Hey, guys, Adam Savage here at Tested and I am
in Fonco down in LA with Fon Davis and we are standing in front of
our late great friend Grant Imahara's shop and we are going to take a tour through it
there's going to be some nerding out, there's going to be some geekery and we're going to
try and keep it together while we go through this. Shall we take a tour? Let's go on in. All right
And when did when did Grant first move in here? Oh boy. About seven or eight years ago we both
moved down to Los Angeles and he needed a space and I had space here at the studio.
Of course we've been friends for a long time and collaborated on a lot of things and this
felt like the cleanest way to continue that tradition. I think the thing that people might not
realize is that I look at this space and I know what it is as a maker to move into your first
shop. Not that this is his first shop but this is absolutely the shop of his dreams.
Yes. And so that's what we're looking at here is not just like Grant was a maker and so he had a
shop. This was, oh yeah yeah this is the kind of thing you sit in you know cad software and lay
out every piece of furniture and tool meticulously yeah to try to create the perfect system for all
the creations that you can which is necessary because it's only like five or six hundred
square feet it's not huge yeah um but we've got a cnc mill we've got 3d printers everywhere laser
cutters we've got cad we've got exhaust we've got paint milling machines lays i mean everything you
need is in here yeah for fabric i think you know he definitely seemed to have a really good time
building it from scratch right like he put the light switches in he put the
oh really he painted it like every every single detail uh is planned you know i just i know that
i know that pleasure yeah it's like it's yeah we did that yeah right i mean that moment of being
able to like stand in the space that you have designed and built is surpassingly powerful yeah
yeah because it's the foundation for every creative project you're gonna do
yeah which is where the excitement is really i also sit here and i realize the fundamental way
in which grant was a radically different maker than i in terms of precision and cleanliness
yeah we all have our own little style for sure it's kind of fun too to see the influences you
know because there was a point when um they were getting ready to launch on white rabbit project
and they hadn't locked into all the locations and so grant came in here and he really uh gave
the whole space uh an even deeper organization but also a little showmanship oh nice uh to um
kind of try to get the the white rabbit folks to shoot here yeah they ended up going for a
much larger space but um that's why the room has like leds behind the shelves he was going for that
kind of tony stark's laboratory aesthetic and it's also why he has six monitors at his desk
which yeah talk to me about it this is amazing well he he would he would be the first to admit
this was completely ridiculous and just for the show but then once he had the six monitors
he was like this is brilliant really because he used yeah he would actively use all six of
the displays and he got really used to it oh now i'm starting to wonder i know huh
i love that he started out with this for showmanship and then realized it had utility
yeah um what's going on with all these well these these are the remotes there's lighting
here in the room oh so each of the things can turn on and off nice he was really thinking
of it from a film production standpoint oh absolutely of like adjusting the lighting
for different kinds of shooting yep and then of course we have the mythbusters style containers
yeah uh and he did spend some time uh deciding how these would be labeled oh really um yeah
i'm pretty sure he didn't have uh antimatter so these were all printed uh you know large enough
to see on camera yeah i just made the space fun flex capacitors actually speed controls yeah
oh my gosh yeah i'm curious if you have a prevailing image in your head of him in this space
yeah yeah certainly um
it was usually either at the computer at this work table yeah this was the primary work yes
yeah we all have one yeah right you could tell too i mean and this isn't far off from the way
it always looked there was you know the millennium falcon was here um you know his r2 is usually
here yeah and then whatever project was at the forefront would be at this end of the table here
so you can kind of i think just bounce back and forth yeah between the spaces
um i i haven't seen this mill in a long time but i believe this was uh this was the mill that was
at m seven when they wrapped m seven in my oh i don't know i don't know i remember um it was
it was difficult to get in the building as they always are this is his uh bridgeport yeah this was
a prize for sure because a lot of the studios as you know we worked at had bridgeport mills
and we all loved working on them so to get one of these uh of his own that was a really big deal i
remember talking to him about it yeah i remember being like you're getting that bridge part oh yeah
he's like yeah i'm taking it oh man yeah rented a forklift had to take the doors off all kinds
of stuff so he really plotted this whole space out from scratch before moving stuff oh yeah and you
can tell everything is like so yeah perfectly uh fit i would imagine that he could get into a real
flow state in here yeah yeah you know what that is i totally do you reach over you got the bolts
the nuts that you need how much juice did the turmeric did the uh the cnc the cnc mill they're
they're great for certain tasks and then for a lot of things they're just very complicated right
so this didn't actually run that much you like to do a lot of stuff by hand yeah me too yeah me too
oh i heard a slave vacuum farmer yeah he would usually it was funny actually he usually go use
my vacuformer the little red one yeah but he did have his own vacuformer what a nice lady
really i think he really valued independence he never wanted to uh go into our shop which
is right on the other side of this wall that's really sweet you use anything because he was like
you know very aware that we're we're busy with things right right right and just want to tie up
time yeah but i think also just the joy of having everything at your fingertips 100 yeah when you've
got a toolbox you want to use your toolbox this is always the thing i admired about his shop the most
and we ended up doing this too well this is based on what we used to do with ilm but every single
size thread you can imagine all organized so no matter what project you're working on you could
just come over and grab the amazing screw that you need amazing that's the those are the prizes for
the fabricators you know yeah i know when you put something like this together it's expensive at the
beginning but you'll have it forever mm-hmm man i get so much like we said we set ours up i actually
came in here and took photographs oh really we just copied it it's like he did all the footwork
of designing exactly how the organization should work well and then there's a question of how meant
because there's an endless number of these you get you have to limit your amount you have to
decide what length yeah what is yeah it's all a thing so yeah it's always great to have someone
who's done it before you so you can actually benefit from yes the a b testing they've done yes
it really this is a really complete yeah it's a complete model shop yep yep so all the power
tools in this corner and then his welder and the welding table all custom yeah i dig the welding
table and that is really nice and again everything everything you would need right there yeah boom
boom yeah somebody described to me that like this style of shop is like a fighter pilot's cockpit
yes everything is like right where you want it. Everything is ... Yeah. That's a good analogy.
Tell me what's happening with the space. You know, it's basically sat here in
limbo for a year much the way a parent's bedroom would stay. Yeah, I would imagine ... Yeah, you know, it's
of course an emotional thing to deal with so the easiest thing to do so far was nothing.
I feel you. And just you know it's difficult to accept to be totally
frank about it and so you know we've just kept it here but moving forward we're going to
donate a bunch of the tools to some of the robotics teams that he worked with. Right.
So some of the tools go that route, some of the tools we'll actually be purchasing here
and we're gonna set up the space in dedication to Grant so we'll be continuing to do
all our electronics, 3D printing, robotics, special effects work in this room.
I just ... I don't have the heart to rent it out again so it'll always be in my mind Grant's shop
so it just seems appropriate. I completely agree. Yeah, um normally I'd have a better finish
for a video but I really .. thanks for taking me on a tour through here, man.
Yeah it's good to spend time here with you. You too, buddy. Adam Savage signing off.
you