hello tool nerds hello everybody uh adam savage here in my cave
with a tool tip uh about the application of heat i talked a few months ago here on the channel about
this the blow dryer which i think no maker should be without um it is a super handy tool i love this
conair what is this one called the yellow bird they're expensive like 60 bucks you don't need
to spend 60 bucks you could spend 12 bucks on a blow dryer and you'll use it for the rest of your
life it'll be just fine i just happen to happen to love this make and model um this is my low
impact low flow method of applying heat to stuff when i want to apply a much greater amount of heat
in a concentrated area well i've got heat guns like this milwaukee here um these are frequently
adjustable oh this one isn't it just has uh yeah so this has two speeds high and low um i've got
a dewalt that's more adjustable but they basically do the same thing they apply heat in a cone out of
this uh the farther away the cooler it is and the wider the area you're applying and this is also
great for applying heat to specific areas and a high degree of heat you can melt stuff pretty
handily with these but these aren't what today's tool tip is about i want to talk about this
the humble super usable acrylic strip heater um i don't know why i call it an
acrylic strip heater it's a strip heater is what it is and it's made for heating plastic
in a strip yeah that's basically it um you can buy different versions of this they make long
flexible ones which you could buy at different plastic suppliers that you can lay on acrylic
and it will heat the acrylic and allow you to bend it i prefer this one i went and invested in
this one this is a more industrial version uh it's stronger it's got a big fat heating element inside
um it's gonna last forever uh and i wanted to show you because it just came up i've been working on
my ironman mark one and in order to make the left forearm more accurate i needed to add this big
armor plate here which i did using my favorite materials uh foam pvc effectively the weight of
foam board but much stronger it is a foam plastic it's the same stuff that
same stuff your pvc plumbing pipes are made out of
except in the manufacturing process they add air so it's lighter
and when i made this block i needed really nice bends here the bends
what sells this piece here on the forum as a piece of steel is not the paint job it's the bent and
this is just something that i knew when i was making this the bend had to be right i couldn't
get the bend close the bend had to look like it had been bent in a piece of steel and so that's
what i did i i used the strip heater to bend it and it it just honestly it really sells does it
look like that in camera yeah it looks pretty good on camera uh up close and personal it's
even more convincing so i want to show you how i did it using this piece of quarter inch or one you
would probably want to see yeah a quarter inch uh give or take 20 out actually it's got a it's gonna
this is most likely a metric measurement let's see what it says um i can't read my metric calipers
not on the fly i just it looks like anyway um so i'm gonna turn this on and start to heat it it
doesn't like get bright or anything it doesn't glow it just it just gets warm so one of the
things you want to do is you actually want to know where you're going to be heating your strip so
in this case i will make a line here and this is the line that i actually hope that i hope to heat
and bend on so i'm going to place that line and put it directly over the um actually the weight
so i'm just gonna place this directly over the strip
and i'm gonna wait
yeah i really like this machine i like the fact that the heating element is robust um i like the
fact that it's open but you can't actually touch it so it's like you put your hand here it doesn't
feel that warm but you put it down here right up close you can feel how warm it is so it's a very
it's just a great machine at localizing the force that you want um and when you see like uh museum
vitrines where the where the acrylic is bent at the corners this is exactly how that that kind of
bend is done i've actually seen wow i remember josh corral from academy scenery made these
uh sleep pods for a science fiction set that was shot in a commercial in the mid 90s and he did all
this faceted bending of these big clear acrylic windows using strip heaters it's pretty cool
so when it's time to bend is arbitrary you don't want to leave it on there too long with anything
that you are heating in your shop whether it's your vacuum former or your lab oven or frankly
your hot glue gun um you are wise to never leave the room when that thing is on sure like you
i have left my hot glue gun on overnight but i try not to because i don't want to burn anything
down tom sacks says that every artist's biography has a chapter called the fire and yeah i live in
i live in fear of that moment so uh when you are heating something in the shop keep an eye
on it monitor your hot things um still still a bit from being able to bend but nice and warm
i wish i had a thermal camera if i had a thermal camera i could show you but i don't so it can't
if you had to do a strip heat but all you had was this i have a technique for you you can do that by
covering over your piece of plastic with two pieces of metal to localize the heat and just
be really really slow and consistent just like cooking you want to slowly move that heat through
the thing rather than get it really hot at the front end and then burn that while you're trying
to push that heat through that overly hot front end you can took using use you could even use
two garbage pieces of plywood um which are better insulators than metal uh and leave like a one inch
or one and a half inch gap and then use your heat gun to heat the strip in the middle the one time
i did that i made sure i could feel the strip from underneath i could touch the plastic from
underneath like i'm touching this one at the top and sense when it was actually getting warm and
getting ready to bend um that is definitely uh the poor man strip heater and it works great it works
just fine um but i've been doing more of this kind of stuff and i decided to invest in this one
we will include a link to this strip heater in the in the comments below uh and to uh
some of the roll-up ones and i you know what it's funny i have a roll-up one here in the
shop somewhere but it's not up there and thus i'm not sure where it is if i ever find it it's going
up there where this lives all right now we are we yeah we are okay so i'm going to turn this off
pull off the weight and here we have this piece of plastic which has been heating and you can see
it's slightly discolored but actually i might have left it on there just a little bit too
long but look at this now i bend it oh and i get this beautiful linear bend look at that right
that that's a real profession professional bend per perfectional yeah i really dig that fan um
this is this is terrific so you can hit this with a spritz bottle if you want
or just wait for it to air dry you can make yourself a little clamping
system just like clamp it to something so that it holds while you're setting it um
but this is how you heat a long strip to get a nice sort of factory looking bend out of pvc
and to be honest iron man mark one if you're like wondering whether to like dip your feet into uh
using foam mats and pvc as cosplay materials the iron man mark one is like the costume you
should attempt it is it looks really complicated but from a foam mat perspective it's actually a
pretty straightforward build and and it's one of those builds where close enough is plenty good
right because it's so chaotic and beautiful like you can be off the mark and still be
right on the mark uh in terms of like fine detailing all right there we go
that's my my strip is bent i've got a really nice contour here um i do think i might have
left it on the strip just a tiny bit too long but again a little bit of sanding and paint
you won't ever really notice that uh that that slight amount of texture that occurred from it um
and that's how i use my strip heater to make pieces like this forearm yeah a little crowded in
here thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip stay safe and i will see you next time cheers