Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Famous Gemstones Collection!

hey everybody adam savage here in my  cave with an origin story of sorts uh i i haven't fully figured out exactly  the order in which to tell you   the parts of the story that uh i  want to cover but here we go um when i was about eight or nine years old i found  a diamond i found a bit of costume jewelry in the   street in a classic like diamond cut i found a  piece of glass about like this it was probably   not this large this is plastic by the way it was  probably not this large but to my little fingers   it did seem this large and nine-year-old bee was  like i found a diamond i was so freaking excited   and i went to every adult and i was like do you  think it's a diamond and now that i'm adult i   know that the proper answer is it might be which  is a terrible thing to say to a kid because there   i was like maybe i'm rich maybe this is amazing  i can't believe i found this and i would be like   in the back seat of the car like as my parents  were driving and i'd be like holding it into the   shaft of sunlight and watching its spray its a  little light pattern across the back of the seat   yeah i mean i just really specifically remember  like a couple of weeks this was up at cape cod   where we would spend our summers when i was a kid  and i just i really remember this like two week   euphoric period of obsessing about this little  costume jewelry glass gem that i had found and eventually i can't remember who i showed it to but  i showed it to someone and they were like oh yeah   it's class i i'm using an accent because i think  it might have been my parents friend jacqueline   who was i think the sort of person who would know  that sort of thing jacqueline was like a sculptor   and she was rich and so she was like yeah this is  glass and i really specifically remember when i   found out it was glass not mindy like none of my  pleasure in my diamond was diminished whatsoever   and i was the reason i'm telling this  story the reason this story came up   to me recently is i was thinking about i was  thinking about the kind of experience that i   want from the objects that i make i want as i'm  always talking about a level of authenticity but   to the interaction between me and the object um  and what that story tells me when i reflect upon   it is that i was getting an experience out of  the diamond that had nothing to do with whether   it was real or not which is a perfect analogy  for everything that happens in this building um and i think that that like you know when  you go when you go back through your memories   there's a reason some of them stick around i  mean sometimes we hold on to certain memories   for self-serving reasons and we build them into  other things sometimes you know there's real   information in why you remember something and i  feel like that story is is an early harbinger of   of the kind of experience i would be chasing for  the rest of my life um but you saw the the the   title of this video we're talking about gems in  general so when i made the crown when i made the   saint edwards crown the windsor coronation crown  when i made it twice i was looking into the gems   right because the gems of the coronation crown  are all removable and they've actually changed   over the years like these pieces of crown jewels  they they're they're not necessarily static uh   yeah it's fascinating um and there's a  whole bunch to unpack in that right like   the ship of theseus but uh as i was researching it  i was looking i wanna do the scepter eventually i   wanna do the scepter of course i wanna do the  scepter um the headpiece of the of the scepter   is the great star of africa  it is the largest cut stone   in the world the largest cut from the  cullinan diamond which is like this   i can't even remember a thousand carrots um  it's this giant chunk um by the way if anybody   out there has well sorry i'll ask that question  later at any rate the head of the royal scepter   of the windsors is the great star of africa  the cullinan one the 580 carat diamond and i   was like look at it and i was like man that is  one hell of a piece that is a hell of a chunk   of stuff and then i thought what if it's possible  to buy a replica of this stone reader it is i went online and in a fairly  short order i found this uh this is   billed as a replica of the culinary one the  great star of africa it is made in glass   uh it is a fine replica yeah that is fine fine  replica you notice i'm not using superlatives   it's fine and then i found myself wondering  well if i can find replicas made of glass   somewhere in there by the way i went  down a youtube rabbit hole of looking at   lapidaries people who carve these stones with with  the platons and the different polishing compounds   that is a whole just so much fun i don't have any  specific lapidary videos to point you to because i   just like i spent a whole night watching hours and  hours of people like doing these cuts and learning   just how insane the actual art of this is that  you gotta get these points to match and marry and   it's incredible at any rate i was looking  at this and i was looking at replicas of   gemstones and i was thinking to myself i  wonder if anyone makes one of these that's   not in glass but in something that even might  be a little more precious turns out they do then i found this company that makes these  replicas in cubic zirconia so here is the   here is the first one that i bought you're  gonna love this and here is the second oh   can you see right right there's no freaking  contest oh my goodness oh oh i mean this   look it's entirely possible that even  this isn't close to the real thing but   hell's belle's margaret this this is like  when you're talking about like looking for   an experience when this arrived in the mail  and i unpacked it i like went right back to   that nine-year-old self and i was like oh  it's my diamond and i'll tell you that um   uh i have uh sun henge in my bedroom uh seasonally  like uh there's a specific spot in the curtain   that can never be shut and every now and then a  shaft of sunlight comes through and sure enough   i like went to my office and got this and like  held it in the shaft of suddenly filled the room   with like this crystal reflection um but we're  still at the beginning of the video and you're   probably wondering what the hell i'm talking  about so i bought this beautif beautiful cubic   zirconia copy of the great star of africa and i'm  really happy to have this in my collection and if   you know anything about me you know that i don't  just i among the things that i love many is one   of them i love many i love collections i i crave  agglomerations of things i don't exactly know why   and so uh you know i started to look around  at other gems that i had because i wanted to   like well i've got i've got this and then  i remembered i had these i have these and   forgive me please one of these is from conan  the barbarian i think it's this one and one of   these is from the second raiders film i think  it's i think this is a loud chase diamond and   i think this is the eye of the dragon but i'm  not positive i used to have a jewel of the nile   el corazon the big green one um and there was  a run on the rpf many years ago and uh sadly uh you know what a friend of mine  asked for it to give to a girl   he wanted to impress a girl and  i thought that that was a really   reasonable reason and i gave it away  to him and he did impress the girl not quite enough i think at any rate  i never got that jewel back because i   gave it to him to give to her if you have a  line on the el corazon it's like one of the   one of the gems i'm still looking  for but anyway so i had these   and then i also had this which is the noble  collections philosopher's stone which is noble collection they are hit or miss  in my opinion mostly hit to be honest   they do really really good work uh when  they do good work it's great work this   is a tremendous prop replica it's  actually made of glass too feels great so i think we've established that i  realized that i might have a collection   and then i might make that collection bigger  and bigger and then i just did this search on   ebay for historical gemstones oh so gemstone  replicas that's what i did gemstone replicas   right so they found them and then that led me  down a thing and then i discovered that in the   turn of the 20th century there was a company that  sold sets of sorry i don't know why i'm yelling   i don't need to yell um what i learned was at  the turn of the 20th century around 1910 or so   uh there was a company that sold sets of replicas  of many of the most famous gemstones in the world   yeah um they were all made out of glass there  was a reasonable smattering of them like 15 or so   um i love this i like so i must tell you that  like when i think about this in the abstract   i'm like who would collect this even though i  would collect it i'm like who would collect this   and so i'm wondering what is the market for that  i don't care i love that these exist the problem   is when you can find these historical gemstone  sets on ebay they are crazy expensive i mean   like 35 4 500 bucks for a complete set luckily i  found one with a couple of broken gems in it and   a couple of missing ones for 200 yes uh historical  diamonds that's what it came in and uh they're all   they've i've removed them here but here as you  can see one two three four five six seven eight   15. um this is how they were packaged this box is  like barely surviving i had to actually glue it   back together just to like keep it from falling to  pieces the gems i have removed from here because   yeah it's time to show you um because i've sorted  them all into into this so here this is now i'm going to show you in close-ups of this but  basically i now have a collection of replica   gemstones from history i have 18 of them  plus from fiction another five or six and i'm in the state with this collection   that i know i want to do something interesting  with it i love the idea i love the idea that this   cubic zirconia replica can give you an experience  of what it's like to hold the real thing that not   many other things can and i find myself thinking  about a a a way of experiencing these that speaks   to how remarkably rare they are right like what  if you could go sit at a table and like examine   each one put on gloves and look at each one so  i'm like thinking about packaging these in a way to foment an experience of intersecting  with them does that make sense museums buy replicas of famous objects all the  time uh and they do it so that they can have a   a comprehensive or as comprehensive as they can  afford a display of of things so like often in in   museums that are talking about prehistoric  writing where you've got cuny farm a lot of those   cutie form tablets are cast you can buy them from  replica companies and that's totally fine with me   and actually not only fine i think that's awesome  i love the fact that there are companies that make   replica cuny form tablets i have several in my  collection because it having this and holding   it physicalizes it in a really specific way for  me um and i want to do that with these and so   i've been thinking about displays i've been  thinking about making little rings that   held them with tension screws and i've been  thinking about lighting and spotlights and   all of these it's like a theatrical experience  that i am trying to create in my head for   like if you came to the cave and i and you said i  want to see the gemstones that i'd pull out this   box and you'd be like oh let's see the gemstones  and you'd like have this whole experience this   is what i'm it's like a theater it's a thea it's  theater the theater of props the props of theater   um but i don't know what that experience is  however i do know that this box with its labels   ain't it as they rattle around in there i'm  worried about them i have some doubles of   some things um i don't recognize each one on  its own perfectly so i have to keep each one   with its label so i don't have to keep  on going back to my pictorial reference so we've established that uh my origin  story is in is in fake gemstones   the crown got me back down a rabbit hole  i collected the cubic zirconia and look at   all this collection and i'm trying to figure out  how to encase it and this is actually another   thing that i do here in the cave is when  i have objects that i really really love i   desire to make a vessel for those  objects that holds them right   yeah the vessel is maybe one of the more important  things i do in here uh i'm starting to think but   i don't know what vessel these require yet so i am  going today this is the 15 minutes in this is the   longest intro i think i've ever done i'm going  to build an interim vessel yeah that's all this   is um this is a lot the longest way of explaining  that in order to sort of understand what i want   from these what i get from these what i  learn what i desire i'm going to need to   make an interim case and that interim case  is going to be made out of cedar and other   raw woods no plywood because it feels improper  plywood feels too new for something like this now   i don't know why but i know that that's  the case in my head and that's information   so what i'm doing here is i mean this is a  creative exploration this is a piece of art   that i'm going to make it is an experience  i hope one day you get to experience it uh   but it's far from fully formed and the process  of figuring out what that vessel looks like   will be convoluted and i might never get there  but it begins with like exploiting each piece   of information as i know it and what i know is i  want a box that holds them all i don't want it to   rattle around i want to be able to carry it with  me i mean you know to look at and to think about   and i need it to be made not apply what those  are the things i know that is where i'm starting   thanks for your patience let's get into it um  just before i get into it i want to explain   that the fascination with the gemstone is  like super complicated um the gemstone itself   is super complicated it speaks to the stripping  of natural resources it speaks to the way in   which we take care of this planet it speaks  to tremendous class issues uh colonialism the   history of gemstones is it most often a terrible  history there's so much intensity laid into these   and that's all part and parcel of why i find these  objects fascinating i mean i also make all these   weird like movie firearms and armors and costumes  and things and they often have complicated past   that are part of what makes them interesting  like these things have power and it's not always their complication is part of the  information that makes them interesting   that's all i just like wanted to make it  clear like i have no illusions about how   much pain and suffering giant diamonds represent  to the history of the world yeah totally and   did you see i have a dark crystal look at  this beautiful thing oh dude skeksis beware um   there's one in here it's really really beat up i just wanted to show you this one yeah the  jubilee okay so this was one of the ones in   the kit that was broken and it's hard to  see but uh yeah there you go look at that   it's a full cleaving clearly someone dropped it on  this corner and the whole thing sheared right off   it's really sad because the jubilee is a beautiful  cut uh and so i found a company look at that i   found a company that makes it the same company  that makes it out of cubic zirconia um we'll   include a link to them in the com in the comments  below because they do wonderful work um yeah dude uh so i think that uh for me the first  thing is to figure out some kind of size   some kind of size so i'm gonna lay out a piece of  foam core and i'm gonna place these all on it and   that should help me kind of understand the size  of the vessel that i am looking to make um yeah   i guess i don't need to adjust that anymore so warm off years ago um the smithsonian released a beautiful  hulk diamond replica in uh in a setting it's   just an absolutely gorgeous replica and  i managed to pick one of those up on ebay   all right uh i have i have a  reasonable uh layout of these   not sure if that's how big the box is  gonna be but let's take a look there is   the collection as it stands oh it's a lovely  collection isn't it yeah look at that here it's very exciting why who knows it's time to start cutting some cedar  again i'm not sure where i'm going to   go with this so i'm just going to start  i'm going to start with some cutting yeah so so after i did the um the piece  untested about japanese saws   uh swizan this company sent me  a couple of theirs and this is   really nice saw thank you guys uh we'll  include a link in the comments below since i uh i'm making some drawer dividers or like  little wooden dividers i've taken my cedar and   i've grease on it on my bandsaw down to thinner  slats and i'm about to run it through the player however i'm finally about to use my portable  dust retrieval system here to uh to facilitate the uh the collection of dust from this thing  nothing creates more dust than a bloody   plainer man okay i'm sure you know if things  the crater doesn't play but i don't all right foreign   sorry i forgot to show you look at all these  beautiful all the same size oh it smells so good   and dust retrieval on this phenomenal phenomenal  i mean there's a pile of dust out here the   vacuum's not quite powerful enough to pull up but  frankly usually it's like a rooster tail of dust i've uh i've cut some little dividers and i'm  just i'm playing around with some orders here   some orders of operation how can i  display these how pick-up-able are they   i'm going to want to reach in and  kind of you know grab each one and talk about it one two three four five this is me um slowly just cutting down the pieces  of the grid that will hold these in place i   this is a tough build because this isn't  a final thing and so i already know like   it's not gonna quite work for me and it's  hard to build when i know it's when i'm not   it's just it's a little tough it kind of  muscle this is one where you use discipline   instead of uh enthusiasm right like i want  to get this done i know once i have it done   it'll help me understand this collection  but i also know that like it's only a   temporary solution because i don't know what  the final you know fix is all right here we go okay i think i like those spaces so wow that is almost the perfect  freaking size wow nice okay so good good yes ah oh actually i think interesting yeah these  two just continue all the way to there do this on the bandsaw oh you want to  watch keeping the rods yeah we can watch nice happy with that uh yup okay wow there's a lot of um all right here is the layout all right so  what i need to do is now i need to   figure out all the notching that  allows the internal dividers   to be cohesive i think i'm going to  use crazy glue to put this box together   yeah i think i'm gonna use  crazy glue and some pin nails uh this is one where the inside of the  box is way harder than the outside   once i have this the outside just goes  really fast ha famous last words all right uh so i think the thing is is that all five  of these divide all five of these dividers all right we do these first  so i'm just going to mark   these four divisions and then i'll  cut those notches out of all of these um i'm gonna take a picture of this and print  it there's too many moving parts to this thing i know a lot of people do this  work by catting it up first   my problem is i can't understand  something until i can see it irl all right i'm gonna cut out these four  sets of notches on these guys okay next set of markings so that one goes there oh no that one goes there wait that's where that one goes wait a second did i screw all  this up okay let's see here   there's a lot of information to manage i know  it's not a lot of information to manage but it   feels like a lot of information to manage all  right let's see here one two three four one two three four now that guy so how did i mess this one up so badly that's  the thing that's the most amazing to me really is quite remarkable  how how incredibly thoroughly all right well these are all okay i just need one  more of each oh i can cut it out of this one great okay so doing pretty good here oh so uh that was some table saw  sounds you heard before i'm gonna   re-cut this piece that i messed up so badly  and uh yeah you can watch if you'd like gotta creep up on it all right so right good now that is the one  last notch i need in these long ones okay so now i have all the long ones done now i  want to cut i want to cut the sides yeah i want to yeah i need to notch the sides and that  notch it's just gonna be let's see here so yeah this will be like this okay so that's the end cut and then  here's where the notches are on two three all right we're going to  notch these using the sled so uh yeah follow the process not the plan um i now have  all the dividers in i have the notches cut   for the outsides of the box one for just these  two sides uh i think it's now incumbent on me   to pull the gems and glue this thing  together the way it needs to be which is   kind of entirely upside down from how it is i know  that doesn't necessarily make sense but it will ah here's how we're gonna do  it goes like this that one that one oh right yeah there you go that that oh right this one needs its  little schmidges doesn't it yes it does   then this one goes like this okay yep okay so  now you come out and you do this that goes there there there and there great good yes and then you come  out and you do the same thing upside down on down yeah i'll have to slice you a little slicey there great good i think that one all right  i think that one does that am i right i'd be wrong about this one oh oh oh okay that is that well let's just see here  what the hell okay i can move these guys and i can hold this up here oh yeah that's  where that one goes just like that great   oh oh okay so i see i see now i see the error of  my ways great look at that isn't that lovely can   you see how it all worked out i didn't really have  to over engineer the front end of this equation   just so long as i proceeded methodically  through it now that drops right on there excellent all right so that is the out there   there now the question is how  high are the sides of the box and that's what we'll do we'll cut it  to there and we'll make that the lid   but yeah i guess that is what it is okay  well we're uh i'm ready to do an assembly trying this new stick fast uh ca glue i it  should work like most other cigarettes work okay so let's get this going that is the are the top and this over here let's see how i'm going to assemble this guy  like this and then i'm going to pin nail it   no i don't need these long ones these short ones these half inchers half inch  yeah half inch they won't crawl they won't move   they'll hold the glue you smoke a little weed  you make a little face you stay out the way so yeah uh oh right right right one other  thing i'm gonna add a little bit of blue velvet here uh i've got some blue velvet and i  have covered this with sticky stuff i'm about   to uh yeah i'm about to put blue velvet on here  underneath my uh business yeah a little bit longer mm-hmm let's just trim off most of this mostly heroin now right i like that um now with  this guy you see i'm gonna need to okay good oh good nothing really screwed up   i'm happy about that all right  let's um do a little bit of sanding so all right uh now i'm going to give  this a quick coat of some black paint   um for reasons that'll be obvious later i realized i also wanted the inside to  be darker to better highlight the gems so   i gave it a quick coat of  matte black now i'm grinding okay uh all right we're gonna yeah that  goes like that and then it goes right that it's every bit as long yeah okay so that right yeah it is itches got a little crazy glue going crazy okay good good happy what totally messed  it up totally messed it up yep yeah you watched me do it i  know i know i know after all that okay so right this goes to there   come suck like that not yeah because that  is yes that is this is and yeah it's okay so let's do it again ah yep all right no blow throughs whatsoever let me get  a nice sharp blade and clean that up uh yeah i'm just going in and gluing the whole thing  this is the bottom i'm never going to see this   and i'll sand it back with a orbital sander in a  minute but yeah this will hopefully keep all this   stuff together and cohesive yep yep excellent i am  not being gentle with this process this is again   this is an interim box you know it'll survive  this project and probably go on to do other stuff just like i will all right so this is the specific this is for stick fast particular  so i'm going to try it out   um yep so uh i now have i now have a box mostly  assembled i'm about to do a little bit more oh oh i'm about to add some more nails to tie it up you do uh come on good you all right mostly complete i am now going to so obviously what  i'm going to do is i'm going to   slice this box here but first i'm going to  use my um my linisher with a scotch brite belt and i'm going to just kind  of tie this all together yeah time to cut and i think it's about like  stitch this is goes like that i think all right months this saw which is another gift from the um  suizan people it's fantastic hey look at that   all right so we'll clean up those edges  a little bit and then yeah sander all right now i've got that it's time to it is the moment of truth  it's time to put this thing   well this is one of the moments of truth it's just  time to get these little doohickeys all lined up oh yeah look at that that is  a a nice tray for some jewelry oh hey uh i'm not doing bad i'm not doing half bad   uh i'll need to get some padding in  there but next up hinges in the stuff interesting stuff like hootie and the blowfish  uh right these will totally do for a hinge or or   these are even better um one two yeah that's all great so gosh so okay that's great now i'm wondering since i bought some of these clock feet  they might not be right i'm not sure yeah that's it yeah these look great i have a really good reason for  putting these feet on here like this   and i'll explain it in a second um basically it's   when you build something to house something  delicate you kind of want to include they could be great if you could tell everyone  that was going to go near it that they had to   handle it carefully the question is how do you  communicate that to everybody and the answer is you do it with design and one of the things  that i don't want anyone to do with this   box is put it on its side if they put  it on its side it becomes problematic uh   for various reasons so when  i put the clock sheet on when i put the clock feet on here like this what this box says to anyone who approaches it is  don't put this up on a bookshelf it has to stay   like that okay so now i need a um   before i put in the cushion i got to put in  the jewels that's i got to see how they fit   and then i'll understand see i'm going to  have a cushion under here in the blue velvet i gotta say i love that you can take a  picture with your phone print it out on   your printer and have it there as  a map for where stuff goes dig it all right i know you go there beautiful  i know you go there i know you go   there and you live here do you live there it's  already awesome uh the hope diamond lives there polar star lives here um i'm gonna mark that tiffany here the grand mogul up there and the  jubilee down there is a nice large ones florentine   i don't think florentine goes over  there i think florentine's better here and the shaw down there pasha there the cone or new and old  so that's the old and then luckily my new culinary cut is cubic  zirconia won't shatter like the glass well   that's the new cut that's the regent regent  goes there and then the orlov there oh pretty nazik also goes there and the  sansi fancy goes there i am missing   two the pigo that's on its way  and there's one other just a hope oh the star of the south that's it the here we   go and the star of the south  are the two that i'm missing um yeah i'm gonna put quarantine back  here because that's where it was   that's nice oh the hope diamond almost totally  disappears because it's on dark on dark i like it i think that hot glue hot glue on i realize that a lot  of the a lot of the solutions i come up with   are like theater solutions you need a cushion in  a minute uh that's not necessary to be archival   take a piece of foam spray some high strength  adhesive on it stick it to the back of some velvet oink like that then hit the edges there we go that will yeah  and uh right because yeah okay then you want to stick that on the inside  of this bad boy and hot glue is your friend   here we go okay right yes this is quite pleasing to me well uh i'm one happy camper i'm pleased   this is a weird build i normally don't show these  kind of builds i i and it's not like on purpose i   just will come in on a weekend and be like let  me knock this out and i'll do it and then i'll   take it home and i'll think about it for you  know a few days weeks months you never know   but here it seemed like let me try it in  front of everybody uh there we go that's my my jewelry container thank you guys for joining  me for the oh it smells good i'm smelling like   hot glue and ca glue and spray glue and spray  paint it's a heady melange uh thank you guys so   much for joining me for this one day build i hope  there was some stuff in here that was useful and   i will see you next time cheers thank you guys  so much for watching that video if you'd like   to further support us here at tested one of the  single best ways you can do it is through a tested   membership now there's a link below as to  the various levels of tested membership   but at the top level i want to explain it's so  much more than videos that are exclusive there are   q and a's there are live streams there are some  exclusive videos but the thing i love most about   the tested membership is the interactivity the  constant and wonderful communication between the   tested members and not just me but our entire team  every day it feels more and more like a beautiful   community just devoted to the joys of making so  join up and become one of us one of us one of us

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,021,899

Keywords: tested, tested adam savage, tested one day builds, one day build, one day builds, adam savage one day build, adam savage one day builds, custom display, custom display case, custom display box, diy display box, diy display case, gem collection box, adam savage box, how to display gemstone collection, how to display gems

Id: WAxxrBF5V3M

Length: 76min 32sec (4592 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021