hey everybody Adam Savage here in the cave with an awesome show-and-tell
I recently got this letter in the tested mailbag dear Adam my name is James
Davidson and I am a funeral director in Beckley West Virginia James maybe you
don't know but my family hails from Charleston West Virginia
in fact my great-great-great I can't remember it's two or three greats Uncle
Jesse I'm a great-great grandfather al yeah apparently used to make furnaces
in the town in West Virginia that used to be called savage town that now is
called strange Creek I have no idea if there's some editorializing going on but
James Davidson is a funeral James Davidson is a funeral director in
Beckley West Virginia and he's a huge fan he says I know from your videos
untested that you like collecting all types of strange unusual and unique
objects I thought you would like to see some of the tools of my trade Oh James I
feel seen and closed as a copy of the textbook for embalming Oh embalming dude
this is by far the most amazing whoa Wow
addition to my maker's boho there's ooh there's some stuff that I awesome stuff
in here this is fabulous James you're totally right I love weird
esoteric strange fields that involve making and embalming and
funeral direction is oh my goodness one of them this is fascinating
oh my god I hope a child never opens this book I think I should write on it
children should not open this book oh my goodness how to create lips
jeezum crow about makeup for dead people Wow okay so James didn't just send the
textbook enclosed is a copy of the textbook for
embalming and an embalmer z' toolkit to add to your unique collection of things
please know that all these tools are new and unused free of contamination
to be honest James that wasn't the first thought I had which shows you just how
strange I am but thank you I am glad he says I hope you like my gift I do and if
possible he hopes that I create a unique storage box for these tools that is
entirely feasible James holy cow let's take a look at an embalmers toolkit I am
so excited I let it I haven't opened this I'm just oh okay let's let's work
through this from left to right we've got some scissors we've got some bigger
scissors up with a blunt edge and this is for like taking off clothing and
stuff like that EMT scissors like that long jawed hemostat we've got a another
type of hemostat esteems a locking hemostat but it's got it's got holes in
the jaws here oh there we go specifically for grabbing something it's
for grabbing something specific okay so we've got that we've got a needle this
is a sewing needle with this this is amazing
this is a sewing meal right look at that that little eye this is for dude yeah
this is clearly a sewing needle like none other in my collection and another
sewing needle and I do have a few like this just simple curved sewing needles
okay so that's the first tool plate second tool plate we've got a plastic
scalpel I don't need to open that to know that it's sharp a piece of wood it
looks like a burnishing tool of some kind all right we've got a
this is fascinating so this is Magne brand a surgical tool of some kind it's
not sharp it's got a kind of a blunt hook edge here and it's got this big fat
horn right there that's that's you know the thing is is when you encounter a
tool and you don't know what it did or it's hard to understand its
functionality it's great to think through the shape and sort of log it in
your head that's that's what I do with stuff that comes into the shop I log
into my head because frankly there's a way in which this tool might save my ass
one day yeah I know jokes about my actual ass and what that might be used
for sure if I'm embalmed there's no dignity in being the embalmed of course
not no you're just being prepped for the funeral
here's another hook tool similar to this except with a different kind of handle
fascinating this handle has a wave in it I'm not sure if that's gription or if
there's some specific type of knitting you do with the veins of a dead person
we have two pairs of tweezers this is super long clearly for pulling bullets
out of bullet wounds that's what I always see these used for in movies and
regular small tweezers it's got lots of pairs of those now we've got rope look
at this some scalpel blades nice this is find a scalpel handle a metal scalpel
handle that's fabulous now this look at that that is a pair of that is an
amazing pair of tweezers little closure on them they live there and then these
alright so what we've got here we've got three nozzles and the nozzles have holes
in their fronts that seem to allow for the pass-through of a thread or a string
of some kind it's hard to say yeah not really sure I guess I'll have
to read the textbook for embalming to figure out what these are used for James
alright let's put this fucking back together I am I'm so chuffed by the
generosity of this it's just I'm gobsmacked let's see here
we go like this small scissors big scissors chemo stat hemostat
when done when my kids were younger my kids went to hmm so I guess this just
kind of lives there and this also kind of lives there I think another tool was
meant to go there but this is where they put their there we go
okay when my kids were younger they went to a daycare over here in Noe Valley
called Littlest Angel and at one point they called me from Littlest Angel and
they said you got to come get your kid and take him to the hospital cuz he got
a bead stuck in his nose and I said yeah I can take care of that and they said no
you can't because the bead is stuck deep in his nose and worse the hole in the
bead is lined up with his nose so not only can you not get it out because
normally you just plug up one nostril make him blow and the bead would come
out but because the hole was lined up with his nose
it was just whistling through when he tried to blow it out and I said yeah I
think I can take care of it they said no you got to take him to the hospital and
so I put him in the car and I took him home
and I brought out my flashlight and I looked in his little nose and there I
can see the bead with a hole lined up and I went and got a long pair of
hemostats that I have actually I will show you something that hemostat came
from hang on that hemostat came from a specific sculpture of mine
called the evil saxophone it's deep in there and I will do a show-and-tell
about this but notice all the hemostats on it so I grabbed one of those
hemostats off the sculpture so I got the hemostat off the sculpture using the
flashlight stared up the nose of thing 1 and put the hemostats EDD is this gonna
hurt and I said no and he said I'm afraid and I said it's already done and
I had the bead in the jaws of my thing and he apparently went home to his mom's
house that night we were separated and sharing custody he went home to his
mom's house and he said I got a bead stuck in my nose and daddy took it out
with a hemostat so one of my favorite thing 1 stories he has a few James
Davidson the second funeral director I cannot thank you enough for this
bountiful generous gift you have bestowed upon me I I really appreciate
it I am I'm gonna do I'm going to give this its first life here in the shop I
am going to give it a label let's see here
the whole key with storing stuff is making sure that you can find it later
and I do this in two ways I label everything really really clearly with
this whiteout correction pen this one's made by kugels
and it's fabulous the other way I do it is I think to myself where will I look
for this tool later like what if I had to find this fool right now where would
I look and then I store the tool there I feel executed ladies and gentlemen
that's fabulous the embalming tools have found a home in my cave James I can't
thank you enough what a lovely and generous thing you
have set have a wonderful day and stay safe out there thanks guys have
a good day