Adam Savage here would tested as regular viewers have tested know by now I have a
book out through Simon & Schuster's imprint atria it is called every tools a
hammer life is what you make it I spent a long time writing and I'm really happy
with it I can't wait for you to read it every time I read something by someone
who makes stuff it makes me want to make and so if the book makes your hands itch
to get to the workbench then I've done my job and it is it's partly
instructional about shop technique it is very autobiographical the ways in which
I learned the lessons that I now know and it's also philosophical how a shop
develops I realized at some point in my life that every shop is the
externalization of somebody's philosophy about how to work but one of the stories
I do not tell in the book involves this object and this object is the very first
thing I ever built in a shop because in seventh grade when I was 12 years old
and I got to middle school there was a shop class and they had drill presses
and they had saws and they had jigs and they had clamps and this was some of the
very first advanced technique that I learned and of course we made the
standard bookshelf that everyone made our version was two nesting squares that
crossed in the middle like a Venn diagram of squares everyone made one you
you know you cut your wood so it joined like this and you nailed it and glued it
and then stained it and sealed it and then for the second semester my teacher
was like what do you want to build and I have I grew up on the little rascals
they were on constant repeat on television when I was a kid and if you
don't know the little rascals look them up they are deeply formative for a whole
bunch of boomers and Gen Xers they are also hugely problematic in all sorts of
ways now that I can't predict but I'm sure they are but one of the things one
of the things they had in one of the episodes was they're driving around
these kids are all driving around a model a forward and they have this
extendable boxing glove instead of a whore and there's this boxing glove and
they pulled this lever the smack from the boom goes out and like punches
people and I wanted one of those and I kind of understood how it was made with
accordion pieces of steel so my shop teacher let me
make this and it's not perfect but thank goodness I still have the first thing I
ever made this is about a dozen pieces of steel all cut to size using a hacksaw
by hand then each of the holes drilled and as you can see my drilling was not
regular I was clearly not measuring the distance carefully between these things
that is very much a plus or minus game here and I didn't have a boxing glove
nor could I afford to purchase a boxing glove back then I mean it was like
probably 15 bucks at the army/navy store at the thrift store and that was way
more than a twelve-year-old had access to in 1979 so I ended up making it
Pinsir like a fireplace poker and I am still thrilled I still have the same
thrill when I first put it together and hand hammered all these rivets as you
can see I've replaced one of them cuz it broke a few years ago with just a little
a little it looks like a 632 button head Allen screw but all of the read all of
the rest of this was made in 1979 now I will tell you that if you reach out to
grab someone with these and they move away as they move away they pull the
pincers tighter and tighter and tighter and they leave a really nasty bruise so
don't build one of these and don't by all means by any means go and pinch
someone with them because they'll be really really really mad at you don't
ask me how I know for more stories like this pick up my book every tools a
hammer life is what you make it it is packed chock full with stories of how
young Adam got himself into trouble and learned life lessons getting himself out
or in some cases not getting himself out of trouble
you