Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Luke's Lightsaber!

Good morning, well or good whatever time of day  it is for you where you happen to be right now.   A few weeks ago I did a show and tell  of the lightsaber that i built uh   back in the mid 90s after traveling to the  lucasfilm behind the myths exhibition at   yerba buena arts center here in san francisco uh  i took a snapshot of this made some measurements   and built this on lunch hours while working for  jamie heinemann in commercial special effects   in the comments of that video a lot of you  asked and requested that i show myself building   a lightsaber like that from scratch which i  think is a terrific idea and i'm totally going   to do it but i'm going to uh i'm going to walk  you through the story and i'm going to build   it as if i had to build it today with similar  resources like i have reference material for   the actual luke's lightsaber that is perfect  but i'm not going to use it i'm actually   going to show you how i would do this if  i didn't have access to enough information   the first thing you should know is that back in  1995 while working for jamie i was making like   yeah i wasn't making very much money and so for me  to go get a 35 chunk of aluminum was significant   like that was a significant expense to me i had to  think about it and like talk to my then girlfriend   about it and like save up for it and so when  i did i wanted to be really really careful uh   this was like a a holy prize when i realized oh  you know what i think i'm gonna go get a piece   of aluminum and make a lightsaber and so then  i went down to bay shore metals and i looked   at their scrap pile and i found a piece just like  this about two inches in diameter this is standard   6061 aircraft aluminum um and yeah it was like 35  bucks and i just remember that really that expense   really kicking my butt back then so uh i wanted  to get this right so uh what i'm gonna do is i'm   gonna walk you through my computer mechanicians  for doing a build like this i'm gonna find a   picture of luke's lightsaber i am going to isolate  it and blow it up but i'm going to try doing this   without using any special software let's see let's  see how i do let's see how we do let's get into it first things first is yeah that's my baby yoda  what of it he's helping out today uh let's see   here first things first is luke's light saber um  great okay this look i mean it's it's a bonus yeah   here is an auction photo of luke's lightsaber there we go that that's fantastic that  is exactly the kind of reference we want   all right so uh i'm gonna  save this image to my desktop   and then uh i'm going to use apple's  preview their you know preview is a photo   viewing program they have oh are you really not  going to let me save this image save image as no okay all right here's a trick   there are websites that won't let you save photos  off the website what you can do is you can go to   view and uh at least in google chrome for the mac  you can go to view scroll down the view menu to   developer and go to view source then look at the  source and what you're looking for is find luke luke yep loot lightsaber there we go in  the source code you can find the link   to the picture without the web mechanisms that  keep you from being able to download it yeah   this doesn't take too long seriously it's  a great little technique um save image as   okay or desktop so here's what i'm  going to do i'm going to print this out i'm going to print this out onto paper and yeah  so i kind of got that working and i'm not sure   exactly how uh this is a tutorial at making  not in web resource management my apologies um it's confusing sometimes it can be look  this is one of my difficulties with with   uh with pinterest is being able to save good high  resolution images off of stuff they don't make it   simple so i frequently do my google searches with  a minus sign and pinterest so it doesn't include   them in the mix because i find them so annoying  sorry pinterest you're fine for assembling   groups of stuff but when it comes to the kind of  research i do you're you're often anti-helpful   uh okay so i'm gonna print this out print uh  on my uh on my print oh i think i printed it to   the printer at my house hold on yeah that's the  one i want okay i'm gonna go get the print out okay i have my lightsaber printed out i don't  think it's the right size and sure enough it's   not um i need to get this the right size so how  do i do that well here's what i ah okay so uh here's where we're hoping to get to we're hoping  to get to a printout that shows precisely how long   the lightsaber is and luckily for  us on auction sites they often list   some critical dimensions and i think those are  fairly safe to follow for a reasonable amount of   accuracy obviously you know some conservator is  just gonna go oh okay this lightsaber is 11.75   inches long that's totally reasonable it might  actually be 11.76235 inches long that's the kind   of thing a conservator is not going to worry about  as much as a prop replicator sometimes but we have   a measurement so we know that we want this to  be 11.75 inches long and it's currently only 10 inches long how are we going to translate those  two things to get them to give us numbers we need   i'm glad you asked we're gonna do  a little math here uh on my channel   so the actual dimension is 11.75 and the  dimension that we currently have is 10 inches   so we need to blow this up by a certain percentage   to do we need to this is 10 inches long  and we need to blow it up by a certain   percentage to get to 11.75 well this math is  really easy 11.75 divided by 10 equals 1.175   that is a hundred and seventeen and a half percent  one one seven percent if i multiply ten inches by 117.5 you see how the number works  it's actually pretty straight forward   okay how can this be how can this formula help you  in your day-to-day life of proper application i'm   going to give you this simple formula um when you  want to scale up in a single dimension let's say   you want to scale from 10 inches up to 11.75 you  simply take the bigger number and divide it by   the smaller number that's when you want to scale  up so 11.75 divided by 10 equals 117 and a half   percent when you want to scale down you take the  smaller number and divide it by the bigger number   you do the reverse operation and so for instance  for if you wanted to take something that was 11.75   inches and divided by 10 inches you would get  when you divide 10 by 11.75 you get 85 percent   this is a technique i used hundreds of times a day  as a graphic designer back in new york in the 80s   where that was before we had computers we did  everything by hand and that kind of scaling i did   constantly constantly so what i'm  going to do is i'm going to take   this over to my printer and use its sizing  function to blow this up into two parts   i am back from the printer and i have my  lightsaber in two pages so uh this is now 11.75   inches in dimension you can see it's nice and  close to my lightsaber um a note what i've done   here is called tiling because eight and a half by  11 sheets of paper aren't big enough for an 11.75   inch long thing and i tile a lot but it's bizarre  to me that it's still really really difficult for   instance on the mac i might be different on a  pc but on the mac if i wanted to tile something   up to like full size me i have trouble i still  have trouble finding a program that can take an   image and let me say blow this up to 72 inches  long and then divide it out into sheets of eight   and a half by 11 paper i can print out i still  have to kind of manually do that in photoshop   which seems crazy to me i know you're saying why  don't you learn how to code and write your own   software i have chosen a different path in life  i am suggesting this right now so that somebody   else maybe tells me about the right tiling program  to make big posters because i haven't found it and   it drives me nuts i can't believe in this day  and age this is such a simple thing this should   literally be a print function in every print  dialogue how big do you want it i want it this   big it might take 400 sheets of paper yes that's  what i want please give me this functionality okay   i am that's the end of my rant i'm gonna tape  this together i'm gonna cut off this end tape   it together with scotch tape and start to make  some critical measurements off of it uh i have a   piece of aluminum that is perfect for it it is two  inches in diameter um that is the tiniest shade   too small for the edge of the emitter here but  this is what i was working with back in 1994   95 and that's what i'm going to work with today  my emitter will be slightly smaller than normal i cut this on a diagonal because  it makes it easier to find line this by the way doing this this is such a classic  uh assistant animator in between move so on   animation they'll often draw the first pass of the  animation on what's called fours they'll draw one   keyframe every four frames and then the assistant  animator's job is to go in and draw the frame in   between each frame and i used to do that  and you would do lots of this this lot a b   testing of your drawing back and forth back and  forth yeah super low res worked every time okay great okay okay so there is our lightsaber look  at that this is almost exactly what i   was working with way back then this piece of  aluminum is freaking just barely long enough   wow i wish i had a slightly longer piece but i  do not okay so what am i gonna do here i think i could do a cover of the bottom  of that so i could i could mill yeah okay i think i could  mill the back half of this   while i can still hold on to this nice and  tight and then put an expanding collet in there   and then cover that with a cover plate  i think that's what i'm gonna do i'm   not gonna make that out of copper i'm  just gonna mill this monolithically okay uh one of the issues i'm gonna deal with  here or i'm actually not going to deal with   is called parallaxing and that is um this  isn't a perfect plan view of the lightsaber   because the camera was in the middle at some  distance away probably on a lens like a 50 or a   70 millimeter lens um but you can see that  i can see kind of that at this end i can see   sort of under the transmitter and at this  end i can see under the hand wheel here so   i'm getting some parallaxing that means that these  dimensions aren't going to be perfectly accurate   that's okay that's that's kind of what we have  to deal with sometimes and that's for real you   know that's just like you can't really escape  parallaxing you just got to be able to accommodate   for it i'm not going to worry about it here i'm  just going to assume that these dimensions all the   way down are just gospel all right i think i have  a i think i have a rough plan for how to obtain   this out of this it's going to take a couple  steps because if i had my druthers i'd have   another couple of inches on this so i'd have  a more positive grab it means i'll have to   adjust this a couple of times during the lathing  process and there will be a milling operation   but it should be pretty  straightforward let's find out there's that i'm going to grab this oh actually  right i've got a two inch center cool so uh   i am going to start milling off the back side here  and the first dimension i want is this dimension   what is the outer dimension of these eight  uh crenellations on the end of the lightsaber and there's answer to that question the answer is 1.88 inches please don't take any of these  dimensions as actual canon star wars dimensions   i'm getting this wrong in some small  ways i hope i've made that really clear   it's just me doing this as if i was doing  it back in 1995 working with the drawings   so 1.88 inches and this is currently  exactly 2 inches yup to the to the 1000th good speed all right i'm going to zero out my dro and we get a dimension just peel  off a little bit yeah that is   so that's perfect now when i want 1.88 minus 1.88 equals 0.12 about an eighth of an  inch i'm peeling off of this um in general 120   is a lot to pull off of a uh there's a lot to  take off of a piece of aluminum in your lathe i   try and do about 30 30 40 000 at a clip so 0.12  will go to 0.04 we'll say 035 let's try that   and yeah i'm just trying to get past yeah i'm  just trying to get past there really right yeah once i get past that where the hand wheel is   i don't need much more so  i can just go right there i could there we go i can make  that mark 35 let's just see how it he really likes that awesome okay another 35. another 35. now i want to go to uh 0.12 so we're going to  take my dro to that critical dimension we go   and now i'm going to use the um the  auto feed because it'll give me a give me chatter is what it's giving me what the  hell oh right i'm not pulling up some of these   bits have a certain amount they like to remove  and if you pull off less you get chad that's funny   that's okay we can uh file  that off later with late marks okay now i'd like to um let's just see what i  got there let me get to one time look at that 1.88 a little bit higher 1.888 so uh i'm eight  thou over which is fine it's kind of exactly where   i'd like to be i sort of make some of my small  adjustments here based on giving myself a little   room to move the next thing i want to do is create  the ability to grab this from the inside i'm going   to drill a hole in the end uh first i'm going to  drill this a little bit long no i don't think so   but i want to pull it down to  a dimension of 1.375 and 0.4 in   so i want to level the end first  that's that's the next step nice now i'm going to drill a hole  in the middle but i'm going to give myself a center drill okay so that is uh that is four tenths four  yeah that's four tenths of an inch deep   that is one point two eight seven  five in diameter now what we have   here is we've got these angles so what are these  angles and this is one of the reason i love these   specific elorus universal bits because i can  use them to set angles that i want and i do this   pretty much visually i know that's not necessarily  the exact right way to do it but what the hell it works for this kind of stuff so i'm going to  loosen this and i'm going to get this angle set   see the other thing is that if you think  like a prop maker you'll notice hey look   the angle matches the standard angle that i  can reach with the dolores universal tool bit   given that i learned about these tool bits at  industrial light magic it would seem to follow   that they're using the same thing to make  the same cut so that's what we're gonna   do we're gonna come in here and we're  gonna soften this shoulder at this angle there we go now we're going to soften the other  side of that shoulder doing a similar thing i think that's the right measurement let me just  double check oh right that's how i was doing it   no that's one less damn close enough for me  now the question is how wide is that little   so you know what i probably want to do i  probably want to go in a little farther maybe   i want to pull this piece out a little bit and  and machine from here from here across getting   that critical dimension because once i have  that then i can go in and get that shoulder now i'm going to pull out my other universal  bit leave that one there and let's see things are going well i've got the back section  roughed out here i'm about to and i've got a a a a   live center here stuck into the end and i'm about  to plane down or lay down most of this material   here it's going to be a bunch of auto feeding  and then i'm going to get in towards making the   all the rest of these uh all the rest of those  details up here on my thumb side of the saber   later we'll figure out how to actually  cut the eight crenellations in the   hand wheel here famously the original  lightsaber this was a faucet knob   uh i don't have access to such a thing  so i'm gonna have to machine it but   for right now here's some soothing time lapses  of removing lots of material on the lathe i screwed up again uh for the like the fourth  time i really i really messed this up i i grrrr here is what happened here is the lightsaber  that i'm trying to build and uh i've made   several mistakes about not paying attention  um one of them was out at the emitter i cut   a little too much material off here so i was  going to have to make the emitter a separate part   but now what i did was i messed up this part  here because well you might even be able to   see it on the time lapse but i couldn't see it  but part of my tool holder was i hadn't set up   my orientations correctly and measurements started  changing and i didn't realize they were changing   because i was forcing the wrong part of the  mill the lathe into the material i was ending up how many how many i just i totally screwed it up  so i have a choice i can uh order a new piece of   two inch i can order a new piece of some  two-inch rod it's a new two-inch aluminum   6061 and start this from scratch in a few days or  i can muscle through and adjust to what's happened i think that's what i'm gonna do so i think  that what i'm going to end up doing here is there are some salvageable pieces of this build  right now i'm going to cut those salvageable   pieces off i'm going to tap them so that i  can connect them later with bits of all thread   i have this other bit of two inch rod which should  uh afford me enough material to finish this today   i was really hope here's the problem i was hoping  i would finish this in the first half of the day   and get another one-day build done today i there's  no need there's no need i could do it tomorrow but   i started counting my money and it's not  like i'm making money it's not like i   i don't mean actually counting the money i mean  like when you're at the poker table and you get   a good hand and you start counting your money  that's when you're about to lose because you   are not paying attention to everyone else in  the room that's what happened to me here i was   counting my money i was like oh we're gonna  get this done fast it's gonna be fast cause i had my eye on the wrong ball   okay let's salvage what we've got and  make something better shall we okay okay uh that wasn't as bad as i thought i  have now the better part of a lightsaber   with a removable bottom and that actually makes  this an easier task because what i've got to do   is create the correct hand wheel  crenellations in the back of this   so it's time to move over to the mill briefly  i love the smell of freshly machined aluminum   um it's coming along nicely yeah i'm quite uh  i'm provisionally pleased let's not get ahead of   ourselves so i need to machine eight crenellations  off of this which is four on the cardinal points   and four on the halfway splits of cardinal points  so every 45 degrees i could pull out a a a rotary   head that i've got with a center and set this up  to do that but that is a lot of work and i have an   easier way to do it which is to use what's called  a collet block this is a collet block and i can   actually wait right there since i've got the  3 8 bolt sticking out of here i've got a 3 8 5   c collet i stick that in there i stick this in  the collet block and i can tighten it down hang on   come on cooperate there you go that's what i  wanted so i can tighten this down and then i   can chuck this into my mill and i can get one two  three four because i can just turn it for each   operation then if i carefully turn this exactly 45  degrees and i'm pretty sure i can get there close   enough by eye and some various measuring  tools i have around here then i make four   more cuts and i believe that's how i did the  first the original one that i did we shall see i didn't think through the forces involved i  didn't think through the forces involved that's   what i didn't do i had uh this little 3 8 bolt  chucked in here felt like really tight but i'm   gonna hit it with an end mill that's carving  off material it just made the whole thing spin so uh this will be a mar i i can clean that up  a little later i can i can i can i can clean   that but still the question remains how to  mount this how do i mount how do i work this   you may ask yourself where is that beautiful  house you may ask yourself where does that highway   lead to my gosh i was watching um david byrne  the other day oh my gosh his new concert film   directed by spike lee dude it's amazing david  byrne just one of my heroes let's see here all right that was lame in the stream i'm unhappy i guess i could v block this and  certainly that gives me more encryption i'm gonna have to redo the center oh sorry no center i mean i guess i could do  layout on this piece here   and yeah that'll be good enough i  that has to have been how i did it   before i'm going to do some layout here of  the of the points that i need yeah and um let me use some vertical squares to get myself  to the right orientation okay to the workbench that is a good canvas uh i suppose let's get the marking fluid oh oops i thought this was going to be  a super fast build and that's   why i got boned that's why i'm ending  up in this position because again i'm i'm trying to rush through such such my bellywick trying to rush through things this is the point in which i would say to  gunther or joey maybe just leave me alone for half   an hour this is the point this is that exact point  and they would be like okay and they would back   away but here we are all the warts and warts and  all so uh let me just get this guy held in here come on over and take a look excellent there's  my center finder i gotta find my scribes all right there's my scribe there you are  hello sweetie it's good to see you again there's my scribe so we are going to scribe a line  across now we're going to scribe a line up but   how we're going to make sure that it's perfectly  square that's a really excellent question   well i suppose yeah that's the thing  to it all right there we go okay let's good now that you're in position  this and its right orientation great now i have the four cardinal  points i need the others so now i need i need a 45. i suppose i can draw a line here and split  it that's not as accurate as i would like   but if i get that right right slightly newer calipers on this we're talking plus or minus like a few thou on this it's an aesthetic thing 0.95   so half of 0.95 is 0.475 is that right 0.95  divided by 2 equals 0.475 hey i can do math sometimes okay so that see how i like that that is  freaking close let's see what i can get from that see how it all looks i'm gonna do the same right angle  for these as i did on the first one hey i really appreciate all the advice  you folks are currently giving me in the   comments even though that's in the future  from now about better ways to do this that looks damn good i'm i think i can  i think i can work with that that is   within a degree or two of exactly 45 degree  increments all the way around the 360. so find the center again start milling  and then after i mill it all get this   on the lathe and fix that dumb chatter  grrrrr here we go really nice and exact   yes i like that so i'm going to call that we are in let's get back our edge finder and i'm going to use the edge finder here on my  v blocks because i'll get a more better reading okay redo the edge here we go i see the problem for you yeah that dimension dead smack center of  that no matter how much i move this this way   it's still going to be centered this way which  is exactly what i wanted so let's find her   go home don't you want to go home i'm going  to use my 5 16. hey okay so that's a really   bad thing to do with a square the thing i just  did and luckily it fell on a wooden floor but how much should i trust that let's see here i'm behind the camera right  now i happen to be on my   soap stone surface plate and i'm just  checking square yeah that's good enough   double check this guy i'm sure i like  his position i do i do i do so he's in now we're gonna bring this down  right i'm gonna bring the nut up and i'm just going to bring it all the way  through is that what i'm really going to   do yeah this is exactly what i'm going  to bring it all the way through um yeah the first cut is away that's all next cut i think we could do this at time lapse don't you well this has been a journey uh so   let's just talk about where i started i started  by grabbing an auction photo of luke's lightsaber   here and using it as a plan view  for how big this thing should be um and for reference in 1994 i made this on lunch  hours in jamie's shop from uh uh uh snappy   pictures of of uh the self-same lightsaber okay  literally from like a disposable camera's pictures   of a self-same lifesaver here is where i've  gotten thus far and it's pretty good it's way off   and that is i i i guess this was the  exercise that demonstrates how far off   one can get and frankly i'm part of  me wants to keep grinding away at this   but um i'm gonna have to let  this one go uh because okay um   this just is actually less accurate to me it's  less correct looking in its current state i know   i have to slice that off but and i will it's less  correct looking than than the one i made in 94.   and and maybe that's the thing is like i  know just enough to be dangerous but and and like i definitely don't want to disappoint  you the audience i wanted to have like made a   perfect lightsaber and be like  yeah i nailed it but i didn't for the record this is a perfect lightsaber this  is an exact measured copy of what this of what   this is okay here's the thing take a look at how  different it is oh yeah look look look okay so   oh maybe you can't see it fascinating on  camera it looks dead accurate but in fact   if i line up the tops the bottoms are off by  like three quarters of an inch that's where   we're talking about parallaxing right those look  like side by side like great but they're not no   this is it's not correct so um when i hold my 1994  original up to this you can see the ways in which   it's longer so clearly i was working  with a similar kind of parallaxing   all the topological details are there as i  stated and then in the one that i've built today   um also longer so in fact what i find the  most interesting part of this exercise is that these guys are pretty  freaking close like these guys   and they're way closer than they ought to be  and that actually follows because i was working   with the same kind of reference material a single  photograph which again because of lens distortion   right it's a flat object photographed by a  spherical lens so you're getting this kind of   wrap here and that means that  all sorts of dimensions change   even from here to here this is only a few inches  four or five inches and yet dimensions can change   when you're dealing with the sphericity of  the lens that you're taking the picture of let's take this all the way to its end and call  it and it is not the build i was hoping to have   gotten done today it is less a terrific lightsaber  than i was hoping but i mean part of one of the   reasons i gotta let this one go is because i got  all the lightsabers i i have all of my favorite   lightsabers and i'm really happy with them and  this isn't like there is no line standing between   me and the perfect lightsaber in my life because  i i have them i have a shelf full of them so i'm   totally cool so this one is going to be the the  object lesson in the errors that can be introduced   from the reference material i didn't think  that was what this build was going to be about   and yet that's what it's about the ocds among  us are just going to have to let this one lie   okay so let's cut off this tip and we will chuck  this into the lathe again and then we're going to   do uh some steel wool on it then we're going to  do a final polish and then we'll throw a little   spray paint on there and we'll call this one i  am not going to make the um the activation box   on this it's a whole another it's a whole nother  persuasion that i'm not going to get to today um you know i think that's what's going to happen is  this is going to make me better at interpreting   photographic data later down the line i will be  able to understand more because i've never done   a kind of an a b testing like this okay enough  of my chatter let's get back to the machines so there there's the drawing i started with  there's the lightsaber i made from the drawing here is the lightsaber that i made in 1994 and is the lightsaber that is  all of the correct dimensions yeah a lot of different things going on  lots lots of different things going on per usual the build i thought would be an easy   quick and dirty turned out to be  long and just a little bit brutal um   i i certainly could have done better but  we're going to leave it like that that's um   however the lessons learned are the lessons  learned i appreciate you guys joining me for this   one day build here's what i'm going to do in the  next few months uh i am going to build myself a   personal lightsaber i have built enough of canon  lightsabers it's time for me to build one for me   my design my electronics well i mean you know  i'll purchase electronics kit and a blade   kit and all that uh but i will machine  the the body of this thing to my specs   because i think that's what was missing today  i think i was like kind of doing a demo but i   didn't have enough skin in the game to get it  across the line in this way that i wanted to   so i had to realize that a demo was not what  i was making it was more like a lesson and   well you know another one of my lessons  in that less than perfect outcomes however   uh a lot of information was gleaned today  that that's that's how i'm gonna call it   thank you guys so much for joining me for this  one day build these are cut these are the kind of   days that happen in every shop and i will see you  guys next time my hands are filthy it's awesome thank you so much for watching that video if  you'd like to further support us on tested there   are many ways you can do so one is through paid  membership and there are several tiers of that   each with their own set of unique bonuses you can  follow the links below for that or you can go to   our merch store where we are always coming up  with brand new products in honor of the holidays   we've got our tested ugly sweater in both black  and we have a white one we have some brand new   patches and this is a particular type that i  made a joke about one day and now it's a reality   you know a merit badges when you're a cub  scout or a boy scout you get a merit badge   for achieving something well tested now has  demerit badges for when you screw something up   because that's just as important in  learning as getting something right   so this is the badge for when you measure  something once and have to cut it twice   this is the badge for when you accidentally hook  up your electronics wrong and you release the   mysterious blue smoke that powers them and they no  longer work and this one here is for when you get   your finger caught in the lathe and it almost  gets torn off that might be quite me specific   i hope that never happens to you these are all  designed by tested's own gen schachter and they   are not the only patches we're going to release  in fact these are just the beginning if you have   ideas for demerit badges that we should release  we'd love to hear them we also still have our   regular complement of posters and they're all  back in stock including my hand-drawn toolboxes   i love seeing pictures you guys send us of these  hanging in your maker spaces and your offices your   man caves and your sheds around the world get to  the store follow the links below and hey some of   these might make great christmas presents for the  makers in your life thanks you guys happy holidays

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 850,183

Rating: 4.9446411 out of 5

Keywords: adam savage, adam savage one day build, adam savage lightsaber, adam savage tested lightsaber, adam savage star wars lightsaber, adam savage tested, one day build adam savage, one day builds, diy lightsaber, adam savage lightsaber build, adam savage one day build lightsaber, tested one day builds, tested one day builds lightsaber, adam savage star wars, adam savage star wars props, how to make a lightsaber, how to build a lightsaber, adam savage mythbusters, rotj

Id: iuNjDzT6PWo

Length: 55min 52sec (3352 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020