[Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator] Today, we're going to use this laminate flooring
to build ourselves a shield that's both decorative and functional.
[Music]
For this shield, we're going to go with a classic circle shape,
so let's affix together several of our planks so we can measure out
the exact size we want.
The circle of our shield we're going to make today is going to be
just under two feet in diameter,
so four of our planks should be plenty.
Let's start by fitting our four planks together
so they form one smooth flat surface.
With our two boards roughly fit together,
we now want to use a tapping block to ensure that they're pressed together
as closely as possible, and avoid damaging the edges.
[Music]
Let's do the same exact thing with our next two boards.
[Music]
Fit the grooves in together at an angle,
push them down in together until it begins to lie flat.
[Music]
With our four planks together, you can see how they're already
strong enough that they hold themselves together
as one cohesive board.
At this point, we need to draw on the shape
that we want our shield to be,
and then we'll cut that out using a jigsaw.
Since this shield is going to be a circle,
let's use a piece of string, a marker, and a piece of tape
to work as a compass to draw out our shape on the surface.
By letting the markers swivel inside the loop on the string,
we should be able to keep a uniform length from our center point,
instead of having the string bind up around the pen.
We're going for about a 23 inch diameter on our circle.
So let's put our marker at 11 and 1/2 inches,
and then we'll attach our tape at the other end of the string.
Let's just fold the tape over, and add another piece of tape.
This will make sure that as we draw, none of the string gets pulled through,
and the size of our circle won't change.
Let's trim off the extra string.
At this point, we should now have a compass that lets us draw
a perfect circle all the way around on our flooring.
[Music]
Beautiful.
Look at that circle.
That is a nice circle right there.
[Music]
Now, we just need to cut the four pieces out of our four planks,
and then fit them back together.
[Music]
Let's start by trimming off the extra that we aren't going
to need on this plank.
[Music]
There we have it.
The four cutout planks that will fit together to form
the circle of our shield.
We can put it together the same way we put our planks together the first time.
[Music]
Alright, looking pretty good.
We now have a circle of our boards put together.
This is already looking like a pretty decent shield in my opinion.
Now, even though the planks of this flooring do hold
themselves together pretty easily,
It is still possible to pop them apart if we put them at the right angle.
So we need to add some support on to our shield
so that the planks can't bend in the direction that pops them open.
To reinforce our shield, let's take a piece of this kitchen cabinet facing.
I like this stuff because it is sturdy, but it's also thin enough
that it won't add any significant weight to our shield.
To get our shape just right, let's lay the back of the shield
in contact with the white side of our board,
and then trace that out with a marker
[Music]
Now, of course, we need to cut this circle out of the board.
[Music]
There we go.
We've got our two circles.
They line up nicely together.
Now, we just need to attach them to each other.
We'll use these screws and washers to attach our thin panel
to the back of our flooring.
We want to make sure that we're using screws that are long enough that they'll
get through our laminate board and into our flooring,
but not so long that they will stick out through the other side.
To make sure that our back panel is really well attached to our front panels,
let's add one screw on either end of each board,
and then a couple more in the middle
just to make sure everything is held sturdily together.
We want to pre-drill our screw holes, so that the screws
don't break the board apart.
But we also want to make sure we don't drill all the way through our
board into the other side.
So, let's actually mark on our drill bit about how far down we want to drill.
This black stripe will be easily visible even while our drill bit is spinning,
and now we know not to drill any deeper than that mark.
[Music]
With the backing installed on the planks,
the boards can no longer be flexed apart,
and they hold themselves together really well.
With the body of the shield built, let's add a handle and a strap
that add functionality, and let us wear it.
We have a gate handle that will attach onto the back of our board,
and this will be how we hold on to our shield.
Let's see.
Trying to make sure that we have this in just the right spot,
I've got the shield balanced up on a table,
and if I line my arm up right where I want it to go when I'm using the shield,
it gives us a pretty good sense of where to install the handle.
That looks pretty good to me.
[Music]
Just lay that down.
[Music]
So that is where we want our shield handle installed.
Let's mark those points.
[Music]
To install our handle, let's use some slightly longer screws
since we need them to fit through the hardware,
and still get a good grip on the wood of the shield below.
For the handle, I'm using 5/8 inch screws.
[Music]
Alright, at this point, we have a handle attached.
It makes it so we can hold our shield, but it's pretty uncomfortable having
all of the weight of it just on our hand.
So let's add a strap that will go over our forearm that will help
us support a lot of the weight.
To make a strap that's both comfortable and adjustable,
I grabbed an old belt from a thrift store, and we'll cut that up and attach it
to the back of our shield.
The bottom of our belt will attach somewhere down here,
and the top will attach somewhere up here.
That way we can thread the belt through the buckle as normal,
and have an attached strap that we can reach our arm through.
Let's cut off the buckle end of our belt,
giving ourselves about 6 inches extra space.
By lining arm up on the shield again, we can see the point where we want
the belt buckle to attach at the bottom.
We'll drive a couple of screws down through the leather
to hold our buckle right in place where we want it.
This piece of the belt is going to be extra, so we can cut that off,
leaving just enough of the leather to fold over to give our screws
something to securely anchor into.
[Music]
There we have it.
One side of our strap securely attached.
Let's add the other.
We clearly have way more belt on here than we need at the moment.
So let's cut off some of the extra just so we can measure
a little more accurately.
There we go.
That seems like it should be a pretty good size right there.
Now, we can trim off the extra on this belt.
[Music]
Alright, there we go.
We've got both sides of our belts securely attached.
So now, if we thread this through our belt loop.
[Music]
We have a belt that securely holds on to our forearm,
taking off a lot of the weight,
so we don't have to hold it all with our hand on the handle.
We've got our strap.
We've got our handle.
It all holds together well.
At this point, all our shield needs is a metal band going around the outside
of it to really tie it all together.
For simplicity's sake, we aren't going to use a real metal band.
We're going to use this sheet of craft foam cut, glued,
and painted to look like metal.
To start, let's cut our foam sheet into strips 2 inches wide.
[Music]
Now, using some contact cement, let's glue these strips of foam
around the edge of our shield,
folding it over onto both the front and the back.
The foam is flexible enough that we should be able to wrap it all the way
around the curve of the shield without getting any folded
or doubled over spots.
[Music]
To give the appearance of our metal banding being attached to our wood
using some metal studs,
we've got these decorative little tacks,
and we're going to cut off the post on the bottom of them,
and then glue them onto our foam going around our shield.
[Music]
With the foam and the studs added on,
the last step is to mask off our flooring and paint the edge
so it looks a little bit more like metal.
[Music]
As we remove our masking, we now have our completed shield.
Now, let's take this outside, and put it to some real-world tests.
[Music]
>> I think we got each other there.
[Music]
>> That was hell.
Yeah.
>> As you can see, our shield held up beautifully to every kind
of assault that we threw at it.
It's very durable.
It's wear resistant, its water resistant,
and it works really well.
Like it looks really good as a shield, and it's very functional as a shield.
That's everything we could hope for out of it.
Hey guys! Thanks for watching.
If you're not a subscriber yet, just hit the bomb to get in the club.
If you missed our last video or want to watch it again,
just click up here at the top.
Click down there if you want to see what the internet
thinks that you should watch next.
That's it for now. Have fun.
Be safe, and see you tomorrow.