Adam Savage Geeks Out Over This Precision Woodworking Saw!

hey everybody Adam Savage in my cave with old friend of tested Brian Meek how are you sir just fine just fine good to see you um well yeah thank you for having me up I appreciate it D well last time you were here which is now almost exactly 10 years ago um my impression was that you guys were new Concepts was a fledgling Saw making company and I will tell you that over the intervening decade I very much enjoyed seeing every high-end woodworking video I've ever seen is using your guys saws um among the things you actually brought to show me 10 years ago and added to my saw collection were two of these beautiful anodized aluminum red saws and this which I've literally just this week been glorying in the cage of this titanium saw do you want to talk about okay sure um the the bird cage design was honestly born out of frustration really yeah well we were we were working on the original one the original titanium look like this and they don't Nest very well into the sheet and when we were buying the sheet what does that mean Nest very well into the sheet okay so if you get if you take two of these and you cut them you waste a lot oh I see in terms of your part retrieval got it those don't Nest well yeah cuz what we were doing was buying titanium that the Air Force had um had problems with off the F22 line and eventually they stopped screwing up so we ran out oh so you were buying the seconds from the QC from the Air Force W it failed QC was perfectly fine for handsaws but it wasn't good enough for an F22 um so you were leaving a lot of titanium on the table Yeah and suddenly we had to pay full price at retail and that needed to stop so so that precluded being able to do these big Open Seas yeah exactly so the way these guys are put together is the legs are cut right next to each other and the spines are all cut next to each other in a different sheet so there's a lot less wastage the the you brought now you brought this last time didn't you no actually we didn't see this this is amazing this is your prototype that is the original bird cage and you went from clearly you went from TIG welding to riveting which I think is a lot more sensible well there's a reason for it please um Titanium welds are notoriously brittle if you do them in open air oh so these are riveted as a as a production jigging feature and also as failback just in case the the welds that are up here totally fail there are still welds but the ri gotcha even if those welds completely fail the rivets will hold it together now for the neophytes watching explain the reason that the cage what the cage does um two things it gives you well well one thing I knew originally and one thing I I found out after we built them it gives you a lot of torsional rigidity right right U so there's noing when when we were making when I was designing the piec part version of this I had a version that was all flat right and it was great intention and it was absolute spaghetti in tortion and I finally got frustrated one night and said I've got a I've got a little teeny uh TIG at home that fires through a microscope and I finally got just got I mean this is actually the test legs from that the spaghetti monster and I finally just said okay fine got frustrated tiged it here in here took a pair of pliers peeled it open and zigzagged some titanium struts in there said okay twist I took it in the next day to Lee and said okay twist this and it just doesn't that's amazing that must have been very satisfying oh boy was it so in the intervening decade tell me what you guys well actually before you tell me what you're working on is this is this is part of what you might have been working on okay tell me what you've been working on ahead what we've been working on um Lee passed away about six years ago and the last thing that he and I worked on together was the big Market Tre saw that's sitting right there I can't even tell how this works looking at it I mean I kind of have some idea but it's kind of blowing my mind well well last time I was here um I didn't have a lot of things with me because I wasn't expecting to do a video we were winging that um all I had was one of these legs and it was like okay what is this weird thing going to do and this is a thre diim a fully 3D saw and it looks great in CAD it the the models come out wonderful the tension is great I put it together and I said no it's just is that because it's really hard to put together in a clean yeah it's very hard to get the joints up here good right and it's just beastly there's got to be a better way to do this it's rigidity is quite spectacular oh yeah it's it it I mean it's built like a tank um but it just not so this is a great lesson that that it can look phenomenal on the screen and then you see it in real life and you take two seconds and say no no okay so where did you go from here then well what Lee had found originally and was this thing this is a saw designed by a guy named fer was uh patented in 1884 can I tell you that like one of my favorite things in the world is objects that I don't know why they exist and this might be the greatest thing I've ever seen for like I get that there's chains and that the saw blade moves dynamically but I don't know why I don't either and and I own well what I've what I've been told about it is that it was originally intended for doing the gingerbread molding on all Victorian houses and I have also been told that it was intended for doing that while up on while the after the boards were installed up on a l sitting there doing this and doing this to guide yourself around yeah but what lunatic's going to do that 30 feet up on a ladder I mean that just that yeah fair enough that that seems unlikely to me but that's also a lot of weight to move around yeah this is cast iron guys um what I you know what I've discovered or what I the way I describe it is this is an answer to a question nobody was asking because you can spin it which is great you know as you're cutting along but you can also spin your wrist um and it it's one of those okay that's nice why it increases the range of your ability to spin you cut a full circle while only short amount but you can also just swing your hander I mean it's one of those right um these did not sell particularly well there are two of them that I know that exist if you look online most of the pictures you're going to see are this actual piece of metal because this one has gone through several where did you guys find this one um Chris schores at popular wood working had it he knew that we were interested in them so he gave it to Lee amazing uh there was a tool dealer who took pictures of it and gave it to crit I mean most of the pictures you're going to see are this one amazing there's one other one that I know of and that's it okay so I see a similar concept of chain that moves a blade well so what this guy does this is that's a question that nobody was asking this is the answer 120 years later because the thing about the finner is you can spin your hand okay fine this guy is on a shock mount so he goes up and down but he can't spin but when you spin the handle now all of this ball chain makes the blades track and you can cut sideways and back and forth and since you cannot swing the your hand on this one you need that mechanism uh that's the that's the deal here can we see this go yeah give me a second to tighten the blade and so that's it it's a shock Melt With A yeah wow and it tensions and if I get a little piece of wood out of my scrap bin here I come bearing gifts all right so the way this guy works it's it's got a flat spot on the handle so you can see feel which way the the Blade's going all right let's make sure I got this and as I cut with it the the bungee cord back there is eating up all the weight and it's got ball bearing guides what well it's got a swing arm there's a swing arm in there so I can I can actually move that way and now I can move straight sideways yeah and then turn around and go back this way and I'm cutting backwards without you know without not really having to think about it dude I am completely amazed by can I ask you a question sure from an engineering standpoint were you surprised you could get such nice par across two long chains like this um I mean I see the little the gear the driver you've got there it's an actual two wheel so it it registers but even still if I saw this I'd be like are you sure that these would line up um I'm not surprised because it there was a fair bit of R&D that went into it so by the time we got done no yeah fair but yeah um the reason we didn't use timing belts is that there's a company in New Jersey that will custom make these chains for me in any length they want uh and I can you know and they will do it so they're endless so there's no patch right right no and no attachment point and it's the exact same number of balls exactly uh and there's no timing CH I mean it's lighter than any kind of timing chain isn't it well it's like well I was thinking about a timing belt but timing belts you have to get them in specific lengths right oh right and this thing this thing is modular it changes size sizes there's three different sets of legs for it right right right so it can this is 24 it can be 18 it can be 12 oh my God so there's three different sets of chains and it was just not worth fussing with talking about this is so beautiful thank Go I mean I also I I'll tell you I was just doing a live stream last week where I was saying to the audience that that actually upon seeing your choices of anodization color of the red and this and the gray of like I I know that these are excellent Engineers just from how hard it is to get color choices to match each other and play well so you guys make you guys you guys are currently manufacturing and selling three different sizes of these yeah well there's um I had one I got it has it has you can get the tower unit and then you can get the legs separately gotcha and so there's an there's a 24 an 18 and a 12 we mostly sell the 18s uh I built the 24 just because I could right you know the the traditional the traditional marry tool only it tops out at 18 in right and so I had to beat the traditionalists so all right we do 24 and I've got um one of the things about keeping things in the maker Community is the guy who owns ear Eerie tool Lake Eerie tools um Nick dumbrowski he is actually a mechanical engineer and has all the FAA software and more importantly knows how to use it O So FAA is finite element analys yes and and that's actually going to help you figure out some even better layouts for the well that's actually what specifically what was going on with this thing because it's designed to hold 60 pounds of tension at the end of two two so the F so the the the FAA has made choices like these little gussets with the little land below them and all that stuff wow and you guys can't see it but there's actually reinforcement bars on the back of this thing that are 3/4 by 5/8 I mean they're these giant reinforcement bars and that's specifically because of the FAA analysis and this is all sitting on a bungee shock mount that's just and it's all ball bearings is it linear ball bearings okay wow I didn't know they made them that small quarter inch or a quarter inch yeah 12 mm amazing yeah and that way it doesn't rack it doesn't shutter right right you basically don't know that it's there dude I'm so blown away this is so beautiful so this is the kind of thing it's designed to do is marquetry where you take different colors of wood and you cut through and you basically lay it out like a picture um and the way that works is oops you you set the thing at a very slight angle and you cut through and once you take it apart there's a couple of layers here you take it all apart and you take the top one oh and the angle allows the angle allows you to punch through and so then you put it put them together and youve got no curf lines and you sand it off a little bit and everything's and it looks like there was it was never cut that's what the deal is with these things wow um but just to prove I could I cut the torch out of a dime with this thing at the end of two feet worth a leg let me see this oh are you kidding me yeah I even got the I even got the leaves that is insanity sauce that that was that was me proving my point is what that was this this is the thing is I've been working again on the crown jewels and I'm needing to do stuff just like this and I was literally just having one blade break per cut last week and I was thinking I can't wait till Brian gets here I had so many questions for him all right yeah that was just one of those okay I'm going to prove my point now um because people aren't used to a saw this big that can cut this well um so this is this is a am I looking now at a complete system you guys finished with this system it's all out there you can buy all the parts of it yep it has been available since 2019 um it Lee when he passed away he never got to saw it completely done ah he saw he saw this stuff right right right but there was some stuff with the swing arms that wasn't right yeah I mean I had this is one of the things he saw so many different iterations I'm sure yeah I mean if you look at the swing arm now it's a two-stage it's a one stage unit it just swivels right and it actually it gives you plenty of side to side motion the original version was like this and it had was a two-stage it was a two-stage swing arm and it's got a 100 bucks and bearings in it and there's two of them oh okay yeah yeah um and it turns out it didn't work very well so this was well that's lucky this is yeah this one was 3D printed just to see if it would work and the answer was no but it's got you know ball it's got linear bearings it's got um oh I see surface bearings surface bearings in there it's got Springs it's got all kinds of stuff and the answer was no just from a cost perspective no it just mechanically didn't work right right oh I see right cost and mechanically yeah if it I told him I'd get it done so the cost Was No Object it was just mechanically it didn't work the way I wanted it to so so given that you guys have such what I can see great saturation in the in the mark tree and woodworking Community what are your North Stars right now what are the what what sort of areas are you looking towards well we've got I spent a bunch of years as a production Jeweler and Lee Lee sold into that market so my my guiding thing is to find pain points in the market and and fix them make make our friends lives easier yeah uh we've got a new product coming out that is a tower um that gets the your bench pin up in the air if you look at this thing there's a dovetail on here that's an industry standard Mount there's all kinds of other things that fit on this from companies not not just us there's several companies that that use this Mount and it's like a standard taper yeah it's a standard taper and so what we did was we made a lot of makers are working in improvised situ they're working on you know kitchen tables whatever we made this big steel tower that will get that's adjustable for height and it will get your bench pin wedge up where you need it to be and it clamps onto the table and you can take it off in 30 seconds amazing doesn't bugger up your table it's rock solid so you're like meeting your customers literally where they are whether it's at their dining table or in a workshop absolutely amazing um I love that you know that's the goal is to make people's lives easier yeah and you you know any place I can find somewhere to do that will do it you know what's funny is uh if if I was still interested in making television which I'm not right now a show I totally want to do is go to people's tiny apartments and help them put a little workshop in there whether it's in the closet or under the crawl space or whatever well through through Co my wife and I spent a lot of time watching the the HGTV re you know yeah yeah the remodel shows yeah well they're kind of chicken I mean especially there's a couple of them that're kind of chicken soupish yeah you know it's you know Happy People fixing stuff and especially those years man happy people fixing stuff was a good was a good thing and it would be a cool thing to do for the craft scene yeah is you know craft how to make life easier you know because Lee and I really did do two guys in a garage to a million dollar company that's I nothing makes me happier really I I mean I I'm always I love stumping for local manufacturing uh I also am a you know as you know lifelong Problem Solver and I love your classification of this as an answer without a question and this is the answer 12 decades later yeah 120 years later you finally you finally find the answer to that thing that's amazing but I mean I I wish I think the guy's name was Charles finner I wish he could have seen where it went I wish Lee could have seen where it finally ended up do you have the patent drawings uh I I think we've got him in the office um because Lee was big on that stuff and um you know there's there's stuff like that there's a it's a there's a bit storage thing in there oh really yeah I God knows what for what but also look at that nice like long nurl well here look at um look at the knurling on this where do you think that game from oh you I've been you know what I've almost worked myself up to the courage to try and make one of these that because Chris uses it on click spring actually it was specifically Chris's video that that did it I knew it I knew it well the problem was in order to get it to work on the CNC it has I actually had to get some rollers custom made in Germany right um because you know it's got to be repeat for the CNC it's got to be repeatable and yeah no it was it was Chris I blame Chris I got to say I I I had no idea what you are going to bring today and I it it blows my mind completely wide open it's is such a beautiful mechanical device and uh I want to put an order in for the 12in right away um Brian I think you so much for bringing your beautiful thank you for having me really wonderful yeah it's been fun thank you thank you so much for supporting us by watching this channel you can support us at an even deeper level by heading over to tested-stamp we got your normal baseball cap we got your Flex fits and we got Flex fit truckers and we are just starting to play around with lots of new designs so check back regularly thanks

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 241,848

Keywords: tested, adam savage, tested adam savage, adam savage tested, MARQUETRY, saw, woodworking, knew concepts

Id: TgOvkd-r7c4

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2023