- [Commentator] This man,
DIY engineers superhero gadgets from his garage.
- My name is Jake Laser and I'm the real life Tony Stark.
At this point, I've done over 500 projects
of pretty much every imaginable superhero gadget.
- [Commentator] Having spent countless hours
over the last nine years in his garage workshop,
Jake has taken Green Goblin's Glider
Ironman's Briefcase Suit and dozens of other devices
from the realm of make believe into a functioning reality.
- That idea of going beyond what normal humans can do
is really relatable.
The excitement that you get.
And that like curiosity and a little bit of mystery as well.
It's all wrapped up in there.
[upbeat music]
[hands clapping]
[Laser giggling] [distant chatter]
I mean, every kid loves superhero movies,
so I've loved superheroes my entire life at this point.
I just love that idea of doing cool stuff
like superhuman abilities you know, like flying,
walking on water, running really fast,
all of this stuff.
I think my favorite build to date
is probably the Spiderman Wall Climbers.
It was a lot of work
but I sort of had a vision
and saw it through and it like really worked well.
I was able to climb 14 story skyscraper
and it was amazing.
It was most fun thing I've ever done.
Spider-Man out.
- [Commentator] And he's made it his career.
Jake spends his days filming himself
making these devices and then films them in action.
He wants to share his enthusiasm and passion
for the world of comic books
and hopefully inspire online audiences
to try to make fictional greatness into a reality.
- In my videos, I like to show the entire process
and it's mostly me failing like 85, 90% of the video
is okay, we tried this, it doesn't work.
Move on to next thing that didn't work either
but we got closer.
And then that just makes the end of the video so much better
when it does work.
- [Commentator] For every finished piece,
there are many steps of invention along the way.
Even now Jake has projects in the works
that don't quite function the way he wants.
- Okay, so this is my next project.
This is a device that will hopefully let me walk on water.
I'm about midway through this.
I first started out with like floaties on my feet
which didn't go very well.
Look.
[Laser laughing]
It all sort of boils down to like a physics problem.
So, you really just need to push 190 pounds downward.
And then in theory, I'll be able to stand on water.
So I first ordered these propellers
completely waterproof brush less motors.
They would go sort of on my feet like that.
However, I don't think
they have enough power to lift me out.
So, what I just did is it got this much bigger motor
connected it to this bathroom scale.
The more pressure it pushes up
we can read that right on the scale.
So this was able to put out about 160 pounds of thrust
and I didn't want to go any higher than that
because I physically couldn't hold it.
[machine whirring] [Laser groaning]
So the plan now is to take this motor
and mount it to my leg.
So to do that, I first sketched up a design on the computer.
This is the bare bones frame.
Again, this is all trial and error but CNC milled this
you can see sort of the similarities
with computer screen and what we have right here.
So, the way this works
put my foot in like that strap it all in.
There's gonna be straps everywhere
and a motor like this is gonna sit right here
and there's gonna be a shaft like this
that goes through this hole out there
and connect to a propeller up in here.
And then that should provide more than enough thrust
for me to balance and walk, run, skate around
on the surface of water.
And also hopefully swim around underwater
sort of like Aquaman.
[machine whirring]
- [Man In Background] Wow.
- Right about now I would say I've gotten the concept.
I've done a fair amount of research.
I've played around with a couple different methods,
like the floaties and then sort of settled on a design
that I think will work.
So I'd say I'm building
what I think is the final prototype.
I'd say almost all the processes, trial and error.
Like you really don't know what's gonna happen.
It's you do it, like you can do as much
simulating on the computer as you want.
But especially in the way that I like to work.
I like to make rapid prototypes first and then test.
You can learn so much more from testing
than you can from theorizing and running models
and all this stuff.
Like if you just make a crude prototype, test it
you can get so much information.
- [Commentator] These prototypes can have many iterations,
but once Jake figures out how to make a gadget work
he's ready to get into the garage and build.
- So I'm gonna be making a Captain America Shield
that actually bounces off walls in the corners and stuff.
Ooh, Ooh, Ooh careful.
Yo, good catch.
So to do that, we through a couple things.
We need to make sure are the weight of the Shield
is light enough so it flies, kind of like a Frisbee
but also we need to make it spring.
So it bounces like a ball.
And so to do that, we're gonna be using some fiberglass.
This is a basically a fiberglass ring
that is about two feet in diameter
about the size of a shield.
So this is what's gonna be on the outside.
To keep it lightweight and also strong,
we're gonna be making the inside of the shield
out of some carbon fiber.
So carbon fiber is naturally like very bendy like this.
So to give it its strength, we're gonna be using some epoxy.
There's two part epoxy, mix them together,
it creates a really hard substance that, you know
fuses the carbon fiber together and makes it very strong.
To do that,
I put a layer of mold release,
put a layer of epoxy down
then put carbon fiber, put another layer of epoxy
and then put more carbon fiber on top.
So it's two layers thick
which should give us a nice balance of strength to weight.
For whatever reason, I never get tired of building.
I just don't know what it is.
I just get in a zone
and it never feels like work, which is amazing.
And I think engineering and superheroes
can be one and the same like
Ironman sort of proves that.
He's not a superhero.
He doesn't have any magical abilities,
but yet he's able to go toe to toe
with a literal god like Thor.
So it looks like the epoxy is dry.
So I think we can pop this carbon fiber out
and get to making it.
So, sometimes if it's not all the way hard
it won't come out of mold completely right
but I think we should be good with this one.
There we go.
Yeah.
Whew.
All right.
So then on this side we have carbon fiber.
[gentle knocking] Pretty hard.
I'm just using standard scissors to trim up the edges.
We're gonna trim it down
so it fits couple inches on the inside of this fiberglass.
So now we're left with a nice circular carbon fiber disc
that should fit inside of the ring right here.
So now we have to coat this in some rubber.
[paper rustling] [upbeat music]
So I'm just gonna have a little more glue
to the inside of this
to just completely encase this in rubber.
What that's gonna do is also protect us from the fiberglass
'cause fiberglass will actually splinter.
It's pretty nasty stuff
but it makes for good Captain America Shield so.
[Laser giggling]
- [Commentator] No matter how long a project takes,
Jake can always see the final product
and drives himself towards it until the fantastical
is in his hands.
- So I'm just gonna use the mold as sort of a guide.
We don't want to lopsided shield.
Yeah, that's about right.
And then once we've got it lined up
we are gonna to push it down.
Push up on all the rubber and get it to connect.
[soft music]
All right.
So this is pretty much ready to go.
We've got carbon fiber rubber
and fiberglass all connected together.
So the last thing we would have to do is paint it
but this is pretty much ready to throw at a wall
and it'll look really cool.
[shield thudding]
- [Man In Background] There you go.
- There it is.
The funny thing is the first time
I made the prototype of this shield,
it worked like that never happens.
I was thinking about it for a while.
Just how to physically make this work.
And I was just like,
oh I'll just go to throw together a prototype
probably did it in like five, 10 minutes.
Threw it at a wall and it bounced
directly back to me already.
It was so cool.
And I was like, oh my God.
So I ran inside
and showed my manager Christian and he was blown away too.
We were like, what is this?
And we were like, we're holding like,
it's like we discovered fire for the first time.
It's like, oh my God, this is gonna be amazing.
I think to truly sell the story
of the video and the setting we're trying to create.
I think making it look movie realistic is super important.
We pride ourselves, not only in like making cool stuff
but also more of that artistic eye
to try and really capture
what the movie would be in real life
in a way that pretty much anyone could do it.
- [Commentator] The functionality and realism
of Jake's creations bring the magic of superheroes alive
making the world's our comic book icons in habit
a little closer to ours.
- I think that superheroes spark so much joy
for a lot of reasons actually.
There's the social aspect of being able to do so much more
and having all of this pressure I think is pretty cool.
And just that out of the norm ability
that superheroes have I think is really relatable
'cause I think superheros also take
a lot of inspiration from animals.
Every kid looked up in the sky and seen a bird
and it's like, wow, I wanna do that.
Then you take a superhero
put it on screen and show it flying.
I've always wanted to do that.
Childhood me would be so excited.
[Laser giggling]
Just thinking about I had all these ideas all through.
I was growing up and finally being able to do them
which is really cool
and you know new ideas that
I never thought would be possible
and getting and finding a way to do those as well.
[soft music]
I hope people take away that
impossible might not be as impossible as they think.
You know, if a dude in the garage can build stuff like this,
you know, why can't you?
I want my videos to be somewhat relatable,
show that this stuff can actually exist
and sort of give people hope that like
I could actually do something like that
if I put my mind to it.
Then I hope in the same way to like
maybe inspire some people to, you know
learn more about science and engineering and stuff
'cause that really is a super power on its own.
You have this ability to create things that didn't exist.
Give yourself these abilities with your mind like
that's to me is amazing.
And I hope I'm conveying that to other people as well.
[soft music]