my buddy brian (buckykatt) and I recently did a test run on making aragocrete rocks.

I have been trying to wrack my brain and figure out how to make these things more porus, and I am sure there has got to be a way to do it by mixing an incgredient in that will dissolve with the curing process.

We allready took Tim's (I think it was tims suggestion from a long time ago) to mix spaghetti in with the aragocrete mixture in order to have tubes in the rock when the pasta 'cures' out of the rock over the 6 weeks of soaking... but my mind has been running over other possibilities.

We have allready bought some baloons to blow up and make 'macro' caves that will have small openings, sort of a 'pod' heaven. put the baloon in the aragocrete, cover it, let it dry, pop the baloon and pull it out, instant cave.

and I just recently thought about putting bits of pasta in a coffee grinder and chopping it up to the consistency of coffee grounds, that I think has some serious potential...

but then I thought, what about on a more 'nano' scale... what about putting bakingsoda in, or perhaps sawdust (it would have to be from non-treated lumber) that would all decay (or dissolve) and become vacuous spaces within the rocks...

I am wondering what your guys thoughts would be on this, any negatives to something like this? contaminates?

we are curing it by letting the rock sit in a trash can of water and we change the water out every couple of days... if the pasta decays slower than we expect, I thought about doing the final curing stage in salt water and spikeing it with bio-spira and maybe a little amonia to get the process rolling. We didn't document our test run with photos cause I couldn't find my camera, but since I have that now, when we start up again (in a few weeks, Christmas shopping and scuba certification courses are getting in the way! ) we will definatley take photos.

If anyones interested, the mix we are using right now is:

2 bags of southdown
2 bags carib sea special grade
2 bags Sea Chem silver coast (crushed sea shells)

for giggles we also through my old sand bed in, that alone will probably fuel bacterial growth!

in the next round, for sure, we will be using:

Baloons, intact sea shells, and probably some mollusks from the HEB seafood counter)

in addition to the process of using the spaghetti, we use some clay modeling tools to 'sculpt' the rock, and every now and then throw in some of the dry mix (without concrete in it( so that it can 'wash out' and a more unfinished appearance.

any thoughts on this you guys can give, would be awesome, all criticisms and ideas to make this project better would also be welcome!