all right so through here you can see some of our famous projects from youtube
we got the captain america electromagnet bracer down there the doomfist the chain fist
this is the proto-saber battery pack a whole bunch of thor hammers
the umbrella from kingsman, shazam staff the skull hammer and the runescape sword...
so we've been busy.
My name is James Hobson, I'm here in Kitchener Ontario. I''m 29 years old i have a bachelor's
degree in mechanical systems engineering and four years ago i quit my full-time job as
an engineer to pursue youtube full-time i'm the hacksmith and we just finished building
a batman grappling hook and repelling device
to make it real is our main series on youtube and we take fictional ideas from comics movies and
video games and make real working prototypes and we do this as a way to inspire youth
into science technology engineering and math and basically show how cool it is
to be an engineer i made these claws 10 years ago now and it was quite literally my
very first make it real project it didn't get very many views at first until i ran
electricity through them and then i basically made like a jacob's ladder between two and i was
able to cut through things and suddenly people took notice and i got a whole bunch of uh news
headlines being like crazy engineer electrifies wolverine's claws so that's also when i kind of
realized like oh you kind of got to like spice things up to get the internet to notice me
holy crap that this is oh it's so hot like my face is starting to burn
ever since i was a kid i've enjoyed building things and i always gravitated towards tech
class and i eventually went to school to become an engineer because an engineer has the ability
to make and design pretty much anything which i think is the dream job let's laser baba
so i started producing weekly content in 2012
and i did that while i was working in various engineering jobs and not much happened i
maybe gained a few thousand subscribers and i was making maybe 10 bucks a month
so it wasn't really going anywhere but then i had a few projects that got some more interest
james thompson is only 24 years old but he's already designing and building technology
usually only seen in movies he hopes one day it'll help save lives you could be able to
go in and say pull wreckage off of a person something you probably wouldn't be able to do
normally so that was our first successful video on youtube that was based off the movie elysium
with matt damon and suddenly it was just like hey there's appetite for this online maybe i can
maybe i can do this more i'm pretty excited i think this is going to work out quite well
i asked if i would work part time so i could focus more on youtube they're like no we can't
make any exceptions so i handed my resignation letter the next day a lot of my coworkers thought
i was pretty crazy for quitting my job because it was well paying engineering job great company but
it wasn't what i wanted to do i wanted to youtube full time all right so this
is the original captain america shield that really started the channel the next year i had
my first like super viral project and that's when we made the captain america electromagnet shield
so we went together a prototype we did a build video a test video
and both videos got millions of views in a month and the channel grew from 100 000 subscribers
to half a million and suddenly was like whoa we're a mid-sized channel now like it's working
since then we've been doubling year over year size subscribers and employees too
oh yeah now who's laughing so this is a new home of hacksmith industries on the right we
have our video editing pod got my office over here it's a little messy right now
but the real magic and the real reason i got this place is behind this door
10 000 square feet with 20 foot ceilings the room to pretty much make or do anything you want
over here we have some of our fun toys some of the the company motorcycles and under this is our mgb
spy car we're making a james bond spy car complete with ejection seat rockets under the headlights
we have a few dream projects that we're currently working on one of them is the
aliens power loader so we're actually making the yellow walking forklift from aliens 2.
it's been out for 40 years no one's ever done it but the cool thing is it's actually possible
and then following that obviously some kind of iron man suit would be a dream project of ours
were you expecting someone else in the meantime we like doing quick and easy projects like building a
half scale cyber truck which my team's working on right now i'm going to fill up these tacks
over there and then we should be able to drop this on top and align the body because the cyber truck
is basically a giant polygon we can literally plasma cut the pieces weld them together and bam
we have a side truck and it's gonna be able to tow stuff like it's gonna have a lot of power
we're trying to knock that out in just two weeks which is pretty cool i think
then through here we have unit three because ten thousand square feet wasn't enough so
we rented the unit next door as well obviously i could have kept the youtube channel right
here in this garage keep a small team and we could we could still be growing
huge on youtube but i wanted to really take this next level and my dream is to actually try and
turn this company into basically a real-life stark industries so this is the ultimate sleeping pod
it's insulated from sound it's got air conditioning and heating
you got the temperature control here we've got uh usb ports and plugs inside and basically you
can have a great nap in there and we've actually have youtubers stay in here which is kind of cool
and of course you can uh lock people in with keypad
i'd love to make something that helps improve the quality of life for people we can either live in
the system or we can break through the system and create something new so i see that as building
this big company and being able to actually make a difference in the world because the
the fact of the matter is you need to build a team around you you need to build a company around you
you'll actually have an impact on the world and that's that's really what i want to do whenever
we do a fan event and we have kids come up to meet us it's always so amazing to hear like i didn't
know what engineering was and now like i'm halfway through engineering school or i made this thing
because i saw your video it's just it's an awesome feeling i just love how as an engineer it's
possible to take some of those things that like kids dream about and actually be able to do it
i can't think of a better job than this hacksmith industries is the coolest thing we've ever made
have you always had such great hair i just push it back in the morning and it's good to go
sometimes a little spray but like yeah good hair thank you