Adam Savage's One Day Builds: How to Build a $5 Sword!

hello everybody adam savage here in my cave i like to say that tested is not a how-to channel  it is more a what just happened channel uh   i certainly film myself uh making lots of mistakes  and so there are a lot of the builds i do on this   channel that i don't think of as how to's because  i don't consider myself having any authority   about how to do a thing that i have just figured  out how to do uh that requires a point of view   and some experience but occasionally i do  have some how-to videos and today is one of   them it's one i realized i thought of years ago  and i can't believe i haven't gotten around to   and it's the five dollar sword five dollar sword  we're going to make a sword today using a paucity   of materials a very small amount of inexpensive  materials i'm going to make a pretty fun and easy   to construct sword you could follow along and make  your own and make however many you want um this   is a design i came up with um in two different  ways first i built my first version of this sword   when i was 16 it was shortly after i'd  seen excalibur john borman's amazing film   which went on to inspire my own construction of  excalibur see this footage here i made one out of   aluminum like the movie swords i also eventually  took my obsession for excalibur all the way to   cornwall england where terry master armor terry  english taught me how to make armor while he and   i made me a set of king arthur's armor but back  when i was 16 i didn't have any of that knowledge   i just wanted an excalibur sword and my house i  grew up in a suburban house in terrytown new york   uh and my house had uh that uh that slatting uh  on the bottom of my front porch you know those   wood slats that are about an inch and a half  wide and however long and there's just like you   know cross slats you can see through the squares  and we had tons of that surrounding some of the   parts of our house and one of those slat pieces  came off it was about a quarter inch wide and   something like seven feet long and about an inch  and a half so a quarter inch thick about an inch   and a half wide and i took it and i cut it into  a sword shape and i sanded it into a sword shape   and i made it my very first sword and i was  very pleased with it uh cut to let's see i   was 16 cut to maybe eight years later i am living  in san francisco and it is a theater town and my   friend rich calls me up and says he's working on  shakespeare play and they could use some swords   um do i have any i said i don't but i had this way  of building them that would be really inexpensive   if you guys could pay me like 10 bucks per sword  i could make you probably like 15 swords and they   were like we don't have anything close to that  kind of bunch this is what theater is totally like   uh but i'm about to do for you what i was  going to do for my friends shakespeare play   and by the way if you are in a theater this  is a great way to get some reasonable stage   blades at least for rehearsing with and with a  little finesse definitely for performing with um the five dollar sword i have not costed this  out to an exact five dollar amount there are   some things that cost well let me start with  the materials list and then we'll talk about   the five dollar story appellation that i've  given it um this is a piece of poplar i had   it's slightly thicker than the slat that i  was working with back when i was 16 years old   but anything close to this will kind of do uh  you could even if you're if you have access to a   bandsaw blade take a two by four and slice a thin  slice off of it that is completely reasonable but   many lumber yards will have timber like this that  you could utilize um you could take apart a pallet   that something got shipped on and mill it down on  a bandsaw or even on a table saw though i would   do that with real supervision um not fun to do  big thick cuts of thin material on the table saw   not fun at all not for the faint of heart but  it all begins with this a piece of lumber that   in this case is about 3 8 of an inch thick it is  about 3 inches wide we won't need that full width   and right now i'm saying this is probably  just about 4 feet long we're going to draw   a sword on this we're going to cut it out you  could use a coping saw you could use a hand saw   you could use a jigsaw any saw you have access to  will be sufficient for cutting out the sword shape   uh am i getting ahead of myself no i don't think  so all right so here's the materials piece of wood   uh some electrical tape some aluminum  plumbers tape some kitchen twine some ca glue now a roll of this stuff about 10  bucks however it'll make like 50 swords for you so   let's say it's about 50 cents  worth of material is that right no that's even less that's like 20 cents of  material per sword yeah you get a lot out of   this so i'm not calling this a 10 expense i'm you  know i'm i'm saying you're just using like a few   pennies worth of aluminum tape kitchen twine i'm  assuming you have access to some kind of twine it   really barely matters what kind of twine you use  the way we're going to use it electrical tape   found in almost every house i like it because it's  made of vinyl and it stretches and that will be   beneficial to us later ca glue now this is my fast  glue of choice but if you don't have access to a   crazy glue or a ca glue by all means you could  use uh for this build you could use wood glue   you could use epoxy you could use an all-purpose  glue all of them would work just fine um this is a   this is both a material and glue agnostic build  you can kind of use anything you wanted to do it   i'm going to do it in one specific way  but as i go i'll keep on explaining um   the the the that you don't need a full  shop for this build under any circumstances   uh and this is probably achievable by pretty much  anybody in a day or two if you take some time   um we're going to be after we cut out the  blade we're going to be shaping it and i'll   be shaping it with a probably a an orbital  sander and a plane and again planes which is here is a here's a stanley plane these are not exotic tools you can pick  one up on craigslist for 5 or 10 bucks again i wanted this build to not use  a lot of exotic tools and materials   i wanted it to feel accessible  uh and so every time i'm using   something and you think i don't have one  of those i hope that i have contributed   the thing that you do have that you could do  this way to begin this build first you need   to decide on the size and shape of the sword that  you are making uh and i'm going to start in pencil but i am going to make a bunch of  marks in uh in sharpie because it   doesn't matter normally i don't like making  marks on uh stuff that's going to be hero   sided in sharpie because sharpie tends to bleed  through paint but we're not painting any of this   we are simply uh covering our blade with aluminum  tape and it's going to be like wow i know i did a   version of this when i made hellboy's sword which  is hanging up there behind me um but this is just   this is a much quicker and dirtier way of  getting kind of a very similar result so i'm   not going to make a huge long sword here i think  i'm going to make a very medium-sized short sword   kind of a roman gladius is that what you call it  i'm also going to make mine quite wide i think yeah that's good i like that um okay so  that is about two and a quarter inches wide   which means that an inch and  an eighth would be the middle   and it's important to mark the center  of your blade that is going to matter   okay so now uh i'm actually  going to make these marks in i would like to show you  something here what i've got here   is a piece of wood on which i have a center  mark and a cut mark this is the center of my   sword blade that is the outside edge i'm going to  cut now i would like to do these lines in sharpie   so how do you draw a really nice strip i just drew  these lines out of pencil and they're really nice   and straight and if you were looking carefully you  might have saw seen how i did it what i'm doing   is i'm utilizing my fingers as a stop for the mark  that i want to make so if i have if i want to make   this mark what i'm doing is actually let's do  it this way i want to make a mark right here   i am going to hold my fingers in an orientation  that provides a really nice basis see that   i've got both my pinky and my  ring finger touching the side   i've got my middle finger touching the top and i'm  holding the pen between my middle index and thumb   and when i want to draw this line i  drop my pen and i go all the way down   yeah this like old girlfriend of mine taught  me this technique she was a framer and it has   it changed my life the moment i saw it there you  go and then you draw a really nice straight line you know look at how straight that is that's just  done with soft flesh of my beat up fingers yeah i love this technique i use it almost every day and i actually like it almost better than  measuring sometimes because it lends a   sort of a hand-hewn look to things these two  sides might not be exactly perfect but that's   fine with me totally fine okay so uh let's  see i would like to now it's time to draw   the this is gonna be where the base of my  sword is i'm just gonna use a square and   draw it across the base i'm going to continue the  middle on down because i'm going to use that okay   now i want to draw the tip of the sword so  i'm going to do a little bit of a sketch and there we go and now it meets it across   there so i'm going to do the  same thing on the other side yeah that's pretty good all right exactitude isn't critical here just  getting pretty close is good enough   you're going to have plenty of chances to fix  it up later i can see right now that this curve   isn't going to be matched that one so i may  need to do some more shaping of it once i you know something like that okay i'm going to  cut this out using a jigsaw oh right right right   uh i've got this business down here this is  the center of the sword and i want to actually   mark off uh a bit of this because this is  actually i'm going to make this the handle as well   so you see i'm doing the same thing i'm getting  pretty darn close and i'm making the handle   overly long that is totally going to be overly  long and i'm going to cut it right about there   actually it's going to be probably about there and  i'm going to just give myself more material than i   need and because i want to make sure i don't cut  out the wrong thing i'm going to mark off this is   a classic maker method for delineating what you  are going to cut and what you are going to keep and again back here go like this   you might think why would i need that i can see  where i want to cut yeah i'm here to tell you   every time i don't do this i practically  cut something wrong almost every single time   yeah here is the shape that is going to be the  handle and there is the blade very very simple   re you can lay this out any which way you  want if you would like some reference you   can do a google image search first  uh sword short sword roman gladius   two-handed sword bastard sword oak shot sword i  mean if you really want to go you can go get the   o shot sword book and blow these up and lay it  down on a piece of paper you could print it out   the number of ways you can create this template  is literally infinite but you can see i haven't   spent too much time trying to finesse it i'm  just getting a general shape now i'm going to   cut it out good i can cut it out with a coping  saw that would be a very easy way i can cut it   out with a handheld jigsaw i'm going to cut it  out on my bandsaw just because that's faster so i hope you can see already how good we're  doing we uh we're on our way uh now like i   said these two shapes aren't equivalent they're  not perfect sometimes uh what i'll do is i'll   cut out the first shape like this i'll cut out  that shape and then i'll spin it over and use it   to mark the other side i didn't do that this time  because i wanted to show you that you could even   rescue it if you don't do something like that i'm  just going to use a sander to uh to bring these   even i'm going to use a disc sander but you  could easily do this in a few minutes with a   sanding block all right so now trying to get these  even on the side that i've drawn the lines on is   actually going to be really difficult so i'm  going to make them even to my eye on the other side good enough um it's really good to  get this to work visually for your eye   you can't always trust your marks and as you  can see they'll just they can steer you wrong   they give you false guidance sometimes so that  kind of yeah that's pretty darn good maybe it's   a little more curvy here than here but actually  it feels pretty darn pretty darn right so there's   our basic sword shape now what do we do i'm glad  you asked what now we are going to do is we are   going to shape this blade we're going to consider  that it has four planes and we're going to shape   those planes um we're not going to get  super super exacting and perfection   with this that is not the point of this build  however i do need a couple more reference lines   i've got a nice center line there i'm going to  need another one on the other side let's draw that   just by i it's plenty on such a thing  now i have a center line on both sides   and now i need a center line here along the  edge and i'm going to do that line the same   way i did the other lines so you see i  just bring my finger up here like this and again this line is you know if  you can sight it up center by your eye   you're probably fine i'm pretty sure yeah there we go that's it now i have a  nice center line i have four center lines   and now i think you can see the four planes that  i want to shape what i want to do with this sword   is i want to shape this plane down and this plane  and this plane and this plane so how do i do that   well you could if you wanted to you could if you  wanted to use 50 grit sandpaper and just do that now one of the things that you're doing is i'm  softening this edge but now i have this reference   line i don't want to go past it so as i sand  i'm going to be avoiding both this center line   and this center edge line um don't worry  too much about this this because you'll   be finessing that later but i just  want to remove a bunch of material right away you can see i've got a  kind of a nice curve on there yeah   and my goal will be to leave only the black mark  that's that's how sharp i want this sword to be   which is to say not very sharp at all by the way i cannot vouch that this sword will be  acceptable for um cons uh there are all sorts of   different rules at every con about things that  look like weapons and how you walk through them   with please check the rules of your local con  when we're doing cons again which i hope is soon   because man i really miss cons how many times can  i say khan in a few sentences god god god there   are some pros and there's some cons actually right  now there's a bunch of pros with no cons to go to   that's almost a joke i'm going to move on 50 grit sandpaper takes off a  lot of material very quickly and as you can see i did a bunch of that shaping  on my belt sander um when i put an 80 uh an 80   grit sanding belt on my belt sander you can buy  heavy sanding belts for almost any belt sander   if you have access to one but again you  don't need to you could use just this   and you just sit there and do  all of this shaping by hand the only reason i did this because we're  having a heat wave in san francisco and   i didn't feel like being sweaty today  after doing this for like about an hour   that's about what it would take about  an hour of your time and i'm gonna do all the final shaping with this though   and what's funny is the very same  skills you're using to do this   actually you could use a piece of metal and make  a sword out of metal it just takes a lot longer   the technique is about the same you know you cut  out the shape make sure it's nice then you start   to actually make your reference marks and you  start sculpting down to those reference marks the nice thing about your hand for the finishing  work is that um it actually smooths out a lot   of the crimes that you could add in by  using a belt sander i get a lot of these   witness marks can you see them it's hard to see  uh and your hand standing takes care of that   ah this piece of wood i'm using is poplar i  just happen to have some around um but again   any softwood pine whatever you've got access to  will work fine i wouldn't try plywood plywood   you could do this out of plywood it's  just going to be a little trickier because   you're asking a lot of plywood when you start  to do that and ask for a finished surface look at how far we've come we are like minutes away from larping okay not exactly minutes but this is very  satisfying already we're gonna take it   a couple steps farther the 80 grit not great  as a finished surface i'm going to go to a   120 grit wrapped around the same block i lied 150.  120 150 i consider them almost interchangeable   a lot of the time uh and all you're doing is just  trying to get rid of all the big scratch marks   and now you don't have to worry about about  trying to stay away from the lines because   um you can't stand off too  much material with this stuff   you're just trying to get it to feel nice  and smooth and you will feel the difference you will feel the difference between the  finished side and the unfinished side   and you can go ahead and stand right over top of  your marker marks you are kind of done with them for those of you who study juggling i found that teaching myself how to juggle  made me somewhat ambidextrous not entirely   ambidextrous but i can switch things between hands  so i can stand with my left hand or my right hand   and that's nice because every single day my muscle mass is decreasing you can go as far as you want with this with  this moment of sanding uh you can take this all   the way up to 180 grit if you want and then  at that point if you guys are 180 or really   like 220 you can stain this but we are not going  to we're going to aestheticize this however   our blade is mostly fleshed out pretty  pleased with it a few more little rough patches to smooth away yeah feels  good um and now we're going to make the   cross guard the thing that protects your hand  actually this piece of wood which came off the   side of this is actually perfect look  at that absolutely perfect uh however it's got the sharpie marks on i don't like  sharpie bucks i'm gonna let that be a deal breaker no i'm not i'm gonna use this piece  of wood it's a great little scrap   and it literally is like proportionally i  like that look i dig it it's working for me   now a finger plane is also a totally reasonable  tool with which to do the shaping if that's what   you are comfortable with it's a little more of an  advanced move and clamping it down is going to be   a little bit tough but you know i can actually do  the finishing of my edges here using the finger   plane and get a kind of what looks like a sort  of a a roughly sharpened edge that's kind of nice now i've ended up with a little nick because  i took off a little too much material   because i got ambitious um but that's  okay little nicks on this thing are   actually going to make it look i think even  a little bit better to be perfectly honest okay right we're working on this thing okay  so i want to slice that there you can make   this cut with a handsaw without any difficulty  i've got a bandsaw here so i'm going to use it so now i want to make sure that  i'm going to put this in the center   three and quarters three and  eight and eight yeah ready now i need to cut out that shape and again  you could just use a coping saw for this it's   totally easy and i think  that's what i'm going to do   first thing we're going to do to make this  cut is we're going to draw a little hole in each of the four corners   with a hand drill precision is not critical  although having your drill bit properly mounted   in your drill is now there's a specific  way in which i'm drilling these holes which is each hole can you see that is on the  inside of the line that's that's a key trick here so now you can see i've got four  holes drilled into the corners   it's not perfectly exact that's okay we're  gonna hide those crimes we won't see them later outstanding that is perfect  for our purposes right now   great sharp-eyed viewers might  have watched me do that and thought   what the hell kind of saw is that and well  it's actually a pretty special saw this   is a titanium coping saw built by the wonderful  geniuses that new concepts k-n-e-w concepts   this is a spendy piece of kit but it is one of  the more beautiful tools i have in my collection   i got to tell you you know when i receive  something and i see a particular balance of   colors in the anodization i know i'm working  with people who are paying attention to the   the right things i'm not saying that the color is  the most important thing i'm just saying that when   i see a balance of color like this i know that  someone has spent time getting those things right   this is a a trust structured water cut  titanium riveted frame it is incredibly rigid   uh and it is my go-to coping saw i've had it  for years and i think it actually is one of the   very first tool tips i ever did on tested and  we'll link to it below so you can learn about   the other things that they make because they  make even more extreme and cool coping sauce so   i have my cross guard i have the piece that  should go into it but it doesn't quite yet   because it's a little tight that's fine i want it  to be tight um i want to loosen this up a little   bit and i'm going to do that with some sanding  sticks when i worked at industrial light magic   when i was a model maker i used to make my own  sanding sticks and i'd make them at every grade   and i'd probably make them about twice a year so i  take tongue depressors which by the way a full box   of tongue depressors should be in every maker's  shop uh not expensive fantastic to use as all   sorts of things wedges and paint applicators  scrapers etc and also for depressing tongues   what i would do is i would spray glue on one side  of these and spray glue on let's say a piece of   150 grit sandpaper then i'd lay them down  cut them out and on the back i'd write   150 150 like that and then i always  knew which sanding stick i was going for   and that allowed me to do what i like to  call climbing the sanding ladder right so   you start with 80 the 100 the 120 150  180 220 320 all the way up to you know   400 600 but really 220 is about what most  model making would ever need unless you're   doing highly polished parts i used to make  these twice a year i'd make a whole set of like   10 or 15 of each grade as many as i could fit on a  on a piece of sandpaper and then i discovered that   they sell this at beauty shops this is a nail  salon file and you can buy them in every grade   you don't need to go through all that trouble  and i haven't since but i am going to use some of   these sanding sticks to just open up and refine  this hole oh that one's too wide there we go and i'm just straightening up the sides cleaning  it up and i've got a little edge one here i've cut   you know what i think i might take  an exacto blade fix that a little bit i'm trying to show the variety of ways in  which every step of this build could be done i just don't want anyone to watch this and think  well i can't do that because i don't have x   and literally if you like have a piece of  sandpaper and something that cuts stuff   i mean i i guess you could do this whole build  with a swiss army knife if you were so inclined   man if somebody does this whole build with  a swiss army knife i'd love to know about it   it's not me i don't have that kind of  energy anymore so here that is pretty close   that is that is great um the tighter you get this  the easier your work later will be um but now   it needs a little bit of shaping because i don't  this isn't perfect i want to get a little bit more   of a refined shape out of this guy so i'm going to  do a little marking all right so what do i mean by   shaping and refining well i i would like this i  don't think the cross guard should have these big   flat it shouldn't just be rectangular it  should have a little bit of finesse to it so   i'm going to start with the center line again  using the same technique with my fingers to   just do a rough center and i'm going  to make the assumption that perhaps   oh actually that's kind of nice yeah why don't  we try this i'm literally going to use this for   my reference marks and you'll see kind of how i  think through something like this sometimes so   i've gone a popsicle sticks width away from  each side actually that's not quite square   that's better uh and then uh i want the ends to  be about like this and again i'm just using my eye   and this is really accurate by the way if you  go to like an armor museum you will notice like   almost nothing is perfect in fact it looks  much more like somebody was using their eye   all along so i'm just going to  now join up these marks i've got yeah that's great and uh i'm just gonna  oh right so this is what i want to cut off there that's what i'm going to cut  off and this will be my cross guard   so i'm gonna do it on the bandsaw nice all right we're just  gonna sand that a little bit now i could do all sorts of  stuff i could round these edges   i could drill some holes in here i  could put some filigree around that   all of that is totally up to you you  can do whatever you want with this part   this is i'm just showing you one way that i have  done it so i think it's time to take this and this   and make them one all right so for this there's  a million ways we can do it i'm just going to   clamp the sword in the vise here like that  and i am going to work my piece down that that kind of fit exactly the kind of fit you want  uh it sits it holds the blade it doesn't rattle   very much that is a nice positive fit and we are  um we are really close to uh to our sword see that   look at that yeah okay now time to finish this  bottom how are we gonna do that great question   here's what i'm going to use i'm going to use  this to be the pommel of my sword the the the   base under the handle this is a table leg that i  sawed off something i can't even remember what i   sawed this off what did i saw i don't know so  i'm going to use this table leg i'm going to   cut out a couple of slices of it on a bandsaw  and yeah you'll see just how simple this can be these three pieces are all i'm going to  use for the pommel uh i am going to the   pommel's going to end up looking like  that right just a just a diamond shape   that's it that's really really simple um but in  order to do that and and by the way this table leg   those are totally cuts you could do with a coping  saw or handsaw or anything you've got available   to you what i'm now going to do is i'm going to  make a mark on this middle part in order to uh   well you'll see how i'm doing i'm holding the  middle part in its orientation and i am going to do it that's it now i'm going to  cut that out also on the bandsaw i thought i was recording i thought i was  recording and i wasn't um let me guess   what i need is a pommel with a  square hole that this fits into   there are ways you could do that with chisels and  drills and precision um i've never been that good   a woodworker to get that kind of result so i do it  piecemeal i'm gonna slice this out on the bandsaw   and then i'm gonna sandwich it between two pieces  and just like a cooking show this is what i end   up with is three pieces sandwiched together  except because i've cut out this middle part   i have this perfectly square hole that perfectly  fits the grip of my sword look at that yeah   and by the way this is precisely the way that i  did the handle on my uh hellboy samaritan this   is i i did it in pieces rather than trying to  drill and chisel out a perfectly square hole   this allowed me a lot more that is a great sound  is it yeah uh that allowed me exactly that kind   of precision and look i i got pretty close that's  just because i have a long long like a lifetime of   kind of sussing this out and getting it close you  may be farther away doesn't really matter doesn't   really matter now we have our pommel we have our  guard we have our grip we have our blade those are   the four main parts of the sword we are almost  done with the form of this sword however this   handle isn't very comfortable i don't like holding  on to it so i want to make it a little bit more   comfy and more substantial and that's where  this comes in this is the tip of an old cane um   that i cut off for some other project i can't even  remember what but i have a practice in my shop   that is if it's small and round i'm keeping it  because round things are eventually always useful   seriously round things are eventually always  useful that that should be a t-shirt um this   is just a piece of round wood it's roughly uh  three quarters of an inch in diameter i'm going to   slice it and slice it and i'm going to use those  two pieces to round out this grip a little bit a note if i was going to do this without the band  saw i would do those cuts in reverse order i would   line up my hand saw on this piece  clamped into a vice i'd slice down   and then i would slice out um i am let's see  here so this is actually really great i'm   i really like how that feels and how that  looks um but i think this transition's a   little rough there so on my sander  and again you could use just a block   block sander if you wanted on my sander i'm  just gonna finesse that bottom edge that's all this is rapidly becoming one of my favorite one   day builds ever i'm having a blast  oh i forgot the sword over there look at that we i i'm literally like an hour  into this build myself i've been filming this   in real time uh so uh the next thing i would  do is yep so i'm gonna glue that on both sides   and again you could use wood glue  anything you've got in the house will work hell's bells the way i'm about to address this you  can use double stick tape if you really wanted to   yeah you'll see now we're going to give it a really nice  feeling grip that is that is important   or good play it should feel great and  that's where your kitchen twine comes in   it's only going to take a little bit of this  stuff and seriously any string you've got will do   for this part it's really not that complicated  here's what we're going to do we're going to   glue in one little little part of it here let  that set and then i'm just going to wind this   around itself and i'm not going to try and  go all the way like perfectly next to each   other i'm actually going to see how the spiral is  going i'm actually going to do this all the way up you will see the method to my madness later but  it will make this grip feel great and look great   there are little things you can do details  like this which helps sell something and also   you know feels good you give it to an actor and  it feels good it becomes part of their character   i really i still am sad that they didn't buy  those swords for me for that shakespeare play   i really would have loved to have done that but  san francisco in the 90s was an amazing theater   town there was theater everywhere but that also  meant that it was super super low rent theater so   it was like budgets were tight man some of my  first model making jobs i did for free as long as   they paid for materials because at the beginning  of your career materials are your expenses are   your big expense time is your least expensive  thing later on that formula reverses itself   okay so there we go i'm going to put a  little dot of glue there now up there i   don't have to be perfect about it i just want  to stop it from unraveling there like that great okay now i think yeah i think i can um glue that in i think  i can glue this part in so let's uh just jam some   glue in there jam some glue in there up on the  sides yeah okay and i'll pre-release this there we   go those two parts are now one they are one there  can be only one okay a couple more steps to go a couple more steps to go uh the next  step for me is paint and i am going to   give this a coat of just some uh some black  paint black paint let me see what i got i'm just gonna use a little gray primer on this  some flat gray primer i'm going to break out my uh blow dryer and my respirator give me a second oh that is really nice and thick you don't have to do any  masking for this paint operation   you can paint right onto the blade if you  like doesn't matter you'll see why in a minute all right now we're to do one more bit of  aestheticizing of this uh because these   strings aren't glued in you could glue them in  you could actually paint those all with white   glue and make a very nice looking handle i'm going  to wrap mine in electrical tape because it's quick   and dirty and i'm just going to take one of the  tricks with electrical tape is it'll last for   freaking ever on something if you uh if you don't  over stretch it it likes to unstretch itself   so i start out there and then i slowly  wind my way up eliminating any buckles and now the string makes it look  like i knew what i was doing i know that's one of my favorite phrases and  now rather than tear at the end if you want the   electrical tape to last give it a cut and bring  it in and just like yeah there you go now take a   look at that that is a very i got to tell you  from a hand feel standpoint that is fantastic   we have our basic colors and again you could do  anything you wanted with this you could put a   jewel here you have some costume jewelry drill  a hole stick a big jewel there glue it in with   hot glue you want to add some filigree around the  edges go grab an old like disposable dinner plate   with a pattern on it you like and glue that on  uh some copper tape striping tape markers fimo   whatever you wanted you could use to augment  and dress this up you could drill some holes   and sculpt in some super sculpey and then  bake it at a low temperature in your oven   the world is your oyster i am just giving  you the basic framework but now it's time   to make this blade look great and just to  do a final fitting polish i'm just gonna   now that i've got a handle i'm just  gonna make sure that it's nice and smooth it's time to put on the aluminum tape oh also  swords like this really great for balancing   because they're heavier on top and as long as you  stare at the pommel they're pretty easy to balance the deadly juggler a movie  no one's ever going to make   so again i'm going to peel the  backing off my aluminum tape and when you're peeling aluminum tape stop right  there stop right there and get a handle on it   because it likes to curl up so now i'm going to  lay it in right right there and i'm butting this   right up to the other piece of aluminum you could  overlap it by a tiny bit that's completely fine and so i am and now i'm going to do the same  treatment i did before using the pad on my thumb   and the backs of my fingernails to just slowly  work this in look at how the tape line gives us   a kind of a dividing fuller on the blade that  is sort of this added bonus that looks pretty   freaking cool oh there's little worm holes  in my actual wood that's fine i care not and you'll see there's the edge no i'm getting  pretty close okay time for some exacto trimming and we're halfway there we are halfway  we are halfway there and i hope you're   feeling the same way i am which is damn that  looks way better than i thought it would   that's it the side of a sharpie is great for this  smoothing operation uh separating the backing   from doubles from sticky tape always a thing  again stop right there yep there we go okay so i got it stuck to itself yep there we go okay again right up to the edge  oh i went a little too far you don't have very many opportunities  to re-seat it but you can take them   and again the tape is  inexpensive so ah all right there and again just gently from from the center  line i make sure the center line is good   and then the rest kind of falls into place  and the back of a sharpie is great for this   the the trunk of a sharpie  is fantastic for this kind of   burnishing that is what we are doing we  are burnishing the aluminum onto the wood this edge is a very forgiving edge   um obviously it helps if you cut pretty close to  the edge but it doesn't have to be a perfectly   straight line honestly um because it's  the edge it will hide a lot of crimes all right oh i cut off a little too much there again   that's fine you can hit that a little  bit later you'll see oh there we go here's a method for getting the backing  off is to get an exacto and split it   you actually get pretty  good at that over the years and there we go right up to the edge and by the way i'm also using my fingers as a  brace for the exacto blade as i make this cut   they're not braced against anything but they are  sort of serving as a kind of a carriage riding on   the top of the of the sword while i cut in the  same way that i was making the marks earlier   so now we oh oh oh come on come on  there we go right i mean yeah this this was a piece of scrap wood a table leg some  string electrical tape some extra scrap wood   and some plumber's tape ladies and gentlemen  five dollar sword yeah that is a very satisfying   one-day build for me even i hope that  many of you try this and if you do i'm   dying to see what you make with them what kind of  sword what your inspiration was where you started   where you ended up please share it in the comments  below please send it to us at testedinfo.com   um we really want to know what you made using  this technique and again i've really left it as   broad as broad as humanly possible uh if  the uh if this edge actually it looks way   better on camera than it does in person if  this edge bothers you you could spray this   blade with some black primer and  then sand it back off with some   steel wool or scotch brite or the green  scrungy part of your kitchen sponge would   also take that paint down and do a kind of a  final spit and polish on your aluminum tape um i hope this shows you some of the possibilities  inherent if you wanted to get better you could   actually facet these four planes that i described  earlier you could sand them so that each one   is a visible facet that takes a lot more  practice takes a lot more training and   understanding but it's doable you could uh  you could cut this out you could cut a fuller   out and then fill it with let's say a lightweight  plumber's epoxy or something like that and then   tape over that you get a fuller yeah there's  so so many possibilities but it all begins   with the scrap materials with  which you can make the five dollars   i hope you had as much fun as i did this might  be one of the fastest real-time one-day builds   i have ever done and it is without a doubt the  most satisfying thank you guys for joining me for   this oh look you can even see the camera thank  you guys for joining me for this i will see you next time oh i can't turn the  camera off i have to use my finger thanks for watching that video if there's a video  equivalent of the clean plate club you're a member   uh if you want to support us one of the  best ways you can 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: 767,544

Rating: 4.949501 out of 5

Keywords: tested, one day builds, adam savage, one day build, adam savage one day build, adam savage tested, one day build adam savage, adam savage builds, adam one day build, one day builds tested, one day builds adam savage, tested adam savage one day build, props, wood sword, cheap sword, how to make a sword, how to make a wood sword, $5 sword, five dollar sword, diy, sword build, diy sword wood easy, diy sword wood, diy wooden sword, making sword wood, making wooden sword

Id: 4JQ4O1SPHSY

Length: 56min 14sec (3374 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020