hi I'm welcome tested I'm Adam from tested we're here in your cave once
again we are we have a we have a buddy this time we have a buddy and he's been
seen in the background of a bunch of the stuff that we've done people ask about
him all the time they do we get a lot of
questions about him and his and his companion okay well his companion is
going to get a much better coverage in a couple months let's say I have some work
to do okay but this is my protocol droid human-cyborg relations just three c-3po
he looks like c-3po me beautiful he's gorgeous his eyes light up he's not
super articulated he's more of a statue statue he's in two legs torso head and
arms and having moved around with me to three different houses he's kind of beat
up but that's okay that's Rubio is generally beat up anyway well he needs
an oil bath in a quick overhaul saying the dents out um so there's a good story
about the the acquisition of this I always wanted a Threepio I don't want
the costume you've got to be like a very skinny guy like Anthony Daniels or Doug
Jones dip it in one of these I mean if this is the actual size of Threepio in
the movies maybe he's a little taller but yes I mean notably I understand why
you don't see you dudes walking around at cons wearing c3v armor anymore no
there's no way people who do it it's like a life investment and I have a lot
of respect for them and and some of them actually get work from Lucasfilm doing
appearances on Gerald in those costumes but they're not cheap to coat they're
hard to make work they're not super comfortable and trying to look through
lint tunnels darkness like this it's like you know the wrong end of Benassi
keep smashing and design well yeah people who do troop as Threepio I have
the utmost respect for them so this is a plastic resin this is a urethane resin
casting now I bought this on eBay as a kit okay it is probably a casting off
add on post Threepio statute now Don posted all of
these iterations of Star Wars characters full-sized stormtroopers Boba Fett's etc
and they're quite expensive you can find originals someone took one cut it apart
and made a casting of it and I bought this kit from them a cap at this point
probably 10 years ago okay go and it's sat around in parts
and then I finally thought after I've been doing Mythbusters for a while they
had a little more money I thought you know it's time to have Threepio coded
it's time to it's time to have it and so the types of coding that you can do when
you metalize something is you can either electroplate it which is what I did for
my Rocketeer backpack and we should cover that at one point okay
or you can do it's called vacuum metal ization vacuum idolization is a process
where you take a metal and you heat it to its melting point in a vacuum okay
when you do that it actually from what I understand pumps and coats every sorry
buddy coats everything in its vicinity with it
like a moat several micron thick layer of metallic most of the time they vacuum
metal eyes with aluminum which means that everything comes out with a silver
a very Lumina makind of a very bright chrome coating which they then spray
it's and it's also very volatile it's you can just wipe it off in your opener
so that you have to spray it with a clear lacquer and the color is usually
given by the lacquer so all do you spray it with a gold colored lacquer and how
does it look it looks fantastic I mean it's almost every chatzky you see that's
chrome plated that's that you know has vacuum metallized and has a color to it
it is done that way and they have tremendous control over all sorts of
fine finessing of those colors this Threepio is vacuum metallized but not an
aluminum okay so what happened was as I looked around the country for a company
that could vacuum analyze things this large and I found a place I think old
rare earth coatings it's in the Midwest and they do things like visors for like
space helmets like Neil Armstrong's yeah yeah so when you see the gold on Neil
Armstrong's spacesuit that's real goal it's actually real gold
that you could actually see through because it's so thick when I send it to
this company and ask them to vacuum analyze it in aluminum and they gave me
a quote of about you know the standard price I think it's about twelve or
fifteen hundred bucks to coat something like so it's a big this is a lot of
vacuum at eliezer yes it is a lot of c3po but two things
happen when it arrived is that these from this is all story told to me by the
owner's wife actually is that there's son loved two things in the world loves
two things in the world one is Star Wars and the other is mythbuster this arrived
he kind of went a little nuts in the best way of going nuts the way I like to
go nuts and he was like well we can't code it because it's not sanded smooth
and it won't be a beautiful coating I knew that I was planning to do a
Tatooine weathered oil stain Threepio okay this was not good enough for him so
he spent like weeks months even sanding and making everything really releases
very smooth then he convinced his dad I think the way I heard the story said
their uncle owns gold mining this sort of thing happened yeah of Cour any
convinced my dad to actually use gold in the vacuum metallization which almost
never happens I mean really honestly it's probably
like it's probably like amount of gold that's in my wedding right right it's
very little however this might be the only actually 24 karat gold plated c-3po
n'existe that's fantastic yes well we won't tell anyone it's our little secret
yeah and that a good story that's fantastic do you know do you know
anything about the actual costumes like were they were they metal they weren't
metal they were some resin or some the actual costumes were were were several
different things the arms of the original costume were actually metal
okay because that gave you the most room inside there but in terms of doing
repeats they were both Threepio how do I say this back then
in England there had been talking about 1970s 1976 in England when they were
making a lot of these things there was a contraction of the aerospace
industry so the guys had built r2d2 norik engineering were a bunch of
out-of-work aerospace engineers so the original r2d2 s there was cut more than
I think someone rate I think six of them yeah I've worked on a couple of them at
ILM they're like jewels there everything is welded every detail is welded
aluminum it's aerospace engineer support was amazing so so Threepio I've seen
some original Threepio parts they are in fact they are in fact metal the
chest was fiberglass and then it's been vacuumed metallized the shorts so he can
move around are actually vinyl hot melt vinyl and so are those shoes so he's
very worn and it's very and it's a really difficult costume for Anthony
Daniels to I'm sure hard to see and hard to move in hard does he can't sit down
put straws of soda through the thing once the head is locked on put good go
to the bathroom before you put that thing on and don't drink for three days
beforehand but it's beautiful it's a magnificent design it speaks to Maria
from from from metropolis you know it's it's one of the great robots even though
it's probably the least realistic as to how a humanoid robot but it might
actually be well it's the most wrote it's it's the robot I always think of
when I think of robots first right so you can be on r2d2 are the things I
think kind of as robots and you know even if they're not realistic they're
they're super iconic designs and really gorgeous and I really appreciate your
sharing with this one thank you this is fantastic
absolutely so thank you guys much we'll be back with more from the cave soon
next week hi guys I can't imagine wearing this for any
extended length of time I can't believe I forgot to tell you this do you know
who actually we know who wore one of these many many many times
Jamie Grant Imahara no way when we worked at Industrial Light and Magic
Grant Imahara actually was was hired to do some of the c-3po appearances well
he's the right body type and it's the right time and they so they built a
costume for him that fit hell that's awesome I think I think it would still
fit him grant grant is in great shape so I think it would still fit him and yeah
he had to contractually stay a certain weight for a while to do these
appearances he has a story about being advanced Chinese Theater for some walk
of fame star of Fame for I can't remember who it was but literally like
seeing Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman when they were married through the tiny tubes
of sister's eyes oh that's fantastic yeah so grant is Britain we're gonna see
gran on and ask him what it's like very good
alright thanks Adam thanks