Hey guys, it's Adam from Tested And I'm standing here in my shop with friend of Tested, friend of Adam -friend of me, I don't talk about myself in the third person - and master foam maker Bill Doran. Howdy! Howdy sir, how are you? Good to be here for the first time. Dude, I can't believe you haven't been here before that's ludicrous. I know, I know. That is like stupid. I have to crawl out of my cave every once in a while. You are- you're producing like a video a week out of there? Yup. A build, a video, and plans every single week. That's what we do. That's why you can't leave. I know, right. My wife is now currently at home keeping- manning the fort building foam armor right now, Which is... So awesome. Sounds like a lot of fun. And and we've got a collaboration coming up in our quarterly box: the the foam build. But you seem- have you been injured? Why are you wearing this cast? So I got this ring a long time ago and over time, I've felt inspired to become one of these guys. So you are wearing one of my Scott Maple and Kropserkel constructed Nazgul gauntlets from the ring wraiths - yes -
from Lord of the Rings It is real steel. It is- feels great. Doesn't it feel amazing? I mean so Kropserkel put this together in a way that it's real armor, like it has all of the properties and functionality of a genuine piece of usable armor. The steel is thick enough, there are slots in the in the in the rivets so that you actually have no limitation of movement like this - mm-hmm - and you can do this. Do it. See? So you're clearly obsessed - yeah - with this object that you come into the shop and that's great because this is a shrine to obsession. It is. You wanna- you want to do something about it? I think so. You want to make something of it? Anyone at home who wants to make armor like this Maybe maybe they don't have all the tools to do steel, but they might have the right tools to do foam. So you think we could make a foam pattern and foam nazgul gauntlet. We can. In just one day. Awesome. So that's what we're gonna do! Once we're done with this we will put the plans up so people can make their own? Sure, yeah. This is this is this is gonna be really, it's gonna be really fun. Really fun. Okay. Where do we start? I did a little bit of work earlier today on these tiny little finger bits here, and I I drew a quick pattern in Illustrator and used the laser to cut them out- All this morning? All this morning. Dude. Lasers are awesome If you don't have a laser you could cut them out by hand, no big deal But if you have a laser, I mean- If you have access to a makerspace it'd be pretty easy to take the file that we'll put at the end of this build and go out and just laser cut because it's - one two three four five So that's twenty, forty. There's 46 of these identical pieces. Yeah. I have cut stuff like that out by hand-
me too- we all have, that's what it's about, but also the laser makes it easier. About four millimeter EVA foam here. Is that a little thick for this? A little thick - I didn't have any black two millimeter, So this is what I used I think I have some. If so, we can just tell the laser to do it again. Yeah. Later, and zip 'em out real fast. But this is really- so you've left a little tab on, so they don't fall out. And there we go. A little hole for a rivet. And we'll bend those with heat Yeah, okay. And then look at that, that just that matches. It's like a little crown of goodness. Boop. It looks to me Bill like we could make this file a little wider. Yeah, we definitely can. You know what, the thickness of the foam will affect the profile. Ah yes, yes. And then these I only need five of. I'll show how I'm gonna do those by hand just with an exacto knife which you could do them all that way if you don't have a laser And we will slowly work out a set of patterns and make a gauntlet. Yes. And then I figure I can get cracking on those mm-hmm and the rest of these bits up here you can start doing. I'll start patterning those out. Yeah, you can just put masking tape on here to make your pattern - okay - start cranking it out. Okay, will do. I have some leather that we can actually use to attach these to So this is something that a lot of people don't know about gauntlets How are these lames all attached to the finger? Well each one as Bill has drawn here has a hole in its back and each of those holes is a place for a rivet and each of those rivets doesn't go through the glove it actually goes through a piece of leather So a leather strip is created with each of these lames on top of it, and then that leather strip is glued - and in the olden days sewn - to the leather glove on the side and it provides this really very very robust attachment between your hand and the finger lames so yeah I've had- we can get our five pieces of leather strip out of that for the fingers. Great. We can work together. I will go with the tips here and cover these and tape to pull a pattern off them. All right. There you go. Here's some tape. Yeah. Yeah Ippolito and I did this kind of patterning for the Martian space suit. Yeah. I know, you're wondering where we are in the Martian build, and the answer is it's moving forward. Just a little bit slowly So on the- because this, with the thickness of the foam - yeah - it was a little bit thin. I'm going to just manually Enlarge the pattern a tiny bit. That makes sense. I'll do that with normal foam builds like armor. Yeah? If I'm doing a whole set of patterns, I'll trace them all in the computer in a vector file and then put them- scale them up ten percent usually. Oh how come? To account for the thickness of the foam. So the foam tends- the thickness tends to make things a little bit tighter? Tighter, yeah. Ah that's really good to know. I have a standard 10 percent exaggeration rate for my stories and for my prop builds. I could draw a pattern on there, but since this is tape and it sticks down I'll just trace around it with an exacto. Oh nice So this brass tube has been sharpened Oh you want- I can use it to punch a hole right through Oh that was - that's fast. Yeah, that is an awesome solution I love how low key that is. Yeah, and you can get - at a hobby store you can get these in a variety of diameters Now later when you use this tube for a different project and you're wondering why it's full full of little little bits of foam- Yeah, that's cool. No. I mean- But look at this: ready? You have little foam rivets. Ooh ooh! No way! Of course! Yeah Just gotta find a way to get them out of there One of my favorite bits for working with foam are these Really? Believe it or not, these aluminum oxide ones cuz they're not quite as aggressive as like a sanding bit. Right. Oh so they give you a little more finesse? Yeah, cuz if you have like a hundred grit sanding drum on the foam, it'll just go right through it. Right right right. These guys are a little more gentle. That being said, these tiny pieces of foam and a spinning sanding tool of any kind means you will invariably send one of them into Narnia. Right! And you'll just have to make it again. That makes sense that checks out So that my cut was a little ragged on this, and I'm just gonna just tidy it up a little bit Whoa really yeah You see these I've found if you use them on steel they grind themselves down to dust almost immediately, if you use them on aluminum they gall up immediately So I've never figured out what these are good for. I have a bit like this that I've had in my dremel for seven years Right it's just perfect. I have a round one if you need like hammered metal With - oh wow right - like a spherical bit you just go zip zip zip and you get a hammered metal texture. That's awesome Not going to spend a lot of time cleaning, so we'll do that once they're formed and- And put in place. And any spots that are overlapping, we're not gonna see I'm not gonna bother cleaning. Right right right, that makes sense. I will frequently when I'm doing foam pieces or foam builds I will do one bit of the build on some scrap foam - yes - like I'll rip floor mats off the floors and use those. Assemble it and then recut it until it fits just right and then take it all apart and remake my patterns off of that and then do it again with better foam. Most costume pieces like that I end up building twice. Yeah. The second one is so good. I do the same It's always the second one is really good right? Does every prop you do, do you have a favorite side? Where like the paint job is totally better on that? Yeah, I often prioritize. When I'm painting I prioritize the part you can't see very clearly and that allows me to practice, but I'll also sometimes have a second part to just practice new paint techniques on See how the coatings are gonna react to stuff, and yeah the second one's always really really- It's always better. This piece here I taped off We can replicate the knuckle a couple times, but it won't lay flat so we have to decide where we want our seams to be I'm gonna cut it down the middle here and see how well that works. There you go, so when we cut this out of foam we'll have to glue that back together but it should work just fine this piece right here this cut on the the gauntlet is gonna have this sharp peak here so when I make these cuts, I'm going to bevel them in a little bit so that when they glue together they don't glue flush. They glue at an angle, so I'm just kind of eyeballing it and cutting in That way and cutting in that way If it's not quite perfect when we glue it together We can just Dremel it to a nice sharp point. That is our piece that will go that'll glue together like so In fact I'll use this as a test piece and glue it together The other thing we want to do to get this ridge here, is on the back of it, and this now has a front and a back because of those edges, we'll carve a little channel here so that we can get a nice crease, so I'm just gonna eyeball that and carefully cut a little V groove in here And cut it right in half. Now, I can glue these back together very thin very thin foam But I'll get the same effect. I'll try and do that again on the next piece and get it right But this one we'll just glue back together I've been tinkering a bit trying to carve a channel in the back of these really thin pieces It's tricky to do It's so thin the knife keeps going all the way through where I don't want that, I so came up with a pretty cool technique I've got my piece here, and I'll fold it so the area where I want to trench is exposed and then I take my dremel with the sanding bit and remove just a little material Just a tiny bit carefully And then when I lay it flat, there is a nice little trench in there and then when I glue that together that'll give us this high peak right there, and that is what we're trying to match With the armored gauntlet there, and then this seam can get glued together. A la this one. And that is our little armored knuckle I'm gonna keep patterning. I got to do these side parts on these ones here, so I'll do that should be a good time I can't quite get under there, but I have a pretty good idea what's going on, so I'm gonna get these details and the edge of that kind of comes around here, and there's a thing there and So over here I've been working on the knuckles. Yeah. We've got them laid out. Oh look at that. Holy crap so this These parts will go on to create the pointy bits That's amazing! Like that. And this is just- these are just little slices that you made and glued, or? Yeah. So I cut a trench in the back of it I see. And then Barged it up, gave it five minutes to dry and then when you pinch it together you can get that sharp peak. Dude! Yeah, and you can go in with a dremel and sharpen it up more if you want, but this gets it most of the way there. That's amazing! And what's cool, too this has that sort of a dished mm-hmm profile, so if I kind of overdo those when I stretch it out Yeah, yeah you get that super dishing That part in there. That's brilliant. I love it. And then the other thing too when we're finishing this, this is obviously much thicker than the steel mm-hmm If we Dremel this leading edge to be thinner it'll look thin, yeah. That's great. Oh my god I'm learning so much. So I got these three bottom parts done and this inside forearm I've been uh cutting pieces out as I pattern. That's kind of how I do it. Oh you have! Yeah, so that's why- the leather, okay, so now And you're cutting everything out of the two mil? No, these bits here I've been doing- Oh look you already laser cut! Yes I did. I keep looking- I don't know when this is happening, it's amazing. Those look great. Isn't that awesome? There it's it's it's it's 95% there. I could spend- yeah, yeah- another five hours tweaking it, but it's really So do we curve these before glueing them? Before riveting them? I think we can just just hit them with the heat gun and just bend them over a pipe - okay - and they'll kind of hold their shape. Oh, I might have something cool When I made the finger lames for Terry English for my Excalibur armor I made a finger lame bending jig, so we could heat these up and just put them in here and then they all have the same exact bend right they just sit there and- You could even because this is durable you could do that and just hit it with a little hot air while it's in there Yeah, yeah. Cuz if you hit that with hot air that'll go flying away. Right right, okay. We have a heat gun right there Give it a shot See if you try and blast that little guy, it's probably gonna fly away Oh! But if you put them in there- See but I'm gonna have to move a lot of- I'm gonna have to move a lot of heat to get that in there so How much heat is too much heat? If it starts to burn. You know it doesn't need much, it's very thin. Oh really? Yeah. That's not bad yeah. It is so thin and flexible that it will deform back when you touch it But that's- We could also mold the strip of leather a little bit to kind of help it keep it's shape mm-hmm That's easy enough to do. Look at that. That's fantastic. Okay. I want to keep on going. I'm gonna keep going over here Over here, I've got the piece that I pulled off of the the back of the hand here and I can just cut around that but I also found a white paint marker which is awesome for tracing on black foam And I just trace it out like that I'll use my sharp tube here to mark my holes I can finish those after I've cut everything out For my cut here these outer cuts are pretty easy so I can do those by hand with a knife and get them right on these inner ones I'll get them close and Then finish them off with a dremel because that's much easier. Oh so concave curves are better to finish with a dremel? Yeah Then to try and do really exacting exacto blade cuts So I've cut them a little oversized and I put the sanding bit in there It's really aggressive yeah, and then I can just come in And it just eats through that foam Wow! I always wondered how people got such nice edges on their foam work, and I had no idea God I love information! And then the for the trenches These lines, they all go to those points, but on the other side they are here so I can mark that, mark that flip it over because the trenches must be on the back. So I can transfer these lines now from there to there There to there There to there And then with that really sharp knife- Yeah. It's vital Oh wow really you're honing it every time you need it. Absolutely. Because you want to make a really clean sort of V-cut like that with very little effort, otherwise this stuff will tear. And then you glue that up You made that look really easy Bill I have done thousands of these. Like that Yeah, like that. You could use a ruler if you needed to I like the see-through rulers with the metal edge. Those are awesome. I don't have one with a metal edge. Oh, you gotta see this thing. Where is it? Yeah? It's literally the brand C-Thru and that's a metal- so that you can use it as a straight edge So you can cut against it, but also this will give you always All these lines help you parallelize everything. Yeah, I have the see-through one and the edge of it is all dinged up- Right! because I use it with my exacto knife. That's why you have the Yep. The B1-M. I'm gonna take a picture of that. This trip is costing me so much money. We are trading information! I need one of those. That's the most fun part about these um collaborations, is the trading of information. Yeah. I can't tell you how many people have just walked through this shop and been like what's this take a picture of it, go and order it. And I do the same in everybody else's shop Yep So that's how we do those pieces and all of these pieces can be done that way and here's another trick - you can Oh a squirt bottle? Because you can fold it back because it's foam, you fold it like this and you can- you don't have to worry You don't have to try and dig in there. Right. Fold it, and then you just cover all of it Okay. Like that. Just one coat? Yeah one coat and let it dry for five minutes, and you're good Let's just do a couple of them- But not for 20! If you let Barge glue dry too long it actually it actually fully officially dries and won't stick to itself. Yeah, there's like a sweet spot. And by Barge we mean any kind of good robust contact cement There we go Like that so we let that Chill or we hit it. Oh, yeah get my hand I'll hold it and you heat gun me cuz my hands are freezing. Yeah, there you go Let's see if this wants to stick, ready? Yeah it'll stick. Just press that like that press that like that. Okay now- And now when I pull it apart we have- Look at that! And that should line up like that. Look at that! Look at it! That it's so cool man. Boom! I am- I love learning! Just need to make a couple more of those I mean if you're batching, once you have the templates made if you're batching these out Yeah, yeah. You could cut each one of these out in five ten minutes and basically done So here's my technique for (*whirring*) So here's the technique I have built for bending all of these finger lames so that they are actually curved. So, first I take it and I hold it in the heater for a count to ten on each side Then I open up my finger lame building jig The steel draws the heat out, leaves it in a curved form, I throw that over here on the pile And now you can see there's a nice little curved finger lame One of the things I love about this kind of operation is that it can be crushingly exhausting and boring and tedious and thus I love going through the mental process of figuring out ways to automate it and make it faster It's actually one of the ways I deal with the tedium of work like this. I'm constantly asking myself Six seven eight nine ten- how could I be doing this faster? How could I be making this more efficient more regularized so that I can work through them as quickly as possible? One two three four five so in the end, I'll be able to bend all like 40 of these or however many we've got in less than 30 minutes, which is not bad four five six seven eight nine ten These pieces will be attached together like that, but these are not at the correct angle so I'm gonna Dremel a bevel into that. Also when I was designing these I put an "F" for front on there so I know which way it's supposed to go, and then I'm just gonna kind of cut this edge a little bit And then this one as well So these when they gleu up will be at the right angle My Barge is cold. Here, do you want to, um? Want to heat up your Barge? No it's good. I've- I get into a cycle where I Barge something, set it aside Yep. Cut something, stick it together, Barge the thing I cut, set it aside, cut something else. Get into a good rhythm. I totally love that exact kind of thing Now if we use real rivets it might just crush the foam I have some leather rivets, okay, which I think could work Oh, yeah, so they'll you know only compress so far? Actually, I could do it with eyelets and that would probably be even better because it's the lowest possible profile mhm I'm thinking so that's for putting these guys on the leather for these bits to connect these? Oh, yeah, oh right. An eyelet might just crush it too much that it won't they won't have any movement Yeah, so- That's why I'm thinking Chicago screws, although it would be a lot. I have a crap ton of Chicago screws. Yeah. Sortimo 37. 37 here it is Yeah, and then we don't have to tighten it quite all the way. If there's a little bit of friction that'll be okay Is that is that enough? Is that good? Yeah, and then it can still rotate. Yeah Oh and some of these need to be slots. We can elongate them with a dremel. We certainly can. When we figure that out Index is seven holes, middle is eight holes, ring is seven holes (singing) how long? There we go. Eight holes divided across Three points 675 inches. Cool. If you just measure the distance between two of the rivets and you've got it slightly wrong, you end up with an introduced error as I did the first time I tried to do this and when I extrapolated out that distance across the eight holes needed for the middle finger I don't mean to be holding this up intentionally I had way too long a finger, so I had to then measure out the longest digit Which is the middle finger and divide it by 8 because that's the number of lames that are there And then I got a much more accurate measurement without all that introduced error, so that's what just happened I find that it's really good - tell me if you agree with this Bill - to count it out loud to yourself Yeah. One. I talk to myself a lot in the shop. Two, yep Three Four This kit right here of tools is really most of what I use when I'm doing foam work I've got my rotary tool, a couple sharp knives, a couple of different rotary bits metal ruler, pipe for cutting holes, a white marker or a silver sharpie will be awesome, and a dark sharpie for drawing on my patterns. My glue and my foam and that's mostly it for like 95% of the foam work I do. It's not a lot, like you can get this whole batch of tools at Harbor Freight for you know 30 bucks you're good to go And the last one is the thumb which is five so Do you know about this stuff? This is artificial catgut. Of course it is. And because it's waxed you can bind shit really tight with it, and it will hold forever. That's awesome. Um yeah I couldn't believe how much you get - this is like 600 yards or something like that No there it is This one's got a spike on it We can make that, manufacture that. Mm-hmm. We can carve it like on the bandsaw out of heavier foam. I'm gonna just pattern it flat and deal with that this protrusion later. Yes So I'm tapering these edges, so they're super thin - oh nice - and then when I glue them down they should blend pretty well. I mean these I imagine were welded. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm kind of getting them a little bit lower profile. Plus, these are nazgul There can be rough edges on them. There's a lot of- the crimes can get hidden by the by how, you know, dingy they are I do I do only rarely ever make a costume or a prop that's meant to look really clean. I've done like at one point I built a museum-quality prop like a small delivery truck that had to match and in every possible way the 1909 delivery truck of this company, and it was one of the hardest jobs I've ever done Because it was like every detail had to be perfect it had to look as if it came off of the Ford factory floor the day before with every decal line being you know exhausting that museum work is a level of perfection that I am unused to. This is I think a fairly simple You know what I can I can pattern the inside look at that Oh all right: "front" Yep. This looks very symmetrical. Front is there. You can't over label your stuff. Nope. And this is the back so I have to make sure I flip it over The Barge has dried long enough and now I can add these spiky bits I'm going to look at this and kind of see how I can position these a little bit Oh yeah. I have some black welding gloves that are perfect for this So I'm going to start to put these on so that we can put the other stuff on. Okay. Well what's pretty bonkers too, all this foam that we've used so far is like $5 worth of foam. Right! I mean that's what I also love about this specific hobby is how accessible it is. I like your application method for Barge. mm-hmm. This is really nice You just get a little bit on there. You don't have to keep dipping into a cruddy container. Yep Yeah, I know and the container that sits there and dries out on you. Yep Stuff's about to happen. This is where things are gonna get cool. So this seam runs down the middle of the thumb piece- oops And I'll cut this seam and then we'll cut it out of foam so when we glue those seams together it'll force the two pieces of foam into this complex curve. I hope so anyway! I've done a couple of these... It'll probably work okay... pinky... Yeah look at that. Yes, it's gonna be great Dude, that is... I'm really blown away by how... that is a huge amount of detail and like value of terms of like prop replication for not a lot of sweat equity I'm like kind of blown away I suppose we could Chicago screw this on to the glove as well Certainly. Like once we, once we start to do this, right, we can mark and start to- And these, all these parts Oh, okay, so yeah, I can, I can yeah, so that one goes under there Yeah. That's gonna all go on the glove. Okay, I will get that going. I like that. That's pretty cool. Over here these this seam that I cut it to get the complex curve I want I need to bevel these inner edges, so that's what I'm gonna do And I'm just guessing the angle I'm sure it'll be fine So when this goes around the edge like that I don't want it to skip so I turned the rotary tool around so it's spinning in the opposite direction, and it doesn't do that Oh, I see what this We may want to end up driving some little pin in here, or you know? It doesn't want to bend. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't want to move forward Which is fine. It doesn't have to. Look, there's these these pins up here look. Yeah, yeah they do Those go into that that face- So they can certainly be added. Yeah. Right, yeah. That's fantastic It sure is handy replicating something when you have it right in front of you. I know! we don't need screenshots I am I am known to Just load up a video game Or a show or a movie on my TV screen and just take photos of the TV screen. Yup! I've done that too My first Blade- I actually have sketches of my first Blade Runner blaster build which were done from sketches off of a VHS tape. Nice. Here's my thumb So I glued those two seams together. We have that nice edge up there. Oh nice and then everything has to have a little spike on it. Oh, I just noticed too there's a little more detail. I can I can Dremel that in. I'm almost done with this aspect of it I can hand this off to you for that install of that last middle piece And this we could even make a living hinge out of a piece of foam if we wanted to. Yeah, we certainly could. Yeah. Oh right, it doesn't go on there it sits there. Yeah That's great. This thing is totally modular so you can take it all the way apart again to fit you Even if, the, right now the only thing attaching this stuff to the hand is these two which are going into the glove They don't have to, in fact in the real one the pins here are attached to the fingers and this goes to a leather strap around the palm so there's some stuff to work out there You know or- Alright you're about to do that one, so that's the next piece to put on This is super awesome So I just did a little heat bend on that. Ohh! That looks so good. Right? That looks so good And see how it changes the surface to be a little more glossy? It totally does. Yeah. Also, it glues it together, I notice. And as each one of them needs a little separation, but again this is this is really- oh there it is! Yep and then and Front. Okay. There you go. So here it comes Kind of shined it up a bit So this is what it looks like with the the sanding bit And if I go over it with this guy I can really shine it up make it nice and smooth, yeah that is really cool That's a main sort of complaint people have sometimes with foam is that when you really rough it up It gets kind of fuzzy - right right right - you can also kiss it with a blowtorch and just kind of fry all those That's cool, too. I mean anything with a blowtorch is cool. Yeah. Okay. Look at that! Dude, that is a tremendous amount of progress for a few hours work. Yeah. That is crazy gorgeous looking Not bad. Okay, so this is a One Day Build that does not complete here in my cave. The second half of this One Day Build will happen in your cave up in Seattle! My shop up in hopefully warmer, Seattle So you're gonna finish up the last parts of that and do the painting and finishing So this is a two-part collaborative One Day- it has been such a pleasure to learn from you and watch the how how fast and efficient you've made this process and also, what is this like five bucks worth of foam? Yeah, it's super super cheap I and I mean like accessible. There's nothing special about these tools -
right right Although it's been handy having a laser, and yeah the rest of what's going on in here But but most of the work was just done with a dremel and some knives I've gotten so much out of just the last few hours from the little bits of advice I hope you've seen some tools and utilities that you might take back to Seattle. Oh absolutely. I love that cross-collaboration. All right, let's see it Grrrrr Oh yeah, click the link below to the video on Bill's Channel
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ7nE5cKeN0
Adam Savage is kind of a giggly spaz, but I love it. I wish I had some portion of his lust for what he does.
Adam is someone I genuinely look up to; his his enthusiasm, skill as a maker and general love of life are all traits I really try to emulate.
I love Adam's sheer joy when learning new tricks for a craft he's interested in. This foam artist guy is great!
Man I really hope he does the Infinity Gauntlet once we have a final piece with all the stones in place.
I'm irritated that I watched those videos for the last hour and when it was finally done, there was no "arms straight down, here's the completed look" shot.
What the flip, man.
edit really? You're downvoting me? I spent an hour watching this and there was no finishing shot other than a super duper up close hand holding a sword from an angle that barely even covered the work.
I love these guys and it's because their work is so awesome that I'm so disappointed in the lack of a coherent shot of the finished pieces.
I LOVE Adam Savage! He makes some really amazing stuff.
His definitely piqued my interest in working with foam more. The most I’ve done so far is a utility belt/logo for a Robin costume.
Foam is such an accessible crafting tool - it’s crazy cheap in terms of materials/tools needed, and can produce amazing results like this!
Now make a light armor gauntlet