The Magic Material

Just spoke with the director of the Marquette Children's Museum. The "magic substance" used to create their rock caves and their tree bark is Durabond 90 - sold at many local hardware stores, including Mennards. A 25 pound bag goes for something like $15. It goes on like a clay, and hardens to a concrete-strength in 90 minutes. It can be textured with combs or brushes, and then painted with various finishes. MSDS/Safety information can be found here: http://www.mta.ca/administration/facilities/safety/msds/carpentry/Concrete%20and%20Fillers/DuraBond%2045.pdf.

Marquette Children's Museum's treehouse covers a steel girder I-beam. They made a wooden frame, bent 8x4 boards to make it cylidrical, and then covered with Durabond. Viola! Tree! Durabond is a crucial component for theming - with it we can create our own hollow log for crawling, and log slices for balance activities. One thought for the log slices is to use a standard balance disc, and then cover the top of it with the Durabond and paint to look like a log slice. It then has the "wobbliness" of the disc, but goes with our theme....


I'm extremely excited to know there's options out there besides the faux bark I've been pricing, which would've cost us literally THOUSANDS of dollars!!! Other uses include making both the climbing wall and the "quiet cave" look like real rock. We can also fashion our "rock stage" out of this stuff. Yahoo!!