Adam Savage's Indiana Jones Grail Diary Prop Replica!

hi kids adam savage here in my  cave with a uh a show-and-tell that is um it's one of those spikes in the  graph this show-and-tell and by that i mean um   in any set of endeavors that we embark upon uh   and in this case i'm discussing making for  me and specifically prop replication for me   in my history of prop replication there  are some props that stand out for me as   really important little moments in which i  understood something i didn't understand before   uh so the first time i took a wooden  slat and covered it with aluminum   foil tape and turned it into a sword that was that  was like a really powerful moment my five dollar   sword hangs directly above my head right now and  it's inspired by that moment uh the the samaritan   which i've only just wrapped uh is maybe the most  involved prop replica i have ever embarked upon   but it carries you know its execution uh uh uh its  execution involves everything that i've learned   before that and this show and tell is one of  those pieces that taught me a lot early on um this   ladies and gentlemen is my henry jones grail diary  from indiana jones and the last crusade and this   is a prop replica which i lovingly and carefully  recreated back in if i remember correctly 2002 2003 yeah right around there 2002 2003  because it was right around the time the myth   buster started uh right around the time  of my divorce i remembered this because   i was alone in an apartment for long  periods of time which helped engender   the creation of this prop but let's get to this  prop this is the grail diary now indiana jones uh   fans love this prop this is a very oft created and  recreated prop and there are a lot of wonderful   copies out there it's sort of shocking for how  intense and complicated this prop is how many   different people have tackled it but i think it  speaks to what a pleasurable build it is because   i personally found it insanely rewarding  in fact i didn't just make one i made ten   i made ten of these yeah where are the other nine  um i do not know they are out there in the world   i you what's funny is well i'll get  to that at the very end of this okay   let us open up this wrapper and talk about it  from uh from the get-go uh the wrapping paper   is it looks kind of nifty it's like a pinstripey  brown wrapping paper um turns out that's what all   of the uk uses as craft paper so if you watch  number file they write all their equations on   this kind of paper so it's not that exotic um  i found it at flax back when i was doing this   the postage stamps here are absolutely correct uh  to the movie and the cancellation stamps are too   i actually laser cut these on ilm's laser cutter  i made a positive stamp and loaded it with ink and   pounded it down on there  i actually think i made uh   13 of these in order to get the  10 that i that i really liked the more i wrap it and unwrap it the better it  looks the diary itself um is about 210 pages   sewn into signatures so i learned uh the rudiments  of book binding in order to put this book together   and both binding is fun book binding is fun and  satisfying uh so uh when you are book binding   how do you join all these pages at their ends you  actually uh you actually end up uh hang on just   a second all right so in order to talk about how  the book is constructed i want to do a ridiculous   simple little lecture on book binding in the way  it was originally done um your basic paperback is   all the pages are clamped together and then glue  is laid down the back and they're held together   pretty okay that's uh that's a perfect binding  i mean i know they're like a bunch of different   names and it's been a while since i've been in  this space so forgive me if i forget a couple   of terms um but back in the olden days they did  what was called signatures and that is how all   like hardcover books and good books are assembled  and a signature is it breaks a book down into a   discreet set of package packets um in this case  the grail diary is in um 12 page signatures   uh and a 12 page signature looks like this it is  composed actually of only three sheets of paper but when you fold them you get  page one 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.   then what you do is once you've gathered your  whole book in signatures you line them up and you   uh there are many different ways to do this  but you can use a saw you actually add a couple   little holes and you sew the signatures together  there's this whole way of binding it's really   thrilling and fun and when you finally get it  all together and you open your book it's like   it's freaking christmas is what it is but back to  the beginning how do we have images of the grail   diary yeah that's a good question well there is  a magic of myth book about lucasfilm that covers   some of their biggest early films like empire  strikes back and raiders and a few others   and in the raiders section there are reproductions  of like i think over 20 or 30 pages maybe 20 pages   of the grail diary full double page spreads in  this in this book uh and those many of us who   replicated this prop did what i did which was i  scanned those pages uh blew them up in photoshop   until they were large enough to print well then i  removed all the artifacts from every single image   of weathering right so like i would take  i would take one of these pages here's one   here's one and in the scan there might be like  blotchiness all around this so i carefully went   in in photoshop and removed everything but the  black text so that when i printed it it would   just be a blank page and i could add my weathering  this as you can imagine took a while um weeks and   weeks and weeks of photoshop work and you know as  i said i was had been recently separated from my   uh my then wife and uh i had lots of time on my  hand and i needed to do something with my hands   and this was the perfect like way to kind  of zone out and so i did for weeks in uh in early 2000 uh early 2000 it's 2002. i'm like my brain is fried  sorry it's early 2002. it doesn't matter   why am i even worrying about it okay so after i've  the book which is about 200 pages long is not 200   uniquely different pages it's a prop uh and a prop  department isn't gonna write a whole book to make   a fake book they're gonna come up with a couple  dozen pages and then they're gonna repeat them   and that is exactly how this book works there's  like i can't remember the exact numbers but   maybe there's like 30 individual pages and they  just repeat throughout the book like six times   um so after i photoshopped all of the images i  found in that lucasfilm book i found some others   online there are pictures of hero props here and  there there's screen grabs from the movie which   some of us traced in order to create  the artwork that we needed uh hold on   a second i gotta blow my nose we're coming on  spring in san francisco and it's been raining   and that means that we're getting some  pollen blooms and um the way i know about   that is because of this very careful detection  instrument for pollen that i possess on my face so i was talking about photoshopping  tons and tons and tons of pages   it's uh it's tedious work especially with old  2002 photoshop but it was also super pleasurable   i remember it being an incredible education uh in  photoshop once i had those then it was gathering   the other images that i could then there are  actually some pages that no one had seen or   that you know we knew existed but no one had found  anything remotely good so there are some folks who   developed a uh uh henry jones font and i'm trying  to find an example in here of the henry jones font   and so some of these pages yeah here we go um the  text on the top of these two pages uh is a henry   jones font it's it's okay frankly some of the  best grail diaries out there are the ones that   are being hand drawn by people who are both insane  and deserve all the credit because that is insane   and holy hell what a beautiful thing to do um also  you might notice there's stuff pasted in here uh   across the grail diary and this is what makes  it such an exciting prop for replicators there   are tons of little inserts there are there is a  silver certificate dollar there are letters from   characters within the indiana jones cannon  there's the hindenburg ticket letter uh   each piece of paper stuffed into the the the spine  of this this bus ticket these old quotes every   single one had to be researched and replicated  so in doing this it's not just that i you know   went and found a picture of this painting i found  the original painting and then photoshopped it   until i had a picture that worked for me right  uh with these bus tickets and things like that i   found originals uh and in many cases the originals  had already been found i can't remember the degree   to which i was doing any new research here you  know it's arguable but uh i mean this is what   makes prop replication so much fun is you get to  like tackle these questions with well i mean in   some cases you get to tackle these questions with  a whole group of people and uh those threads in   an rpf where tons of people are like trying  to figure out where where stuff comes from   it can be really exciting and it can go on for  years all right so now uh in this theoretical   construction of the book i have all of my  photoshop pages i have all of my inserts um   i have all of my photoshop pages as uh as master  drawings and then in order uh and then i had my   inserts and in order to sort the inserts of which  there was like 30 or something i i had a a binder   with pockets in it and one insert went into each  pocket along with each of its uh you know with   all of its compadres so i made 10 books i like  in general made 15 of every insert so that i'd   have extra and those all went into the folder so  when i did the final assembly i was able to like   put the inserts in as i went but each insert  is also a completely different piece of paper   so some of this is newsprint and some  of this is copy paper and some of this   is linen laid paper and some of this is fool's cap  what is fool's cap um frankly i'm not exactly sure   um but it's some kind of paper they used all the  time in detective novels in the 40s um there's   onion skin oh onion skin this prop got me obsessed  with onion skin paper this is onion skin um this is my um white star line titanic ticket  which just seemed appropriate to have in here   um that's like a go with but this  gossamer paper that's like barely there   this is onion skin and this is what everyone used  to type on and i think the main reason we all used   to type on this is because you could put sheets  of carbon paper between sheets of onion skin   and you could make carbon copies that's where  the phrase comes from you make carbon copies of   uh of what you're typing and the onion skin  allowed because of its incredible thinness   for reference your average piece of copy  paper is about 4 000 of an inch thick   yep uh your piece of onion skin here is two  thousands it's half the thickness of normal paper   which means the impression your typewriter key  makes on the first paper and then on the carbon   and the next paper behind it you can make many  more copies than with normal like 20-pound paper and you can still get this stuff on ebay and no  one's really paying attention to it so you can   buy reams of this paper 500 sheets it's like half  an inch thick you buy 500 sheets of this paper um for you know 15 bucks so i have probably 15 reams  of onion skin from across the 20th century i've   sent letters to friends on them uh i made birthday  invitations out of them one year but they're   phenomenal for prop replication uh yeah it's just  it's a beautiful feeling paper and sometimes they   have water marks that you can see when you hold  them up to the light staidler or strathmore yeah paper props are a really really fun and  often quite low-cost entry into high-level   prop replication yeah um definitely paper props  were like one of these places i cut my teeth on   exactitude and precision uh and you know this is  2002. i didn't have a tv show yet i'm still just   uh working at ilm um and i was making a fine  living but i you know this is exactly the kind   of project that my budget could totally afford i'm  going out getting lots of different kinds of paper   making lots of experiments tons of printer  cartridges but i'm walking you through the build   slowly i know it doesn't seem like it but i am  walking through the build so now i have all my   photoshop pages and i have all my inserts so the  next step is to make a book out of all of those   but this is tricky because i can't just print  it out because i'm i'm making the book as a set   of signatures which if you remember are nested  folded sheets of paper in this case nested three   sheet paper bundles that will eventually 15 or 18  of them or so will be lined up to make this whole   book what this means is that when i print this  thing out i have to print it out like this page   1 and 12 are opposite each other on this side and  on this side pages two and eleven you see where   this is going ten and three four and nine eight  and five six and seven right i have to do layouts like this and then i have to print those  double-sided so i get heavier sheets of copy paper   and i do a cut line blue line layout like i used  to do in graphic design and then i paste each of   my sheets 1 and 12 2 and 11 3 and 10 etc right to  do the the layouts of these signatures and because   there's like 35 pages i think it's like three  separate full signatures that i had to lay out and then it turns out that you can't just take  those masters and feed them into a copy machine   why you ask it is a great question because  i thought that's what i would do i thought   feet inside one feet inside one of a hundred  sheets turn the motor feed inside too i mean   there's some information management there  but it seemed pretty tacklable until you   realize that copy machines do not have perfect  alignment from one side to the other no no no draw a dot that's one inch in from each corner  and edge on four sides of a piece of paper   and make a copy of it and then turn it over make  another copy of it they're not gonna line up   perfectly they're gonna get close but here's the  reason close isn't good enough pages like this   so in this case i have a drawing which is   complete across these two pages but this is part  of one part of the signature and this is part of   another this isn't a single page this is two  separate pages their alignment has to be plus   or minus like 16 of an inch all of this meant that  in order to make 12 diaries i had to find someone   local who owned a xerox machine go to their house  that's 2002. it's like printers weren't everywhere   and spend an entire day hand feeding each sheet  in in the right orientation doing every signature   managing all the piles it was like 10 solid hours  of copying just to make sure everything was lined   up on both sides so that when i cut the pages  they would all line up like this ah it sounds   grueling and in that moment where i realized i had  to hand feed everything it was a little grueling   but i remember it with nothing but fondness  truly um so now in this theoretical build i   have all my signatures it's time to clamp them up  i believe i clamped them up in an old wood clamp   let's see here my grandfather was a surgeon uh and  also a maker and i have a couple of his tools in   my collection and this is one of them i own  uh two of his original wood clamps and this   clamp i believe yeah this clamp was uh one  of the i used both of these clamps to do   this this book clamping one on  one side and one on the other   uh and then i tighten them down like this onto the  signatures and then i did that thing i made two   cuts with the saw here two cuts of the saw here  two cuts like that then i sewed them together   bound them inside the end pages ah and the cover  the cover right so in 2002 i had not done much   leather working i had made my first whip in the  90s yes but that's different than the kind of   weather working for doing book covers it's just  different thicknesses different applications   and i knew i wanted to worn leather and i knew  i wanted it consistent across all the books and   i was living in the mission district at that time  not just a few blocks from here and i could have   gone over to sh frank here in the mission one of  the great leather suppliers in the world is just   right here a few blocks from us um but i couldn't  afford a half hide that was like over 100 bucks   there was no way i could afford uh to purchase a  brand new piece of leather for this so i went uh   around the corner to the community thrift store  and i bought a leather jacket i bought an old 80s   leather bomber that was like you know that fake  worn that all of our jackets were in the 80s   and i got uh i got nine books out of it i think i  had to get one more jacket to get that tenth book   um i got nine jackets out of sorry i got nine  books out of one jacket it was a really really   like i remember it being very therapeutic  i remember it being a delightful   place to put my brain at that moment in time  and there is also something intoxicating   as a maker making making multiples of a thing and  making them all perfect that that that is that is   a particular and unique kind of uh maker's high  for me um that's different than just making one   thing there's an assembly line process which i  also love but that moment when you are really   dialing in the final parts of something and your  rap you're you're like putting the inserts into   ten books and you're weathering them with  with a wash and you know you're banging on   them and giving them each a kind of a the specific  weathering then you're wrapping them all on paper   just seeing i i didn't document any part  of this build back when it was happening   which is my big regret um it's probably because  that was exactly a transition point between   film and digital cameras i was an avid film  photographer on 35 millimeter film um but   by early 2002 i had stopped doing it for  the most part because it's expensive to   develop all that film and i kind of lost the  bug for a while it wasn't until uh it wasn't   until late just around after this that i  picked up the canon sure shot 110 i think   it's perfect perfect perfect little early  digital camera weirdly exactly the size of   a pack of cigarettes which i don't think was on by  accident at any rate i don't have any evidence of   this which makes me sad because i'd love nothing  more than to go back today and look at pictures of   stacks of indiana jones grail diaries  um like i said somewhere in this book   i included oh i didn't say it yet somewhere in  this book i included a tell um i included a way to   identify the book as mine and you know what i went  and i forgot what the i forgot what the devil was so if you're wondering if you possess one of  my books i don't know what to tell you uh i've   got a tell in there somewhere uh i should go back  and figure out where that tell is i mean i don't   even know where to begin thinking about what i  would have done i feel like i would have written   something on a small piece of paper you know  on a on one of the inserts perhaps but that's   see the ends you can't make a tell on an insert  it has to be on the actual thing right um yeah   it is hard to say ladies and gentlemen but uh  like i said i made 10 of these i traded them i   sold them back then um every single one had  individual water coloring on the pages that   have water coloring um every single page was  weathered with a wash of raw umber which is   why i had to use copy paper and not inkjet because  the inkjet tends to smear in the presence of water yeah that's the story of my indiana  jones grail diary thank you guys for   joining me for this show and tell it's  a bit more involved than i expected   but yeah it's a fun one thank you guys  stay safe and i will see you next time thank you guys so much for watching that entire  video if you would like to support tested even   further well i'm here to tell you  that you could become a member   if you follow the links below you'll see there  are several tiers of membership depending on   how much you'd like to pay and how  much access you would like to me   and the tested team and membership comes as  always with some excellent benefits including uh   questions that i'll answer in live streams the  questions have been so amazing and exclusive   videos and exclusive content follow the  links below and we will see you next time

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 165,901

Rating: 4.9622984 out of 5

Keywords: tested, testedcom, adam savage, inside adam savage's cave, prop, prop replica, indian jones, indiana jones and the, indiana jones and the last crusade, holy grail (film subject), indiana jones, last crusade, indiana jones (fictional character), indiana jones and the last crusade (film), grail diary, fertility idol, grail diary prop replica, adam savage indiana jones, adam savage tested, adam savage tested show and tell, adam savage indiana, adam savage props

Id: sdoO1kZOQS4

Length: 24min 58sec (1498 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Vectrex221]

Great episode. I wish I was the kind of person who could sit down and do a long form project like this.