i'm all set here
are you ready i don't i don't see any red light where's the red light can you give me a ring light
light what kind of rinky dink outfit are we running here yes i see it now we got to cut
that whole opening in hey everybody adam savage here in my cave with a tool tip uh it is a new
tool it is new to me in the cave even though i've been using tools like this for decades um
but i'm going to start to talk about that tool by talking about this this is obviously a jigsaw
you should have one of these if you are a maker of things uh and you want to take things and
make them smaller in precise ways jigsaw is an absolutely imperative tool i have issues with
jigsaws one of my issues is i have never found a jigsaw that tracks perfectly square and maybe it's
that i overdo it or i push too hard but the lack of square tracking drives me crazy i use jigsaws
all the time but they they are tricky to use well even though they're a completely intrinsic tool
and i've been using them for almost 40 years uh you got to creep up on them carefully but i don't
know why i'm going off so long on this okay i'm going to move on this is called a reciprocating
saw and it's called that because the blade goes in and out there are many kinds of reciprocating saws
one of my all-time favorites is actually this this is an air powered reciprocating saw and i'll
power it up here
as soon as i turn this on i think you'll get a picture of why i love it
it is that's just a nice sound it's not like you know it doesn't like go into your
cerebellum and make you crazy oh just put that anywhere norm
that's fine
okay so this reciprocating airsoft i specifically love it because it's got this fine little blade
they don't stay sharp for too long but that's fine they're pretty easy to replace and it gives
me this very refined ability to make cuts and stuff again tracking perfectly straight that's not
one of the things this is amazing at i mean in terms of trying to get a perfectly square cut
this is for like going in and slicing stuff out where nothing else will get you in there
i now have three different uh versions of this because i bought them over the years for different
gigs and different jobs and ended up with them at the end of shoots um one of my all-time favorites
and i reach for this far more often than i do the jigsaw obviously if i'm cutting a big hole or door
out of a piece of half inch or three quarter inch plywood i'm not going to use this because it can't
possibly handle it but today's tool tip is all about a brand new type of reciprocating saw sorry
a type of reciprocating saw we have not covered before and this is the kind of saw that the doctor
might use to cut the cast off your arm or leg or wherever you might have a cast um it looks like
a rotary saw it's got a round blade it's got a body that clearly has a motor in it this looks
like a rotary saw so i'm going to power it up and do a little demonstration here let's see yep okay
and look close up at this blade and the teeth look fairly uh fairly beefy they're sharp and
uh their sharpness is exemplified by what it can do to these two layers of 9-ounce fiberglass cloth
it's a nice cut and it feels very balanced
and there's a really good reason for that i'm going to show you this watch this
all right cuts through the fiberglass but not through me
okay that's because this blade isn't spinning it is simply reciprocating back and forth it is
vibrating so this will cut through something hard but because its vibration is within a
certain bandwidth and i don't know the math but you know clearly it's within a bandwidth
that doesn't go through flesh but will go through fiberglass that is freaking cool
it's cooler than just being something that won't cut through you when the doctor has to
remove your cast what is really lovely about it is the spinning of a blade is often the kind of
bias that causes your tool to run out of its cut or to bind and that's when stuff can go
through you the fact that this blade reciprocates means i can have a much greater sensitivity as
i'm cutting through something like fiberglass with a blade like this than i would through a
rotary cut-off tool for instance which i would be terrified to use on something i have done that
if i needed to uh but this allows me to do it with a much greater sensitivity uh much less dust and
no chance of injury to me that is a really amazing thing for a tool that looks as scary as this
um i want to try and show you this thing not moving um but we're having trouble with
the slow-mo so i'm actually going to draw on the blade i'm going to draw just a big black
arrow so with that black arrow hopefully we'll get to see a cut and see that it's not moving
um that is it this is a cast cutting saw uh what do they call these let's see if they
actually have a name for this electric plaster saw that's what the manufacturer calls
called this um there are a whole bunch of these on amazon uh they run about 200 bucks i
don't know about how the brands are different i simply went with one that had a reasonably high
like four and a half star rating and the reviews sounded like people who had actually used it
that is those are my two metrics for buying stuff on amazon um yeah this is a more advanced cutting
tool uh it's definitely not like you know if you were first starting out this wouldn't be
the first saw i would recommend you get but when you got to do a lot of cutting through fiberglass
having something that is not spraying fiberglass dust everywhere is a really big deal and there's
a photo that's been out on the internet for years of me and tori belace working on uh two of the big
buildings from topoka city from star wars episode two and all of the concentric rings of those giant
fiberglass castings were actually cut out using one of these saws that was my first uh exposure
to it and i've been in love with it ever since and yet i only just picked this up last week for
the first time i'm really glad this is now part of my shop kit there you have it a plaster electric
plaster saw thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip and i will uh i will see you next time