Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Hellboy's Samaritan Prop!

adam savage here in my cave with a one-day build  that took so many more days than one day um   this is the fruits of my labor it has already  happened i am talking to you from i'm introducing   this video from the future uh and this is if you  don't already know this is hellboy's sidearm the   samaritan one of the most beautiful cinema weapons  ever designed uh built for guillermo del toro's   first and second hellboy films uh and this is a  gun i've been obsessed with forever i've actually   held one of the originals that's in guillermo's  collection and i wanted to make one when i touched   the original but i have never felt that i was  a good enough machinist to bring something like   this into being but a couple things happen this  year one was covid and the lockdown and my diving   into my mill and my lathe and the precision that  i've been learning that i can bring to bear on   these builds the other thing that happened is that  grant and mahara died and that it threw all of us   me included and i felt after he passed that i  needed something like a big deep build to sink   my teeth into and this fit the bill i decided to  go all the way inside this thing there's well over   a hundred hours of my labor and to be clear i  started out with chunks of aluminum like this   and like this and i did made a lot of mistakes  along the way i filmed most of it some of it's off   camera most of it's on and over the next few weeks  we're going to be releasing videos of this build   and i'm going to be continuing to finish this  right it's not black it mechanically doesn't work   all that's still going to happen and we're going  to walk you through the entire process let's get   started well work on the samaritan precedes a pace  you can see that i've got every model i've ever   possessed of the samaritan here in front of me um  i believe these are the two sideshow uh sideshow   samaritans this one is uh zinc based metal this  one is plastic both are legitimately cast off   uh well no they're not cast off the original  but they share many features the resin one from   sideshow shares a couple of really specific tells  this is an actual an actual stunt pistol from the   movie made by weta workshop uh from the original  hellboy film this one is cast in hard rubber   um it's cast off the master uh machined uh  by dominic taylor at weta all those years ago   um so i have the best reference and the the next  part that i'm going to be working on is this part   is drilling out the barrel now this is seven and a  half inches long and there's a thing you might not   know about drill bits which is that while a drill  bit may look to you and me like a solid piece of   unbending metal the fact is that the tips of these  things can move they can they can wander just a   little bit and you have to accommodate for that  possibility when you're drilling really long holes   the trick is you have to expect the wandering so i  have a specific aesthetic need in which i need the   rear hole and the front hole to be exactly in the  center of where they are right the front hole if   that's not centered then i haven't done my job i'd  have to remake this piece if the back hole isn't   perfectly centered well then the cylinder won't  fit perfectly centered behind it and there'll   be all these sort of knock-down effects so what  i am going to do because i need this hole to be   um eight hundred thousands yeah give or take  about uh a point eight a point eight hole   eight hundred thousands um i'm gonna drill it  from both ends and i'm gonna start drilling it   with a half inch drill bit from both ends i'm  going to drill very slowly i'm going to use my   mill uh and i've done a couple of tests even with  okay actually let me start at the beginning i did   a test with this bit right here this super long  bit that i put in my mill uh and i drilled out this piece of metal all the way through just to  see how i would do and what i found was the hole   was only 4 or five thou off at the other end but  that's enough to see visually so i didn't i didn't   want to take the risk of doing seven inches and  have it come out the other side just wrong so   this is all a game of like micro increments  i need to mount this thing perfectly square   in my mill um i'm going to  use this vise here to do it   um i'm going to be checking and rechecking my  measurements i'm going to be using the dro on   the mill uh all the little techniques i know to  get something perfectly accurate i'm going to use   them with the goal of starting with a half inch  drill reaming out half inch so i have a pretty   consistent hole and then once i have that i'm  going to start slowly stepping up and literally   just bit by bit i'm not going to go from half  inch to 5 8 i'm going to go all the like the   30 second increments all the way through because  the less material i'm pulling off each time the   more consistent my hole will be and all of this  is because it's hard to drill big long holes i have my barrels set up for the first drill  i'll be drilling from the the front end first   um i've done a bunch of things i have checked to  see that my vice is square i used a stone to make   sure that my vice had no burrs then i used a stone  to make sure my table had no burrs i laid my vice   on the table in multiple orientations and measured  its squareness with a square i know to be really   precise uh then i checked the square on my barrel  to make sure that i wasn't taking it for granted   uh i clamped the barrel into the vice and  made sure that there they were parallel   then uh i laid my vice down on the table with  enough room so that i could use a big square to   make sure that the vise was perfectly square to  the table i'm not using my marks for these whole   drilling i'm literally going to use an edge finder  and i'm going to split the half between the sides   and the barrel the the the hole is exactly  centered 0.7 inches from the top of the barrel   it's not centered top and bottom i'll be following  that for both drillings of the hole but it's   crucial that every dimension i'm working with  is as square as i can make it so i'll actually   probably be using an indicator to make sure i've  got a perfect squareness on the mill here if i'm   out by even two or three thou look on on stuff  like this every thousandth matters uh and i've   become a real uh lover of the clamping equipment  on the on the bed of the mill over the past few   months um it's afforded me much better security  and i've ruined a lot less parts with it so i'm   going to raise the table and use an indicator  make sure i'm square and then i'm going to   probably use this big half inch drill bit   to go about halfway down then i'll flip  this over and do the same thing again the first half of the hole is drilled from the  front i am pleased with the placement it looks   like it's dead on the money i am now going to  without removing the clamping setup undo the vise   turn this around uh re-tram it to the center that  i want and do the same thing from the other side   i expect when the drill bit breaks through we'll  see a little bit of misalignment on the barrel and   i'll show that to you but i hope to correct that  misalignment by slowly working through starting   with this big bad boy that should help even  out i've also got some reamers and some other   tricks up my sleeve i guess if i  really had to i could go get a honer   but i don't think i'll need one here we go i've successfully drilled  the other half of the hole   it's time to take a look through the  center and see how i feel about the results   i have soft jaws on the vise so i didn't damage  the barrel i mean that's funny right because   i'm going to beat the hell out of this with a  hammer all right here's the moment of truth dude dude um yeah i'm actually going to say let's  see where is the camera there it is   i'm gonna say that that  looks pretty darn good i'm uh i'm provisionally pleased with that okay so  what are the next steps i think the next step   is in fact to um use the backstop of this vice as  a constant positioner because i'm going to want   to drill a whole bunch of drill bits through this  kind of it's going to be a lot of topsy-turvy and   i'm going to creep up on this because i don't want  to screw it up at all this is i've already got   six like seven hours in this one piece and i don't  want to make it again you wouldn't either um so   i'm gonna just go slowly that's that's what i'm  doing i'm really pleased with the concentricity   uh with the alignment here i'm i'm  really pleased with it hang on just a sec okay so here is a really nice presumably  super straight half inch rod and it just   breezes through this that tells me that  there's no significant misalignment i mean   there's about 3000 play in there which  you can expect from any drill bit   normally you know a half inch drill bit  will drill up about three thousandths over but no i that's i can't fault  that that's that's really good so next step yes uh basically work out a  consistent repositioning system so that   i can creep this hole up to the point  for the 800 thousandths it needs to be so so i'm at a very interesting part of the build where  i've got to make some key choices and what informs   those choices is interesting so i thought i'd talk  about it um one of the things about hellboy's gun   is that it breaks and by that i mean when you push  on this lever on the real one um it hinges right   i can't do this with two hands but it hinges right  here so that hellboy can load it but it doesn't   hinge all the way in fact if you look really  closely here you can see right here there's a stop   now the question is how do i put that stop in my  piece um and that's the hinge point of this whole   gun so the first thing i considered was given it's  the hinge point of the gun and it's going to be   a place that gets a lot of wear and the screws  that hold that hinge point screw into that piece   i decided to make it out of steel so i turned a  piece of steel down until it just perfectly fit   that now i'm going to install that into the front  barrel as a gun part here that i've determined   but how do i make the stop i have determined  further that i'm going to mill a slot in this   and sock this piece in there silver solder  it in place and it'll be like grabbed on all   three sides it'd be really really solid and then  lathe it to the round profile of this guy yeah   yeah it is round um and then it can stop against  the rest of the gun and because it's steel it's not gonna wear out  that's that's my goal right so oh wow milling out that middle part is going to  be interesting anyway yeah there's some further   decisions to be made but right now what i'm going  to do is chuck this uh into the lathe mill a slot   out you'll see it'll all become clear as i do it  but it's all with a with a goal towards taking   apart that it's going to be a fairly a part with  a fair bit of mechanical uh pressure on it and   making it out of steel so it can withstand that  pressure and also i don't look i could probably   silver solder a plate on there and then and  then sand it smooth but again whenever i make   a prop i'm looking for an experience and i want  this samaritan that i built to feel like it was   manufactured so i've been tumbling the parts  so they have really really uniform finishes um   and i've been working in every way towards making  this just not feel handmade at all in fact um   i've gone a little bit more uh bold with the  straight knurling on this tube uh than the   original one which you can see is a a little  bit more subdued um but that is part of the   experience i'm looking for when i finally hold on  to this thing all right to the milling machine boy wonder here is my center pivot with a notch  carved out of it that perfectly fits   this piece that is 0.475 inches wide and that  is the exact length of the stop on the hero   samaritan the stud spirit uh so what i'm  going to do is i'm going to silver solder   this in place trim it take it onto the sander  and kind of do a rough trim and then take it   onto the lathe and do the final cut and polish  including drilling the drilling and tapping the   center holes the center hole for this then i  got to install it and and and yeah then i got   to install it in this piece and that's a whole  nother bit of engineering yeah we'll get to that so so so so   checking in checking in we are doing really really  great this is the front part of the gun i've got   some really nice tolerances going on here this  piece here is really nicely anchored everything is   can i describe the sheer pleasure of working  at this level of scale and accuracy it's   it's cool i'm i'm i'm having the time you  know what i mean um but it's time to move on   now that i've done most of the front part to  this part uh specifically the top part uh the   wooden grip is the last thing i'll make um but  this top back section if you thought this hunk   of aluminum that made the top barrel in  the back of the bottom barrel um was big   the one that i got to make this one out of  is even bigger and i just had it on my mill   here it is this is this big giant inch  and a half thick block that i had to   mill to 1.32 inches the width of the  hellboy samaritan and if you can see here i want to just tell you that that is super smooth  and it wasn't when i first cut it no no no i was   using this uh six six insert fly cutter and i had  a step of a couple of thousands and i trammed in   this mill just a few months ago and i realized  i had to tram it in again this is a non-trivial   operation to tram the mill in front to back um  it's slightly counter-intuitive and i did it   and i still got a step and i  realized i'd done it to the bed   the the mill the this platform on the mill but i  hadn't done it to the vice and i was unwilling to   pull the vice off so i re-trammed it to the vice i  know i'm kicking that can down the hill right now   but the vise is now trimmed beautifully to  the mill it is perfectly vertical i'm getting   zeroing out on all four axes it's  just really nice and like when you   sorry when you go and you make something and you  can't feel the separations between the passes   it's a good feeling so i'm about to take this out  debur it and start to lay out how to cut out that   next piece so it's time to talk about some layout  well not talk about it but i think a time lapse   then we'll talk about it side note i know that  what you do with my milling machine is make things   super precise but working at this scale i must  say it just it's a substantively different kind of   operation and maybe it's just mental but  here's something that pleases me greatly   this is my block there it is i wanted  it to be 1.32 inches watch this wait there we go 1.32 inches yeah that just makes me happy i could have been  off by a couple thou no one would have noticed but so   okay i'm trying not to start every piece of  camera with okay because i noticed it seems   tedious to me when i watch the videos but  i'm about to do something fairly radical um   i need now to let's see do i have parts  that show this well yeah i do here we go   i need now to machine this round so  that it fits inside this round exactly can't use a boring bar it's like i have to mill  three quarters of the way around something so   how do you do that well i can chuck this into a  rotary table but that's not the preferred solution   no the preferred solution astonishingly is what  i've got set up here on the lathe on the mill   actually there you can see the circle the rough  idea of the circle i want to mill now what i'm   going to do here is i'm actually going to start  this milling bit up and start to actually move the   piece physically around i've made a pivot i've cut  it off and i'm physically moving this in order to   do this milling yeah it's um this is tricky and i  may have to reset this a little bit just to get it   working and i got to hold on to it with real tight  hands i'm going to wear gloves for this operation   uh i'm using a thin bit so that uh i'm not  putting too much torsion from the quill   onto my piece ah yeah there's a lot going on in  this cut and i'm just going to approach it kind of gingerly we are preceding a pace uh and we currently  have this amount of barrel done on the samaritan   i'm really pleased with how it's turning out um i  have the laser pointer yes that goes under there   and there is a rail uh that travels the full  distance between those two things and this rail   uh it's a little bit of like t-track um and it is  actually the exact same rail that ends up being   the front sight um so i am going to make a bunch  of that rail and uh i have cut off this chunk of   about 410 000 thick of aluminum and i'm  going to flatten it and then i am going to   start shaping it into the rail  i'm making more rail than i need   because if i make exactly as much as i need well  i'm gonna make a mistake and then i'll have to   remake something so i'm making more than i need  that sound you hear that sound is actually my   tumblr and it is tumbling apart but we'll  get into the tumbler a little later um   but suffice to say that some of these parts  that it can fit in my tumbler i am actually   tumbling in ceramic media and it's giving  them this like incredible finish this is a   technology i haven't utilized in my machine  builds yet so it's pretty exciting uh to   start seeing the results of what things  look like here's a laser pointer also it's just it's like it looks like a manufactured  thing that's what gets exciting about it okay   uh so the rails now the first step with a i'm  really sorry about that noise it's gonna be there   gotta gotta do several things at once here so the  first thing i wanna do with this rail like i said is flatten it out i know i've got  a perfectly straight edge on the   machine edge of the stock that i had and  i am going to chuck this into the vise okay now i'm going to use a fly cutter for this  which is a beautiful fly cutter i purchased   recently look at this thing five cutters uh it's  got its own integral r8 collet which is great um   that just means that there's less less translation  to happen and i am going to just chuck this into   the mill and literally peel off a few thousandths  of this just to make it perfectly straight   this uh fly cutter uh it's really nice uh at the  beginning of this project i was showing you that   the the piece of aluminum that i had that  i had faced and i was showing that you know   you couldn't feel the separation strength that's  from this fly cutter it operates ideally at around around 2000 rpm and i can take as much off  as 30 000 at a time but i'm not going to   this uh this is literally just like the gingerest  of cuts clamping in got this going turn this on i can run it pretty fast on the auto  feed and it's just gonna do what i need yep oh that's gorgeous okay so now i want  to cut this to just it's almost going to be   square is that what's going to happen here hmm  i have some debating to do you know what okay i'm going to show you the choice that i'm  confronted with here and let you understand why   i'm going to make it hi the rail that i want to  replicate is this rail right in here so it's about   four hundred and ten thousands wide  and about four hundred thousands tall   i know the original gun was built in millimeters  but i'm working with what i got um and you see i   don't have a lot of room to grab it so what i  think i'm going to do is i think i'm going to so i think what i'm going to do is i'm actually  going to use the full body of this piece of   metal to hold on to it nice and tight in the vise  then i'm going to run a radius end mill all the   way down on this side and a radius ml i'm going  to turn it around and do a radius ml on the other   side and then i get a perfectly centered t fin and  then i will cut it along this axis actually what   i'm probably going to do is mark it roughly with  marking fluid cut it on my mini bandsaw and then   finish that last edge on the mill that should  get me exactly what i need out of this thing so uh what you witnessed there is worth talking  about i was um i engaged the auto feed on my ball   end mill and i was taking off too much material i  um i galled it up this is what sorry i galled it   up this is what happens when you get a piece of  steel too hot the aluminum starts bonding to it   and it was a stupid move i was trying to take off  just too much material um so now i'm taking off   about 30 thousandths in a pass and i'm using the  hand wheel because frankly you have a better feel   for your material with the hand nails where you  saw the smoke in the time lapse um yes i know that   um i'm cantilevered out on both sides of the vise  but i'm not that worried about it because again   this is an aesthetic piece it doesn't need to it's  going to be within like two or three thousands   of what i need it to be and that's plenty  because it's aesthetic so on to the last pass   so so so   so so well uh got the first part out of the way i am  being super super careful and cautious about this   i am moving super slowly and it's mostly because  it's a labor of love i'm like six days into this   build um there you go there's that little  notch right there fits right in oh so pretty   love it so uh i am now going to continue on the  shaping and adjustment process to fit this um   in place with uh with this guy uh and then  adjust it all so yeah it's gonna be just a a lot more fitment so well things are going really well  with my build and it is now time   to add in a part that you should be able to see  is missing here the top rail uh the top rail is   this part right here so you can see that  it sits on top of the octagonal barrel   and it's got these one two three spacers uh  none of those spacers are uniform to each   other but that's how the drawing was um and  the first order of business for doing this   is for me to get these little lines see  these little lines on the top rail here   those are the lines are the first part to get  right i know enough about machining now to know   that if i have a piece that's visually going  to highlight any inconsistency like little tiny   shallow lines i want to cut those first and then  cut the rest of the piece to those rather than cut   it perfectly to size and then somehow get those  off by literally when you're cutting lines that   close just a couple of thou can really mess you  up so cutting out those little these little lines   first oh yeah i realize i'm pointing  this yeah it's not a gun see it's just   casting all right uh so that's the next step  now i've made some drawings that the lines are   33 thousandths apart with a 125 thou gap in the  center and there's four of them on either side   here is all of my notes about the top rail i've  started putting in numbers on my drawings rather   than tons of arrows with measurements written  and i love arrows with measurements written in   to be sure like i've got here but isn't this funny  that you can see that like the three gaps aren't   the same they're not equivalent to each other  and neither are the screw placements it's just   it's funny lots of little details like this  but these little lines that's the next business   so i cut a test piece uh actually it looks like  wait there it is i cut a test piece there we go   and i was pleased with the depth of those  lines and the width of them and i'm doing that   using this little dremel diamond cutter   i didn't want to use a dremel emery blade because  they wear down i needed it to maintain its exact   circumference so i'm starting to cut the first  of eight lines here and i'm going to be using my   quill feed as you can see i'm 630 thousandths from  the center that gives me a gap of roughly 125 thou   i'll do the same and then move 33 thousandths  for the other three lines on this side   all right so here you can see my quartet   of lines or octet i guess uh and now uh that  i've got those cut out and i'm happy with how   they look i may have to still clean these up  with a fine razor file which i can totally do   these are the two marks which are almost identical  but not quite i'm gonna cut this uh bar down to   and then i'm gonna start to shape its uh it's  trapezoidal cutout to fit the top of the barrel ladies and gentlemen i now have  completed this chamfer cut which fits this barrel beautifully look at that oh   i am i am super pleased with that that is not an  easy cut to get right i will i will tell you that   you just gotta creep up on it i got  really really close and then i just   started pulling off five thou at a time and  like yeah it gives me a give or take and   with the paint that'll finally  take it that last bit okay so now yeah i've got two right so this is the front   i'm not going to worry about shaping the back to  fitment just yet what i'm going to worry about   wait a second yeah anyway what i'm going to  worry about are the slots that come out of here   and the chamfer on the two sides that's the  last bit that i have to complete to finish   this top rail that is a great view into the  depth and almost tedious and exhausting level   of problem solving that this project required and  let me just state right now i am sorry that i did   not build the cylinder on camera i will admit  to you that the weekend that i did this i was   simply self-soothing i didn't realize i was going  to end up completing the whole build i thought   i'm just going to make this cylinder because  that's how i want to deal with this world right   now and then i was off to the races and again as  you just saw in the video it's not just a barrel   and a cylinder there's a top rail there's  a front sight there's marks on the top rail   there's contours that have to be matched the laser  tube which has to be totally hollow for weight   and because it houses an actual laser which  meant that i had to also accommodate wiring   coming through this hinge see every piece that i  machined for this i had to be thinking forward to   what that piece would need to do later on in  the gun this hinge had to accommodate that   latching mechanism working every single time its  robustness was super required i could go on for   a long time but this is exactly the kind of stuff  that you're going to see covered in the next video thanks for watching that video if there's  a video equivalent of the clean plate club   you're a member if you want to support us one  of the best ways you could do it is going to our   merch store and purchasing one of our beautiful  new posters this is my hand-drawn sketch of my   two toolboxes that i used when i was an active  model maker at industrial light and magic in the   late 90s and the early aughts there's also on  the far left side of the poster a list of all   of the tools i had in these tool boxes and  i used them daily for almost a decade again   you can get your own version of this printed on a  beautiful card stock by following the links below

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,648,525

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage one day build, hellboy replicas, adam savage tested, tested one day builds, adam savage one day build hellboy, hellboy samaritan replica, hellboy good samaritan, hellboy prop replicas, adam savage builds, adam savage machining, adam savage milling machine, adam savage prop making, adam savage props

Id: Pb1BpA7QN3U

Length: 47min 40sec (2860 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Goddamn, that’s impressive.

[u/jerryleebee]

I watched this last night. It was super fun. And it's only part 1! Highly recommended.