't even look that good.
Trust me.
When we get this feathered out,
you'll see how it looks.
So, nice thick layer here,
covering as much of the foam as possible.
You take a brush like this,
and this is actually a little powdered cement dust here,
and we just go like this, stabbing it on.
And it covers all of those little areas, right?
All the little imperfections kind of just go away.
And you guys thought I was just a snake guy.
Turns out I'm an artist.
Do the exact same thing with the seam, like that.
Back to it.
And you don't have to be super perfect.
As a matter of fact,
it's better to not be perfect,
because nature has all kinds of imperfections,
and it actually makes it look more natural
if things are not quite perfect.
Then look at that, that seam completely disappeared.
So, now we have basically an entire thing.
We just gotta let this dry,
and it's ready to go into an enclosure.
That's how you do the Universal Rock one.
Let's go look at the all foam one.
- So, nobody knows, but they left a vlog camera,
and I just wanted to let all you guys know,
I like ice cream.
- Moving on the just foam one.
Obviously, this is just a big piece of foam.
This is the cheapest one, right,
because it only costs about maybe $8 to get to this point.
And basically now what you wanna do
is just kind of start shaving this down.
Again, you could be as creative as you want.
If you wanna make it look like little rocky things,
you can do whatever you want.
I'm gonna keep it pretty simple,
to be totally honest with you.
I definitely want a little contour on it,
so I'm gonna just kind of shave it down like this.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do
is just get the shape I want.
Super simple to work with.
You can work with it with a knife, a razor blade, a sawzall.
I mean, whatever you wanna work it with.
It's actually gonna get covered
with a bunch of like peat and sphagnum
and moss and stuff like that,
so you're not gonna really see much of the contouring,
but you can get as creative as you want.
You can build entire enclosures like this too, you know.
If you have a terrarium,
and you wanna foam it out like this and get super creative,
I mean, you might have a lot of hours
into carving and all that type of stuff,
but you can really make some amazing things.
I tell you what, Great Stuff foam is pretty darn awesome.
And make sure and hit that like button,
if you'd like to see me do an entire enclosure
out of this foam.
My inspiration for this
is kinda like Devil's Tower in South Dakota.
So, that's why I'm making
all these little kind of ridges like this.
Where over time, you know,
you're going to see water erosion
on a mountain top or something like that.
So, now we're gonna move on to actually covering this,
which is where the real magic happens.
But first, a little coat of spray paint.
(paint sprays)
What we're gonna coat this with is a little ABG,
a little bit of coconut, and a little bit of sphagnum.
But the first thing you've gotta do,
and this is where it gets a little bit messy,
is coat this entire thing with silicone.
Every little piece.
So, all this whole thing has to be siliconed out.
All right, so this is where it gets fun.
We want coverage, right?
Because, again, all of that ABG and coconut husk
and sphagnum needs to have something to bind to.
You know, bring out your inner child,
if you know what I mean.
Oh yeah, that's good.
It's like making a chocolate cake.
You guys may not know this,
but I have this kind of weird quirk
that I hate to get messy
and hate to get things on my fingers,
so, even with the gloves on,
it's kind of creeping me out a little bit.
So, it looks pretty cool on its own, right?
But now this is where the magic happens.
You actually start putting stuff on it. Right?
You start making it actually something more.
And, again, I'm gonna start with this ABG.
Coat everything with this ABG a little bit.
Not too much, 'cause I want there to be room
for other stuff too, right?
So, I'm gonna put it like that.
Then I'm gonna take some coconut husk
and kind of come back and do the same thing.
Kind of just coat it like this.
And all that silicone disappears.
Then even come back with just a little bit of sphagnum moss.
See if I can't stick a little sphagnum on here,
so that looks a little bit more natural.
And this is why I was saying you don't have
to get too artistic.
I mean, if you wanna make some really deep grooves
or something like that, you can,
but, you know, it pretty much gets covered up
with all of this other stuff, right?
So there you have it, a natural looking water bowl.
Something that you would find maybe out in the wild
at the base of a tree.
It costs about eight bucks to make
and little bit of your time.
And now of course the fun part.
This is the water bowl that used to be in there.
It would only hold about six ounces of water.
Now, of course, these deli cups are 16 ounces.
And look at this.
Slides right in here like this,
and we can replace it.
Now, I can put it in here.
Matches the kind of decor.
Absolutely incredible.
And now this snake has about three times more water
than it usually has.
And the same thing with this one here.
I'm gonna go ahead and take out the water dish.
This actually doesn't have that much water in it.
You just have to be sure you put the right one that fits in.
Look at how good that one blends right in.
Now the water's there. It's amazing.
So, it not only is super functional but looks really good.
I'm over the top happy with the way they turned out.
You know, it's a little departure from a normal vlog,
but I get excited about this stuff
when I can actually improve
not only the quality of care of our animals,
but also the way things look.
I get excited.
I hope that you enjoyed it.
If you did enjoy this video, here's a playlist
of me building a whole bunch of stuff here at The Reptarium.
You can all so subscribe over on this side.
It would mean the world to me.
Have an absolutely wonderful day, Reptile Army.
Remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you in the next one.