Grant Imahara's R2D2 Replica!

hey guys adam savage and i'm here with vaughn  davis and we are in grant imahara's shop with   grant imahara's droid uh you recognize this  little blue guy as r2d2 um this came about as   part of a a collaboration between how many of us  five or six at our ten of us are ten of us yes wow   uh you me billy brooks don bees john duncan john  goodson pierre maurer later joined us mark buck   yeah and um we all wanted our own r2d2s and  so we carefully built ourselves a set of r2d2s   totally from scratch yeah that was the  ethos that was well that was the deal   too even though we we worked with the real r2d2  at lucasfilm we were never allowed of course to   make copies of any of the parts or anything  like that so we had to create every little   detail you see here from scratch just i guess  just like all the other r2 builders in the world   so but we split it up among the 10 of us some did  these parts some did those parts i i just remember   endless amounts of machining yes for all these  leg parts making whole bunches and then molds   um i did some fiberglass hard molds for the outer  shells yeah i remember and you also wrote the   instructions for all of us to do the perfect  fiberglass oh did i really yes because it was   a hard mold which is nerve-wracking a hard part  in a hard mold yeah because if you do that wrong   you fuse your part to the mold so yeah i'm sure  that that was why you wrote those instructions i   was taking um careful instruction from mike jobe  and tony preciado about how many different layers   of wax go between the hard part that's casting  into the hard world because the cost of failure   is absolute catastrophe yes um and so this was  grant i'm i i i knew that he had finished it but   this is actually the first time i've seen it up  close yeah yeah we had been working on them for   it was on our 20th year really that we finally  got to this point where we could call them done   so we started that probably in just around 2000  well it would be 20 years ago 2020 so it was   2000 yeah yeah so i felt like i was late  finishing mine six years later well you finished   yours you were the first to finish yeah yeah  dawn was the first to drop out of the group   and then yeah yeah a bunch of people  ended up dropping out because it was just   too much work it's a gigantic construction even  for us like familiar with the process the number   of parts and pieces the amount of accuracy trying  to get things to work mechanically it's a bear   it is under the best of circumstances  absolutely i remember we had a really really fun   all of us brought our droids to your shop  yes up in norcal when you finished yours   oh was that really what i did oh right because  i fried i think i set something on fire inside   my bot while showing it off i think i like moved  the head too far oh man i love the data displays   are you telling me this correctly these are fiber  optic yeah so this is this is led right but we cut   lengths of fiber optic a lot of the artsy builders  are doing this now um so it still has the visual   appearance of the fight the original fiber optic  and the original fiber optic is kind of shitty   and it it's so perfect yeah that's what the color  wheel yours has a color yeah right yeah yeah yeah   not only does mine have the color wheel i have  the um bubbly uh epoxy pot in here because that's   true to the original it's like sitting there in  this meniscus of crappy epoxy that is that is   the dilemma of building one of these is  like how nice do you make it versus how   dirty and kind of run down because the originals  didn't actually i mean they were made for   movies they're just props so they just rushed  through them to get them on camera and that was   it yeah so they weren't polished then they  weren't perfect not only weren't they perfect   but no two of them match yeah they're off by an  eighth of an inch sometimes up to a quarter of   an inch on some of the parts and pieces between  two bots built by the same people you're correct   yeah so but we stayed pretty faithful  like this is a separate piece right here   um you know oh the fascia here yeah if you wanted  to make that cleaner you would just build that   straight into the body but all these are you  know um yeah my boys used to pull these out   so they could hug our two that's sweet clearly  grant had not gotten around to filthing him up   because he is way too clean yes that was going  to be my job oh yeah he was he was helping me   with the electronics naturally yeah yeah um  and then i was going to help him paint it   because i'm really good at messing things up well  i remember being really close to finishing mine   and i didn't have a skirt or there was a skirt  mold and i lost it oh and so i was like ah and   then i realized i could just build this i could  just scratch build a skirt in probably three or   four hours so i did and then i was obsessing about  some lines and i was like r2 is totally beat to   hell why am i worrying about this yeah and again  it's that like why make this lines because when i   was done i like took a ball peen hammer to him yep  um that is the routine it is so lovely i just like   it was so many countless lunch hours  oh yeah oh you're gonna make this part   this time oh yeah i'm gonna make this part  and then we're gonna make it this is one   of those projects where the journey was more  important than the the completion or arriving   because i think about all the times we'd huddle  around uh you know photographs and plans and frame   grabs from the movie and try to figure out like  does this you know does this stick out here what   color this is black in some movies but not others  and this is not level in nearly any movie or it's   not parallel and correct yeah i mean there's all  these things about it that you that don't work   unless you build it wrong but yeah and then  you also find things that were inconsistent in   the movie like the right and left leg they're not  they're not they're bilaterally they're not mirror   images they're not well no they are mirroring  right sometimes it would put them on backwards   in the movie so even within the movie  there wasn't consistency so it was always   that decision of which version right within the  movie are you going to do i remember also this   we figured out that the copper jacketed uh braided  wire was like i don't know it was like 40 a foot   or something but you could buy the stainless  steel and painted copper for like a dollar   which is what we did yeah we got this this is like  home depot yeah this is just like sinkholes um   oh man and this is what i love is that this  aluminum panel that tops the the ankle there's   no there's no screws holding it down and even any  of the ground tubes it's just sitting there yep   yeah it's remarkable uh the real kenny baker one  was in the shop for a while and i always grooved   on seeing um inside the battery boxes here on  the kenny baker r2 you can see his sneakers   yeah where his legs would come through here  into here so anytime r2 did like one of these   kind of movements that was kenny inside yeah i  remember that was the first one i got to work   on at ilm oh really they needed it repainted and  refinished so i stripped it completely down to   aluminum and repainted it and i'll never forget  the moment i took the head off i just because   this is just sitting on here just like everything  else um it's not attached and i just lifted the   head off i set it down on the table and turned and  i looked inside and you could see the straps right   that kenny baker would wear over his chest inside  and the little footholds yeah it's just like   wow right yeah i was that that was one  of those rare moments at ilm where i was   like seven years old again nope it was just one  of those moments it was really cool you know a   friend of mine said when i was building my r2 he's  like you know you're making a happiness machine   yes what do you mean he's like if you have r2d2  in your house how could you ever not be happy   i'm always telling people that like  uh uh adam calls his a happiness   um i've actually just recently dubbed mine uh  my emotional support robot absolutely that's   cool because i keep it in my office and i find  myself gravitating towards it and just kind of   holding on to it while i'm talking to people yeah  and then i realized this is my emotional robot oh yeah if you want to build your own r2 there are  tremendous resources online the r2d2 builders club   has amazing plans and all sorts of wonderful  innovative ways to do it and it's still going   to kick your ass no matter what yes stupidest  project you could start and i can't recommend   it like awesome absolutely between 6 and 20  years is the completion rate that sounds great

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 153,786

Keywords: tested, grant imahara, adam savage, adam savage tested, grant imahara r2d2, grant imahara mythbusters, grant imahara robot, star wars, adam savage grant imahara, grant imahara (tv personality), fon davis, adam savage fon davis, fonco studios, r2d2 replica, r2d2 builders, adam savage star wars, grant imahara star wars, adam savage ilm, grant imahara ilm, r2d2 prop, r2d2 homemade, fon davis ilm, fon davis r2d2, fon davis grant imahara

Id: 6Uc-jDkPyjk

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021