Homes and Gardens

Fake Rock Guys

Posted at June 30, 2006 13:39

Brothers Manufacture Boulders for Backyard Beautification

By Dawn Klingensmith

Nature forms new rocks when wind, water, or glaciers deposit layers of sediment, which gradually cement into a solid mass. The process takes thousands of years. At Replications Unlimited, rocks are formed when fast-curing urethane is sprayed into a mold. Once the urethane is solid, the mold is removed, and a fake rock is born. The process takes minutes.

The St. Louis company has fabricated thousands of rocks.

Why would anyone need fake rocks, you ask? The real ones are too heavy to lug around. Theme parks rely on plastic rocks to design thrill rides like Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure. Filmmakers use them to build sets. Las Vegas casinos use fake rocks in everything from fountains to faux Egyptian tombs. Museums, zoos, and aquariums use them for exhibits.

When brothers Jeff and Rodney Jarboe developed a method of producing fake rocks in a jiffy, they sold them to these types of customers. In fifteen years, their patented technology has grown so prevalent that you can see it on display “at pretty much any theme park in the country,” Jeff says.

Now, they’re bringing fake boulders to backyards. Four years ago, the brothers sold their commercial business, Futura Coatings, and founded Replications Unlimited for the residential sector. Through the new company, pond and pool contractors as well as suburban homeowners buy fake rocks to build backyard waterfalls and ponds, adding visual appeal to landscaping and poolside decks.

Jeff and Rodney use the prior technology, but on a smaller scale.

The process starts with real rocks. Flexible molds capture “every nook, crevice, and cranny off the original rock formations,” Jeff says. To create the fakes, a urethane compound is sprayed into the molds. Once the urethane hardens, the reusable molds are peeled away to reveal fake rocks that resemble their originals right down to fine dusting of sand particles on their surfaces.

Trained technicians hand-color each rock with a proprietary, weather-resistant coating creating additional depth. If you put a real rock and its copycat side by side, you’d be hard-pressed to tell which is which — that is, until you pick them up, Jeff says. The plastic version of a one-ton boulder would weigh about fifty pounds.

Rocks can be ordered straight from the company’s catalog for sixty to six hundred dollars. Custom-made rocks also are available.

One of Jeff ’s top sellers is a bubbler rock that functions as a fountain. It consists of a water basin, a pump, and plumbing. Self-contained waterfalls are popular, too. Practically, the company designs hollow cover rocks to conceal utility boxes, septic vent pipes, and other elements that mar residential landscaping.

Replications Unlimited produces work for the commercial sector as well, and a recent project turned out to be the mother-of-all cover rocks — a one-and-a-half story miniature mountain used to hide a cell phone tower in California.

For more information or to find a dealer, call 314-524-2040 or visit www.fakerockguys.com.

June 2006

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