hey adam savage here in my cave with a this isn't exactly a one-day build
it's more of a quick and dirty technique but one that served me incredibly well
you recognize this is captain america's stealth shield uh and if you're wondering if he has more
than one shield the answer is no there's only one vibranium shield apparently they repaint it
per mission i didn't know that but when i went to look up caps shield information
that's a fact this was made for me for my costume by shield works you can find him on facebook
um beautiful work his paint job is magnificent i've actually seen one of the real cap shields
in dan lanigan's collection and i will tell you that shield works bullet hits are
exactly right it's a great bit of kit and i love it and when it arrived it was missing one little
detail which is this border around the edge for me that border is really critical and it wasn't
on the shield burst shield when it came and i wanted to put it on but i was confronted with
this problem of this is a 24 inch ring that's about three quarters of an inch wide how am i
going to cut that am i going to cut it with a jigsaw oh that's a lot of sanding and no matter
how well you file it none of us are click spring we can't get that good um am i going to send it
out to my friend kevin for water cutting i guess i could but that's not going to happen in a day
and i don't want to make my problem his problem and then i remembered a technique for cutting out
aluminum shapes that fond davis used on his first battlebots robot mouser mecha catbot meow meow
it's actually required to say meow meow every time you say melser mega catbot anyway fawn cut
out the main half inch thick aluminum frame of mouse or catbot using a normal router
i helped him do it and yet i've never used a router and a template to cut large chunks of
aluminum out so i decided to on this and i'm going to walk you through the process because it was
easy peasy now sometimes people ship me stuff in foam board and i save all the foam board so this
is a piece of scrap half inch foam core board that was part of a thing that got mailed to me
and this is my perfect flat base for this operation this
this is my piece of aluminum um i think i cut the real one no i cut it out of just about this stuff
this is like 80 thou so i'm going to lightly glue this piece of aluminum down onto the foam board
i'm going to use pro stick high strength spray adhesive
i really like this stuff it's very it's tenacious so here we go
now this stuff is nice and tenacious but you got to glue it at the right time you can't just stick
the aluminum down immediately you got to let it flash off a little bit get a little bit tacky
yeah still still a little too wet it happens quickly but
you need the stick actually i'm just going to make sure i'm fully covered here
okay all right i like that tack here we go i'm just going
to lay this piece of aluminum down on here yeah there we go
i'm just going to start with the center on the diagonal
one of the complications is is that all my stock in this shop is 24 by 48 inches that's the largest
size i store and this ring is exactly 24 inches in diameter so uh i don't have a lot of margin of
error and an eighth inch bit
all right milwaukee were sponsors of my discovery show savage builds
and one of the bits of the kit was this router uh
look at the number on this this is a dialysis this is their uh 5615-20 router and i have to say this
is a really nice bit of kit this router it is a workhorse it is beefy and powerful and simple
i really dig all that about it and this is going to be our main tool for cutting out the aluminum
all right now i'm going to want to use a short shank there we go this is the one
yeah so you could go with a quarter inch shank or a half inch shank because i'm cutting
metal and i don't want the cut to get too hot i'm going to use a half inch shank and a half inch
uh acts as a kind of a heat heat sink uh pulls heat away from the cut
this is a bit i used the first time i did this in preparation for this video and i screwed it
up because i let it get too hot and it shattered the carbide edges of the blade yeah it's the
cost of being impatient so i'm going to use a nicer bit uh and this one is 3 8. okay
best practice with a router always leave it unplugged when you're working on it
i've told you that i'm terrified of table saws i'm way more terrified of
routers
now now it's time for a little bit of math because what i want is i want to cut out
the inside and the outside of a ring which means i have to account for the 3 8 of an inch of the
width of this bit on the radius that i'm going to be cutting so uh that's easy to figure out
for the first part which is that the radius is going to be exactly 12 inches from right here
to the edge of that blade i'm going to set my calipers to zero bring them out to 12 inches
yep all right so exactly 12 inches from that line to the inside of that bit that'll give me
a 24 inch diameter ring and if i pivot it in the center here it should all work out pretty nicely
now before i plug it in let's just check my extents
damn brother yep it's pretty tight so we're about to make a crap ton of noise ah here we go
this is noisy and it's messy
however i must say i've been really impressed with how
fast this technique works so we're gonna turn it on there we go
turning making sure i have the room to move all the way around
okay here we go i think i start here yeah here we go
a note to be careful when you are exiting and entering and exiting the material you saw that
as it uh came free of the sheet it wanted to run because i'm cutting in the direction uh but
come take a look at this edge that is beautiful that's that's a machine edge right there
at at this point when i was making that ring before c2e2 i was a very
happy camper now it's time to make the second cut now it's about the thickness of the ring
and on this i went with what i thought was aesthetically correct about 0.875
oh that's the thickness of my ring right there so now i need a new measurement which is the
measurement the depth measurement between these two yeah there we go
so right there the amount of extra space there that's simply the width of my ring
added to the width of the bit because now i'm measuring to the outside of the bit
yeah there we go that seems darn close enough so then
now we're going to the outside oh
now we're going to the outside
and oh look at that if it's neatly right through that hole right in the middle there that's awesome
okay it's important to note the order of operations i cut the outside of the ring
first because i want the glue of the entire piece holding it in position if i cut the inside first
then i'm only holding on to what i'm cutting with this outside you want as much surface
area as possible to bring to bear on holding your work down the other thing that i really love about
this is the use of the foam core it's super flat but it totally does not interrupt my bits at all
it's really really friendly to them and i dig that i dig that about you jerry all right there we go
perfect all right here we go plugging in
my other router still works but its switch is broken in the on position
which it makes it a router for those who like action but not for most people
all right here we go let's start here we're going to move around
with
and there we have it look i'm as impressed as you are i really dig this technique because
many of the ways to do and get a ring of this precision and this size
involved big expensive pieces of machinery and that was literally 20 minutes start to
finish you know and i stopped to talk to you for a while so it's like it's a very very fast
technique and what it yields is amazing all right so let's get this puppy up here
a little bit of a solvent like bastine or acetone will clear up the glue that's sitting on there
to be honest i'm going to leave this piece of aluminum attached here because i could
use it as a i could use it as my baseboard for any other template like if i wanted to make a certain
smaller ring and i wanted to make it template to run it through this is it's already mounted
and look at this this is that is without any finishing that's not even an overly sharp edge
ah that i gotta say like i knew about this technique intellectually no i'm in love with it
emotionally and then when it was time to attach it to this i simply used epoxy glue
um i've talked about glues before uh for a wide flat surface you want a bit of tooth so i actually
hit this with like 80 grit sandpaper all the way around really made it rough on one side then i
applied some 10-minute epoxy all the way around the ring turned it over and laid it down and then
as a clamping mechanism i used a whole crap ton of clothes pins just to hold it down normally i
don't like the idea of using epoxy and aluminum for a structural hold because
aluminum moves a lot it's flexible it's lightweight like things will work themselves
away however with a wide expanse like this on the brake on the brace of a bowl of aluminum i had no
problem with that at all i think that uh heaven or hell won't rent us under these two now that i've
clamped them together and that was a half hour solution to what felt like a full day problem
hey everyone adam savage here in my cave and we are living through a completely
strange moment in time six months ago the entire world changed everyone went into lockdown
and so did tested we became a virtual workplace almost overnight and now i see all my colleagues
almost exclusively on video chat i am shooting only on the phone i know the sound quality's
gotten worse norm joey and gunther are all editing from home and maybe the biggest
change is output we have radically increased the number of videos that we make because
well that's what i'm doing all week long here is just shooting everything on my phone
and eventually the world will return to normal but one of the things we want to keep
up is the pace of videos that we've been releasing we've been ecstatic about your feedback about this
and we want to keep it going but in order to we need to ask for your direct support and so i'm
here today to announce tested channel membership if you're not interested in becoming a member
that's fine tested is not going to change for you you still get all the same great one-day builds
tool tips the podcast etc but if you are willing to join we've got some pretty cool extras and two
levels at which to join for a buck 99 a month we have our supporter level and for 9.99 a month our
patron level which includes all the stuff from the supporter level and some live streams some direct
access to me and the tested team and some sneak peeks into our entire tested workflow and process
we are so excited about the new possibilities that channel membership opens up and we know
that many of you have been supporting us all along as tested premium members and to you i say thank
you your support has meant everything and you can keep it going by hitting our brand new join
button somewhere on this screen thank you guys for watching and between you and me i am most excited
by the live streams i really love doing those earlier this summer and i can't wait to pick it up
again