Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Brass Watering Can!

hey everybody adam savage here in my cave with a new one-day build ah and it involves a tool i am making a tool today you might not have thought of it as a tool but now that i've mentioned that it's a tool you will always think of it that way during the shelter in place uh my wife mrs don't try this has been spending a lot of time tending to uh our succulent garden we have a tiny little deck in our house it's a place of great relaxation for us and it is surrounded by succulents and in the tending to succulents it turns out you don't want to just pour water over them uh you actually want to put water right in their base so you want a a watering can that has a nice precise spout that can get to the uh the base of the succulents now her birthday is coming up it may have already long passed by the time you see this video but in this point in time her birthday is about a week away and so i thought i would make my wife a watering can for tending to our succulents and i'm going to do it using some sheep brass and some engineering brass and all of my brass soldering braising sanding machining techniques will come into play during this build and it's the kind of thing i've been excited about doing for a while and i've just been trying to come up with the right project to execute a lot of brass construction and this is it so the first step is to come up with a design and i have a nice big piece of unsullied corrugated cardboard to do some drawings on and then we'll go from there all right i have basically uh figured out the rough structure here i've been looking at a lot of flower uh flower pots sorry not flower pots watering cans and this is a very basic design uh got a long spout with a curve that is above the top water level of the can so water won't leak out a nice handle for being able to pour and i may make that handle thicker at some point along its journey so that it's comfortable a fill spout which does not need to be covered uh some support here for supporting the long spout and i may actually make this spout out of many pieces of stepped engineering brass um k s engineering brass which i have a full rack of telescopes so each piece telescopes into its predecessor and uh into its successor so uh i might try and get a really graceful curve now this is a sort of a planned view and sorry an elevation view of what i'm thinking of but i'm not positive this is what i how i want the shape to go i know i want the body of this to be oval but look on a thing like this order of operations is everything and aesthetically while this is close to what i want it's not perfect so i'm going to let the actual uh uh design i'm going to let the construction guide the design the most difficult part of this build is this spout so that's where i'm going to begin i'm going to begin with the spout and once i have that done then i'm going to make the handle and once i have those two things done i'm going to figure out a shape of a can that joins those two in holy matrimony um so i think it's time to break out bend and deal with a whole bunch of brass tubing uh normally in a sequence like this we'd have a shot in the beginning of the sequence of me pulling out the brass but i forgot to get that so actually it's almost just as important to show me putting away the breast i'm shooting right yeah i'm actually filming okay so it's almost just as important to show me putting away the brass because these kns retail racks um were for me it was like finally growing up uh to get these because this is i always dreamed of having these in my shop for 30 years i've wanted to have such a thing in my shop and when you have something like this where each one is precise and placed in a specific location and i know i've got some other detritus around here somewhere it's really really important that they all go back to the right place otherwise why have organization so here we go here are ones i did not use so i think that one i have my spout look at that isn't that lovely tapered and all it is all i did to do this was i slowly bent pieces of brass tubing and then cut out just the bend part using my portable band saw and then threaded them all together so you can see the steps quite clearly here but from here it just looks like a nice delicate flower flower watering can spout i am super happy with that so i'm laying that on my design here uh and now you can see it's slightly different it's longer and bigger than i had planned which is fine now it's time to bend this part the handle and i have some solid brass rod for that uh and that's what i'm gonna do next bending metal regularly into um nice looking curves is not easy but it's not that hard either it just takes a kind of a really steady attention to detail and a willingness to keep on going in and fixing what you've screwed up i mean i remember one of the first jobs i took as a young maker was to make a uh a set of steel coat hangers for a bridal gown place in hayes valley and oh man i mean i bent so much steel for that but there's a way in which after you've bent a certain amount of it being able to make a curve flow is really satisfying and honestly i've gotten my training on things like coat hangers right like just trying to get a nice gentle bend out of a coat hanger is the same thing as trying to get a gentle bend out of a piece of steel so there's lots of places in which you can practice so what i'm doing here is i'm kind of just applying the first curve and trying to make it really regular i'm moving the rod about a half an inch each time i'm applying about the same amount of a bounce force and i'm kind of trying to keep the physicality just consistent enough because i want to try and get a steady curve first after i've got it steady then i'll make it match the curve that i've drawn the other thing that i've done for strength is i've actually nested two tubes inside each other and that means this is a much more rigid structure than it would be if it was just one layer of tubing that's a nice end run around having to go find a thicker piece of tubing right now it's way too big for my flower pot but i really like this curve and i've got enough to work with in here so that i think that i can start to i can start to sharpen it in certain places and see if i can't get a curve that i like to be my um to be my valentine i i mean and in this again i'm not trying to match perfectly to the drawing i'm trying to get something that's aesthetically interesting and then i will get the pot to match it once i'm yeah so again i'm just moving it in small small increments really it's the accretion of many small actions as how to bend tubing or steel to the shape that you want and for a good portion of the time you're doing it it's going to feel like you're doing it wrong yeah see like that's too sharp of a bend and that's kind of a mistake but it might be one that i can work with because it comes out of the end of this yeah see i think i can yeah i just have to all right so at this point in the process i tend to start to give myself some reference marks um just so i kind of know where i am and then i know where i want a sharper bend so and again keeping it level so your curve always happens on one plane i mean that's what's so great about a hospital bender right it keeps everything on the exact same plane but this is now all about just slowly moving through there we go that's nice and now i'll go to here and again can't check too many times it's just about slowly making it what you want it to be and each time you see a part that you're like oh that bend could be a little more even you can even it out by giving it a little goose in the middle that's what you do and when you have a overall curve you grab both ends and kind of gentle it outwards and i the main thing i want to say about bending tubing is that while you're doing it it's going to feel like you're doing it wrong right now this is garbage like this is making me nuts but i know i can get it where i want it to go and also i've given myself some extra at the end so don't ever cut too close to you need bending room and there's this way in which you can get into this move bend move bend move bend and it's almost like a physical dance and then you look up and you're like oh that's really nice and by the way this is a nice marker that i'm staying on a very specific plane i'm only about half the width of the brass off at this point um that's great that tells me i'm on the right track also having two nested tubes is um that's helping me maintain uh not buckle the brass when you're bending thin tubing it's always possible to buckle it for instance if you look very carefully along the line here you can i think you might be able to see that there are these little buckles and that's just sometimes impossible to not end up with it's just the more the more tiny bends you do the less of those buckles you'll have things like brass tubing sometimes it's impossible to avoid but all right we're going to come in here the way you get good at this is just practicing you know i did so much of almost all of my early metal work for higher was using quarter inch hot roll steel rod and that stuff bends very easily uh it was easy to fit in my car because i would just show up to the lumber yard with a bunch of bolt with a pair of bolt cutters and i cut it into the lengths that fit in my volvo and now i'm crossing over itself which is fine i just want to get the line right i'll worry about turning it to size later but i have a sharp bend here and i want to get it right oh yeah it's coming along nicely okay so we're following up to here and then i can start to come in a little sharper and you get to know your bender and you get to know the material the more you bend it and it's just again it's practice so my recommendation to get good at this is like find some old pieces of steel rod and just start trying to get them in the shape that you want actually again coat hanger just a coat hanger is fantastic practice uh oh oh this is this is nice okay so yeah it feels good too ladies and gentlemen yeah yeah that's good okay so i'm going to overcut it here by an inch and i'm going to over cut it here by an inch um right you should see this so here is my rough drawing uh that's the body that's the last part that i'm building here's the spout which probably is going to go like that and then here's the handle i just spent and i know this yeah so what i did was this mark right here was my reference mark for the side of the vessel and then i can actually make this handle a little bigger or smaller as i want but first up i'm going to cut it here i'm going to cut it here that gives me a little more ability to see because these two pieces uh they're just now getting in my way and it's time to cut them now i've got my curve i've got the handle here and i like it but it has a little bit of um unevenness here on the outside and i want to try and just make that a little more regular i i want an aesthetic feeling out of that that i'm not quite getting so i'm going to use my anvil and a chasing hammer here kind of do a little bit of uh of refinement on this curve i'm really pretty happy i was able to use a uh a sand a a nice fine sanding belt to well let's see i used the hammer to to to even out the highs and lows then i used the uh scotch brite belt and the sanding belt to further even those out because i have two layers of brass because i have a nice thick brass wall there i was able to actually make this entirely smooth all the way around now i'm going to do some more work on this with some sandpaper because the mark of great mark of craftsmanship sometimes is the lack of witness marks sometimes it's the visibility of witness marks but for me right now i want to take away some of those we're going well uh i've got the handle which i've removed most of the marks from and i've got the spout which still has to be silver soldered together next up is to start flushing out the body of this thing and for that i've got some i think this is o2o or 030 brass sheet and i'm going to uh yeah i think i'm going to cut some strips that are about as wide as my as my drawing is tall here because i think that's about the size i'm looking for and the next step is to cut out a long set of strip and maybe even uh silver solder the two strips together so i can get a full round i wish i had a longer piece of brass but i do not it's 12 inches square is what i got so i got to make that work i have the brass that will be the body of my watering can laid out here one sheet over the other and i have some one two three blocks weighing it down i've put a straight edge across so i know that i'm making a part that is aligned with itself and i'm going to be using stay clean silver solder to put this all together um jamie taught me about this stuff years ago it's just really really uh robust it's a lovely lovely product it's one of my favorites there we go yeah i gotta lead it that's it mckinnon i'm also you know i'm bending this without a roller and i'm kind of doing it using the same philosophy i am with the with the strip sorry with the rod which is i'm just slowly making bends and seeing how they're how they're working and i'm slowly kind of dialing it into what i like we have here are the rudiments of a watering can right right and then on the other side right this makes me so freaking happy i've so wanted to make one of these things for so forever okay can you tell that i'm excited um i now have the body of my of my watering can and it is soldered together and it doesn't look like crap so i'm so far pleased next is to do let's see here next is to do the top and the well next is to kind of adjust this until i really like it and then clean it all out make sure it's really nice and clean from all the goop and gunk and everything and to make sure that i believe that it is totally watertight which i believe it is then i'm going to put a top and a bottom on it now the bottom is going to be thicker material um and i think i'm also going to run a border around both sides yeah i think that's that's something that i want to do here i think it'll look really nice if i do after i get the top and bottom on then i'm gonna go in and do the uh the spout 10. i have uh i have silver soldered the bottom on with a border it seems to have filled in quite nicely i'm quite pleased best of all it is holding water yes it is holding water so that's the biggest deal this is the bottom um what i'm now going to do is on the band so i'm going to trim this down all the way around and then finish it on the belt sander do a little bit of final work and we should be able to bring this puppy home yeah um it's going really provisionally well so this makes some good sounds hold on we are we're preceding a pace we have a body we have a bottom we have a border all of this is going quite well it's now time for me to silver solder the spout to heal versus solder the spout yeah because the next thing is to put the sprout in and i want to have access to the inside to put the spout in that's important to me oh this is my spout i'm a little teapot short and stout over there is my handle this is the spout now you can see i've got some um some artifacts of the soldering here uh i will take care of those i've also got some bumps i want to take care of but i can't go too far so i'm going to use my belt sander here to kind of bring it home so so the sprout is going to go here and yeah i kind of want to do the sprout before i put the top on that's the front yep that's the front and the spout's got to be higher than the yeah than the water level and then i'm also going to put in a support but the sprout's going to go right there and it's gonna be yeah it's gonna be right there's only one bit that can drill the hole that i need in here right now and that's this this is a step drill and instead of a normal twist drill which pulls itself into the material the step drill scrapes the material out of the way it's perfect for flat materials like flat acrylic flat metal flat plastic yeah step drills get the a set of step drills and life will be good i'm also working with a step drill that is this hot that's biggest dimension is exactly the dimension of my fattest pipe which is great i am going to start straight in but then i'm going to angle it so it fits the pipe and i believe if i come in here right like this all right i'm through now the trick is to angle this because i want this to be become soft like this so it's a fairly steep angle so i'm going to come in oh yeah need a batter step drill actually uh these are actually three pieces of a set from irwin um full disclosure they sent me this set i'm liking it a lot it's totally great yeah this high end yeah still got some ways to go ladies and gents yep okay so uh now i want to extend this up this way and that is a job for a dremel or a handheld rotary tool as it were it's looking good i i like that join i like how that join looks around the outside there we go so it's that so it's time for soldering in the uh the spout and again making sure that it is leak proof um so i'm gonna be putting it over here and over here i'm gonna have a stand of some one two three blocks that will hold up the spout yeah and i'll have one in here there we go this is great now this is the tricky part i gotta heat it on the outside get the solder on the inside and i got to get it all the way around because i need a seal ah i might have gotten it holy cow that okay i might have actually achieved what i was trying to do i have successfully added a top border um i did that by uh taking this thin piece of brass uh clamping it so that it was exactly the size of the main body of my watering can and then soldering it and then pressuring the ring over the top of the sorry i did this off camera i had a visitor and i forgot the camera wasn't running occasionally that happens but i now have soldered the inner lip of this upper piece all the way around and uh the next thing i'm gonna do about the bodywork is solder that on top of that and then trim it back but first i have to do some work on how the handle attaches to all this stuff yeah that's the next deal is the handle yeah so first things first on the handle front well i'm going to cool this down in the sink and then i'm going to drill a hole for the handle and put it in uh and once that's in and roughly and you know i i have to get this on and i'm going to have a fill ring that i'm going to make for this and i have an idea about that too we are making progress uh i have the body with the bottom ring and the top ring it's all waterproof i've got the spout it's a good join the handle back is joined now the top of the handle is floating and that will of course get addressed when i put the top on but i need to make the fill hole for the look at how nice that glows inside oh it's very high guy um now it's time for me to cut a nice big fat hole out of the brass how am i gonna do that that is a great question i'm going to start by double stick taping it to this big piece of one inch plywood and then i'm going to use this big hole saw nice and slow and hopefully that will get me where i want to go cutting big holes in thin sheet material always a thing always a dealy bob um but uh i have grown to really like the double stick tape over the last few weeks yeah kovit has taught me how great double stick tape is for securing things while you are working on them that actually worked out better than i thought it would uh that came out just gorgeously and it was i probably i had the spindle turning a little too fast but it went and just like cut it and now i have this nice circle of brass which will go into the brass drawer um i thought it was going to turn on the lathe a little border around this but i don't have any brass stock that's like two and a half inches wide so i'm going to bend this to be that yeah we're gonna do a little more bending all right so there was something that happened uh as i was attempting to solder the ring into what will be the top of my watering can i got it almost perfect and then if you watch the time lapse at this very moment i heated up so much the metal buckles and the ring pops out losing the work that i had just done so uh i had to take the ring clean off the solder clean out the inside of the hole and redo it um yeah this is good ticklish work it you gotta what you'll notice on this whole build is that every single step i'm taking i'm kind of creeping up on i'm not going whole hog i'm not trying to do too much at once and that's something i've learned about brass construction like this is that you've really got to go slow yeah you got to kind of order of operation is slow um but this looks really good i'm going to do some sanding and finishing on the top of this and then figure out where the hole for this guy goes and then he'll spells margaret we'll have the main body pretty much done what well that was great yeah i've gotta i it's not gonna stay square i'm gonna cut it out and then i'm gonna sand it down so it all looks like i knew what i was doing this is shaping up quite nicely i got to get a little bit of uh solder in there in that action now it's time to clean this puppy up still a ways to go but yeah i'm really getting pleased nice oh almost almost come on that's it yep i still haven't figured out where i want to sign this i don't want to do any etching on it that i'm weirdly clear about but i do want to figure out how to sign it foreign lots of elbow grease later i have something that looks for all the world like a real object uh this looks like a genuine watering can which it is but now the question is this is the basic form i kind of want to personalize it and so i'm thinking about maybe spelling my wife's name here but maybe that's a little bit like maybe she doesn't want to water the can like i'm looking at my name while i'm watering my plants look at my name maybe that's lame um maybe i just make a little banner here that says happy birthday maybe that's what i do and then i'll sign it on the bottom here it um i will say i've been looking for a project to make out of brass for a long time and that this began this morning as some k s engineering brass and some flat sheets of brass and uh eight hours later i've got something like this um it's pretty cool i'm pretty freaking psyched um and still a little ways to go but i am uh yeah i really like it i have come up with the proper personalization here it's going to go right there yep see that nice and tasteful it's not like crowing about itself happy birthday it says happy birthday a little bit hand-hewn makes me very happy so i'm gonna get some solder under there and some flux on there and heat it up and let it wick in here we go so so uh what just happened there well the fact is i thought i was done and i was starting to polish it and i filled it full of water and i had a leak so i took care of that leak and then i had another leak then i took care of that leak then i had another leak and i've spent the last two hours chasing leaks and i finally just ran a little b to jb weld on the underside of the top because uh i didn't have enough uh surface to edge to edge contact that that was an issue however it should be plenty strong given the way i've got it currently set up uh and i'm gonna let it sit overnight and i'm gonna come back in tomorrow and fix it you can see how sweaty i am that was that was a lot of work um when i'm going through stuff like this i'm chasing leaks and i think i'm done but i'm not quite done i've been doing this long enough that i don't get really bent out of shape about it but it's not fun it's it's boring it's exhausting it's concerning but this is the moment at which you got to just sort of knuckle under and kind of keep on tackling it finally chase it get rid of it find another league chase it get rid of it find another league just keep on doing that eventually you're done hopefully tomorrow morning i'll be done well hours of chasing leaks later i think the main bulk of my watering can is done structurally it's totally sound you can hear that there's no more rattling you know my biggest problem was not enough edge to edge contact here i was using brass that was too thin so i supported it with jb weld it may fail in the future if it does i will wrap this around here and do another solder joint to strengthen that joint but for right now i think it's actually pretty robust next i would like to make it easier to hold so i'm gonna look into doing some leather wrapping around the handle here i have a nice long piece of leather here yeah that's a good six feet long i think i can get a nice wrap lace out of it that's like half an inch wide but i gotta straighten it out a little bit first so just a little bit of surgery on this hide it's a nice veg tan hide so it'll take whatever color i apply to it really well half inch making a better leather strap cutter that's definitely a one day build i want to do i have i have issues with all of them okay so let's see here let's make a little slice to begin with yep that is the sharp edge all right here we go now i may need more leather than this but let's just see let's just see what i can achieve here and just see what it feels like i may need to do a thicker strand you know there's all sorts of questions here hopefully i'll be able to get a fair bit around this bend i don't want to have to sew two pieces of leather together or glue them together i'd rather not but i will if i have to i like how this is looking i may add some glue to the underside to make this a much more positive join but as it stands you know what i also might do is make a thicker lace i certainly have the leather to go a little bit wider but i can't make it longer so if i'm overlapping to the same degree every time i think it's going to continue to be the same length but again let's see how far we get i'm getting excited so i'm getting sloppy but i had no idea it would reach around this far usually when you're wrapping something you lose so much length in the multiplication of pi yeah but this is wrapping quite nicely and to be honest i think it's gonna be perfect as a length um i think what i'm gonna do is yeah we're gonna carry it all the way to the bottom of the leather lace there we are okay so there's that and that right there that feels great that feels really really lovely i'm really happy with this i have learned a lot and i want to say you know there's times in this video when i was talking about like soldering brass together you want to get this you don't want to get that um and i was thinking you have no right to pretend to be an authority on this you're just figuring it out as you go and this is true i have both done a lot of brass manufacturing using silver solder and they're still crap tons i am learning on the fly like if you're going to have a structural join like the top of this you really need to make sure it's supported with some surface area and i didn't have enough surface area and that's kind of one of the reasons i ended up chasing leaks on this thing because the the silver solder is not mechanically strong enough uh under certain circumstances uh using very thin brass and again it's just like every material has its own rules and its own proclivities and you have to both work with them and work around all of those rules and proclivities so after all of that after chasing leaks for a couple of hours and letting this thing sit overnight i i feel like it is a done deal i'm really pleased um i thought i shot a time lapse of me installing this but apparently i hadn't pushed record but i ended up supporting the front so the the back end of my leather handle is glued there with barge glue and that's a nice looking beginning to that seam and then when i came all the way around here this is the part that would receive kind of the most abuse in addition to gluing it i wrapped some fine brass wire i had around the end of that and secured it underneath with a little drop of crazy glue and it is um you can hear it it's monolithic there's no like rattling there's no you know some sort of yeah that would tell you so uh it is complete and finished and ready to wrap and give to my partner uh save for the dedication yeah that's gonna i'm going to inscribe it right now what did i write that's between me and my wife thank you very much for joining me for this one day build i am super happy with it i feel really i feel like it's an achievement i feel like it's a a step up for me and my my working with brass and my making of tools thank you guys for joining me on this and i will see you next time hey everyone adam savage here in my cave and we are living through a completely strange moment in time six months ago the entire world changed everyone went into lockdown and so did tested we became a virtual workplace almost overnight and now i see all my colleagues almost exclusively on video chat i am shooting only on the phone i know the sound quality has gotten worse norm joey and gunther are all editing from home and maybe the biggest change is output we have radically increased the number of videos that we make because well that's what i'm doing all week long here is just shooting everything on my phone and eventually the world will return to normal but one of the things we want to keep up is the pace of videos that we've been releasing we've been ecstatic about your feedback about this and we want to keep it going but in order to we need to ask for your direct support and so i'm here today to announce tested channel membership if you're not interested in becoming a member that's fine tested is not going to change for you you still get all the same great one-day builds tool tips the podcast etc but if you are willing to join we've got some pretty cool extras and two levels at which to join for a buck 99 a month we have our supporter level and for 9.99 a month our patron level which includes all the stuff from the supporter level and some live streams some direct access to me and the tested team and some sneak peeks into our entire tested workflow and process we are so excited about the new possibilities that channel membership opens up and we know that many of you have been supporting us all along as tested premium members and to you i say thank you your support has meant everything and you can keep it going by hitting our brand new join button somewhere on this screen thank you guys for watching and between you and me i am most excited by the live streams i really love doing those earlier this summer and i can't wait to pick it up again

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 728,257

Rating: 4.9553366 out of 5

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage one day build, one day builds, one day builds tested, diy watering can for plants, diy watering can spout, adam savage tested, watering can diy, how to make a watering can at home, adam savage build, adam savage builds, metalworking, metalworking projects, bending metal rod, adam savage metal, adam savage brass, adam savage soldering, step drill bit, adam savage one day builds youtube, diy metal watering can, how to make a metal watering can

Id: EXaDxl60rTQ

Length: 54min 24sec (3264 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020