Adam Savage Builds a Magic Prop Knife!

yeah, still not working Hi everyone, Adam Savage in my cave, uh, this is fun, this is

magic

al, this is a

magic

al build. I've built some magical things in the past, but I don't like giving away magical secrets, so yeah, no. I covered them and count among my friends many magicians and many who are truly amazing magicians. A good friend of mine who is a magician working on this piece has asked me for a large

knife

for this. For this what he does. on stage I'm not going to spoil what he does on stage, but he told me: I want a

knife

that is big and visible.

I have to be able to hide it on my person and then we find out how big it could be. he said about 13 inches tied to his side like he had a way to hide it so the audience couldn't see it, but he wanted a big visual knife for this trick, a 13 inch long visible knife and we talked about it a little bit and he it was like a diving knife and I was like, oh, like one of those that The Sharper Image used to have and he was like, yeah, exactly that, uh, and this is the knife he wants, so long, this big, it's like if you knew half the size of my forearm here this is big 13 long um we're going to make it for him we're not going to make it out of steel we're going to make it out of a quarter inch piece of aluminum I've gotten here and uh, let's do a stage piece.

This is very common in Magic when you are looking at a trick that involves swords like for example a magician gets into a box and starts putting swords in there, one of my problems with magic as a dramatic form is that those leaves are always these flat pieces of chrome that look like children's toys and I recognize that this is an aesthetic. I personally feel that the leaves don't have stakes, um, they don't. they don't feel like blades so my effort, I'm really sorry, I'm trying hard here on this build to make it feel like a blade and I think I'm going to end up polishing it so I can give it a The mirror is not a mirror finish, but a very polished finish and then the magician can remove it with brighter Scottish steel wool if necessary, but I want to give it sometimes, when you make something super shiny, it makes it less visible, it's a strange artifact. of being too bright, but I also want to give the magician the full spectrum of visibility that he would like, so I think I'm going to give it a reasonable polish and let them remove it, but first let's uh, transfer the pattern to this and start Drilling a few holes and cutting it out should be a pretty easy build but also a lot of fun.

Oh, and when we get to polishing the blade here, I'm going to give it a nice real gap. Grind a um, yeah, you'll see. He'll make it much more visually, with a sharp look, yeah, how about that? Okay, so, um, I know it's a little messy, what is that? Wow, I did it on the first try, no it's not. 15 16 Well, one aspect of this is that the holes are clearly centered along the sheet, as is the center line here, and instead of trying to glue this perfectly centered on this sheet, I'm going to punch all five of them. holes and then match this to those uh the holes are 156 in diameter and they're 1.2 center to center so yeah we're just going to throw this in oh right I have to transport my mill I haven't transported it, that means I removed the vise.

I drilled 70 pieces of aluminum at once and removed the Vie and that means I seriously have to reinstall it if there is an easier way to drill a perfectly sized hole than with an annular cutter. Don't know. What is it, I love this stuff, it's a $50 wholesale saw, maybe 35, but it's still a bit of an expensive piece of kit and honestly worth every penny. I love this stuff, okay, let's move from 1.2 to Here We Go 1.2. Wow, that was, it didn't make any noise, oh, you have to be careful with this murder paper, it will cut you into ribbons, you know, on top of that, and you always have to remove the plug from the end of the cut because the reason.

This is why this cut is so good because it doesn't really cut through all the material. Wait, I'll show you. Here is a 1 actually, yes, a queue of two objects to make holes. Here is a queue of three objects. okay A queue of oh wait wait wait four let's do four from sacred to profane or in reverse order um wow the first hole saw I found looked like this this is a uh this is your standard hole saw and listen, these can do a huge amount of really great work, they're not super accurate, you won't end up with that measurement since the inside of your hole isn't precise, but it focuses on your own hole and actually throws things out with strength on Fri. and you can carve half the tube, um, uh, uh, uh, automotive roll cages are built almost exclusively using things like this in many, many, many shops, so don't underestimate the power of these, run them slowly, run them with a lot of coolant, especially if you're going through thick metal, but um, and there are many, many, many different brands of these, they all do different things, there's diamond coated, there's carbide, yeah, so that's your basic saw, then you move on to your Demming bit, which is a standard type of twist drill, uh, layout with the different cutting surfaces and as this goes on, you're also not going to end up with this outside barrel measurement, since measuring twist drills have a lot of wobble in them, um 10 15 20, sometimes it can be real, so this is a Demming bit that drills at 1 inch, but if you really wanted it to be mission critical about 1 inch, you would probably do like/at 3/ 4 151 16 and then this, so it's just carved. it deflects a little, actually the reason you predrill with heavy drill bits is so they don't do all this work scraping the hole which pushes them out and makes this not appear to flex. but man, I can tell you it can flex.

Working with Mitch Romanowski in the early days at Jamie's shop, in the mid 90's, he was drilling a piece of 3/4 inch aluminum with something like this and it caught, bit into the aluminum and started. turning everyone around, he started turning the aluminum in the drill press and the drill press was on, we all hit the platform and then we crawled across the floor to the PR drill plug and unplugged it and this drill bit was bent like a 30° angle, a one of the scariest things I have ever seen in a workshop, they are great, they are wonderful and important tools, but don't expect that when you drill a 1 inch hole you will get a 1 inch hole, so we move on to what will give you a nice hole 1-inch, which is a large, thick 1-inch end mill.

Now this also has a different ometry of the cutting surfaces here, but similar to the Demming bit. The cutting edges are doing a lot of work, they're carving out the entire bottom of that hole and when you ask a 1 inch end mill like this to do that cold, it gets cranky, uh, it'll make your machine vibrate. If This is not sharp at all, it goes to G. Again, you want to get close if you want to make a perfect hole from a doorway. Why is it worth 50 dollars? It's because unlike this or the Demming bit, this only cuts along that.

The profile is about an eighth of an inch wide so it's moving, it's REM and it removes a lot less material than this or the Demming bit, sorry yeah, plus you run it at 500 RPM and these leading edges are six 1 2 3 four five. six instead of two, so they're again, they're spreading the load, they're lowering the load and because the whole spiral flute here is one edge, you get perfectly finished internal surfaces, wait, I'll show you, oh, look that aspect. that's so beautiful and it's precisely the outside dimensions like inside a th, honestly, that's a uh, that's a final pass, right, that looks absolutely beautiful anyway, let's drill five more holes 1.2 now we're going to go to uh 1.2 + 1.2 is 2.4 again, killer foil, be gentle when removing it.

If you throw it, it will cut your meat. I love these little plugs. 1.2 + 2.4 is 3.6 oh, it's removed, okay, so we want, that's good. I like it. Okay so, 48 to 36 24, I'm going to play a little fast and loose here with my measurements, but I think this should work, they're not perfect, but they look great, yeah, that's fine for work in the scenario, yes. Again, they're not completely crazy, but they're close enough. Oh, it's you who all do this, and who doesn't, it doesn't turn on well, oh yes, we are doing it. Hello, I think it could be too. shiny for stage work, let me, let me take it off, no, I was going to hit it with some steel wool because it tends to be a great way to dull something a little bit, give it a little more visibility, I don't even know about Raiders when they had the original idol, Hos Idol, which, uh, the golden idol, was chrome plated and they hit it with dulling spray, in fact, the chrome plate has a spectacular sound.

The chrome plate is too shiny for a movie, but that's okay. I'm going to text the magician to see if he likes this. This is just a friends thing. I think it's a nice stage

prop

and it's nice and big. It is Gantu 13 in Long. Alright. I have to say that this kind of work is very difficult. getting it right is um, I know it looks pretty good, hats off to Tony Swaton, uh, Jimmy Desta, Peter Lion, uh, my heroes, um, this is just it was hours and hours and hours of like and The fact is that when you are doing this Hollow Grind, you can find the gap with the wheel and if you are very gentle you can follow it, but alas, if you start doing this line and this line is sharp, it requires that you do not commit a single mistake in that column and when you look at the work of some people that can do it by hand and not make a single mistake it's shocking yeah it's totally amazing so thank you all for joining me on this one day build yeah .

I'll see you next time, thanks for watching that video. If you're like me, you were watching it wondering, Adam, how can I spend more time with my friends outdoors in impromptu, impromptu conditions? I would advise you to go to

adam

savage

outcom and buy one of my duffel bags which will allow you to socialize dryly but comfortably on the grass or wherever else you are. I've had one of these in the trunk of my car for 25 years, okay I haven't. I've been doing this for 25 years, it was someone else's until I made my own, okay Adam Savage.com.

I will see you there.