The EDC Relay: A Complex Build Project

It's exciting to hear about the EDC relay, a project that requires careful planning and execution. The name "EDC" is likely an acronym for a specific organization or community, but it's not explicitly stated in the text. The fact that this project has to do with everyday life suggests that it may be a practical application of engineering principles or design.

The speaker's Land Cruiser will play a starring role in this build, and they'll be bringing their shop along for the ride. However, it's clear that the actual work will involve assembling complex subassemblies that weigh hundreds of pounds and require careful problem-solving skills. The fact that these subassemblies are designed to work together seamlessly is reassuring, but also adds an element of complexity to the project.

The speaker has had their share of unreliable cars in the past, which can be a stressful experience, especially when faced with unexpected breakdowns or issues on the road. They seem to have learned from their experiences and are now more confident in their ability to handle challenging situations, such as navigating through heavy traffic or dealing with car trouble.

As the speaker prepares to embark on this build project, they're also excited about leaving for Oregon tomorrow to visit family for the 4th of July. This trip marks a significant milestone, as it will be an opportunity to take a break from work and enjoy some quality time with loved ones.

The Exploratorium's latest exhibit is set to feature the completed EDC relay, which promises to be an impressive display of engineering prowess. With its sleek design and complex inner workings, this project has all the makings of a fascinating attraction that will captivate audiences.

In addition to the build itself, the speaker plans to document their progress on social media, including Facebook, where they'll share live updates and behind-the-scenes insights into the construction process. This will provide an engaging way for fans to follow along and learn more about the project's complexities and triumphs.

For those who may be interested in exploring other exciting destinations while staying up-to-date with the latest news on this build project, the speaker invites them to tune in next week when they'll discuss their experiences in Australia and New Zealand. These countries offer a wealth of natural beauty, rich culture, and delicious cuisine, making them must-visit destinations for any traveler.

The discussion about travel plans is an excellent opportunity to talk about food – what are some favorite meals or dishes that can be enjoyed while exploring new places? The speaker would love to hear from readers about their go-to restaurants or culinary favorites when traveling abroad.

Before concluding this episode, the speaker thanks several sponsors and supporters who have made this project possible. Zententitled mattress company is one of them – an award-winning brand known for its innovative designs, comfortable sleep surfaces, and risk-free trial periods that allow customers to test their mattresses in the comfort of their own homes.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody Norm here before we start this episode of still entitled I want to thank the sponsor of this week's episode that's tunnel bear what's tunnel bear well it's a VPN service that protects your privacy does it give you the creeps when your internet provider tracks your web browsing if today's lack of online privacy brings out your inner grizzly bear try out tunnel bear tunnel bear is a simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet all on your desktop or mobile devices any of them and has a top rated privacy policy and does not log any of your activity you can try it with no credit card required just go to Tunnel bear.com Untitled that's the name of this podcast which will start now welcome to still entitled The itam Savage project I'm will I'm Adam and I'm Norm it's been a while guys yes I had to do that without you I know you did a good I I only listened to the first one cuz we're just recording this a couple of days after the second one went up but you did a nice job thank you thank you I I tried to roll it welcome you know the way ready to rumble you know I get a little no no no no don't that's it's a trademark phrase we can't say that there were several points on MythBusters where of course I wanted to use that phrase and they were like don't say that it's a million dollars is that how much it is really I think that's that may be a full one million comments let us know every time he says it um you guys have been busy we have been we have traveled far and wi are you talking about that we are talking a little bit about it should we talk about that today or should we talk about there's a lot to talk about all right there's a lot to talk about I think briefly what we could say yeah I'd like to talk about it today CU it all just happened it's a fat it's a fat cast boy we went to Australia yeah and then we went so we were in Australia for three four days I love that as soon as I quit you guys pack up and go to Australia um and I got to see I got to see uh you know what I'm going to send this to you to post because it's a beautiful picture I had dinner with my entire camera and directing Department from Mythbusters Circa 2004 wow oh awesome my cameraman Peter Heap Tim Elwood Peter Coleman and Alice dallow and I went out to dinner in Sydney Australia and this was these were the guys like IA you know that's 2004 we're filming the season two of mythb these saw these guys saw your eyebrows flashed off yeah they were there they were on hand was this the the drinking on the treadmill year they're all still really close friends and they're all still awesome and working all the time and it was great that they all got and then the next night I had dinner with my uh cameraman Benny oh that's awesome yeah and we stayed uh close to the cdy opera house which the thing I realize is it's not crowded at all early in the morning you can walk and it's like completely empty well because we had jet lag too we're waking up at like 4: in the morning and so you like by 7 and the Sun is just coming up over Sydney Harbor you're like oh wow Sydney Harbor wins in the postcard Department mhm and and you're walking like this is it feels almost post-apocalyptic like Vanilla Sky like you're just enjoying it for yourself nobody there yeah nobody there except a security guard and for some people jogging there's a beautiful Botanical Garden right on the on the on the uh south side of Sydney Harbor right where the opera house is and it's a gorgeous walk if you ever go to Sydney you should do that walk do the walk yeah um I like having that kind of crushing jet lag cuz gives you the opportunity to be the kind of morning person that I have never ever been yeah it does no seeing a city at dawn is a really unique vantage point on that City because it is like a zombie film yeah um so then we went from Australia after four or five days down to New Zealand so just to be clear Australia in general depending on daylight savings time which falls in different times in different countries in general Australia is seven hours behind except tomorrow so they're the Future Past yes okay and then New Zealand is 5 hours behind but it's tomorrow I know that New Zealand is where you go if you want to buy phones before anybody else that's where the iFix it guys go also very expensive of a because of the vet yeah yeah electronics are incredibly expensive down under and in in NZ and Oz right so are you talking about what you were doing on these trips at all or we can talk about what we're doing uh what we did at New Zealand we visited WETA we visited WETA WETA Workshop yeah no and like to say we visited WETA we had two days there and I think we could have spent a week and a half EAS without ever crossing over the same material WETA is this like rabbit Warren of shops um filled with some of the most vibrant awesome funny uh dedicated crafts people in the world right and we have to clarify this is w a workshop cuz that's that's where we were embedded um when you say something like ilm you know there many different department there's w a digital which does a lot of special the computer effects but the the place that we wanted to see was w a workshop which is the all the Fabricators who built the sets and the costumes armor for Lord of the Rings and our host CH yeah and our host was Richard Taylor who runs w a workshop and Richard childhood friends with Peter Jackson ran the workshop all through all of Peter's films including Lord of the Rings um and very specifically runs it and says this is not an shop that's just one of the things we do we also do public art we also do performance we do films of course we do commercials but it's a like The Artisans get a chance to apply their craft in almost every way that that craft could be applied at one point we're talking to one of their lead sculptors we're in the sculpting room mhm which is like you're looking around at the tops of the toppy shelves in the culing room you're like it's and it's oh it's like freaking you out and the guy says he started at weather right out of college after working in the art department on a couple of projects they had some downtime and he said he wanted to learn how to sculpt and so Richard put him on the payroll for a couple months to learn how to scul Letang amazing like you know lot of you hear about a lot of these effect shops whether it's for digital or practical where there's not a lot of permanent people there there's a lot of freelance and contracted workers where because they go from Project to project that's where the money is yes and I think what's smart about what what Richard's philosophy is that they're they have their fingers in every all sorts of projects from board games to public displays and Museum exhibits and they encourage because they have the space they encourage the the artists there cuz they're all new most of them new zealanders yes um to just develop their skills and work on personal projects and and he's building a he's really building a craftsmanship sort of an army of crafts people who are cross-disciplinary that makes them all stronger it's the thing that we've kind of lost in large portions of America as like shop classes and stuff like that went away right yeah and it's it's difficult because you like Norman is saying here the work is very catch as catch can ilm shut down its model shop and while there are a couple of other model shops up in Marin that have tried to keep the work going and are doing pretty well it's still there are sometimes down times of like 10 months for for a big shop and you just got to send everybody home so Richard bust is asked to keep work coming into WETA and I mean like I can't I've never seen anyone I think that I'm busy until I'm standing next to Richard and then I'm like I've never been busy compared to this gentleman well there's a there's a there's a there's busy for you and then there's busy for a team of people you employ right and those are two different but equally challenging kinds of busy I think um so one of the things we got to do was I got to make swords you made swords I made a sword I made a sword like now hold on did you cast it did you stand on top of a table saw B so let's let's be clear I made a sword blade let's just be very clear Peter lion sword master for weda um builder of swords for all of the Lord of the Rings films um took me as his Apprentice for a day and taught me how to grind a sword blade we're going to this is a really amazing video yes we got it all on film okay but there's my sword oh my god oh that's so good yeah so you so okay so you didn't do like the folding over and hammering it like like no no no these enough time to do that no these are ground and these that's primarily the the types of swords he makes for effects for movies prop um but to be clear with a good piece of Ste the main reason for folding a sword blade like a Damascus style blade is to distribute the impurities of medium to poor Quality Steel okay so that's the whole reason Japanese swords are done that way it is it's basically when you distribute the the problems in steel you make it inherently stronger because you are making sure there's no voids or there's no specific weak spots but if you start with a really good piece of spring steel all you really need to do is grind it I know I know there's going to be all sorts of you guys talking to me about what I don't know and it's clear totally true like this is not my area of expertise but you know he was showing us like at one point he said he brought out Bor meir's hero sword two things that were amazing one is I said I wanted to make a Strider style sword so he goes okay well here's Aragorn's hero sword and he put it on the desk and like yeah what does that mean Aragorn's hero sword oh well that's the one that was carried on film right and then so I pick it up and the balance is amazing and I go the handle the leather and the handle is black I I thought it was green and he said that's very funny that you say that it was green and it started its life as green and we couldn't figure it out and then we realized of course it's black now because of orc blood wow so then he picks up this is just one of the you just like this belongs in a museum well everything does then he picks up Bor sort made of both of these it's a big long great also fatter wider and then he bends it on this Arc that's shocking and he's like this shows you how how strong it is and and joy like can I try that and so Joey takes sword and Joey goes bends it and then Peter says wow yeah that's that's that's impressive that you would bend something with a market value of $450,000 and Joey here you go I'm impressed and poor Joey has a history when we're on location of breaking things well not really breaking things but because he has the camera on his shoulder and he's moving around to track stuff and all that he's bumped into some stuff that's of really high value or maybe like a Stop Motion Set before oh whoops just that one time at at any rate it was uh like that's just one of the dozens of things that we shot and talked to people about at weda um it really was I found it so inspiring I'm literally we're my family we're trying to work out when we can go and spend at least like a week to 10 days down in Wellington to hang out the I have now a bunch of close friends at WETA um so we went out to dinner every night the dinners were wonderful Affairs of many people talking about all sorts of different things um you know there's always amazing people visiting WETA and so it was like it was every night was just filled with the most incredible conversation anytime you get a big group of interesting people with multip multiple multiple multip multidisciplinary backgrounds yeah like you it's it if the if you don't have interesting conversations you're doing something really wrong so at one point we're hanging out in this one department and I'm showing so the word got around I'd made some swords so when I whenever I was around people from weda they were like oh you made some swords let's see so I'm showing that picture I showed you proudly and this one woman says I've got lots of swords in my house and I said how come and she said well I did my husband and I um worked on the sound effects for Lord of the Rings so there's lots of clang clang ching ching I was like oh that's really cool and she said but nothing sounds better than my kitchen knife and I was like what and she says yeah it makes this Shing when it comes out of my chopping block that's better than any other sword I have and I said no and she said in fact it's the sound of the One Ring really and I was like seriously she says yes the sound that the one ring makes when you see it is the sound of my kitchen knife being pulled out of the block plus a s of Tibetan meditation Bowl wow secrets of the fo artist unveiled yeah oh that's amazing so there's there's we're going to be parceling out the coverage we did at WETA for months I me we got tons and lots lots of stuff and and you alluded to being in those different rooms like the sculpting room uh the mold room the cast room the paint room the those rooms were all like as opposed to being one big Warehouse they were it's like a compound and they had just like in Peter Lion's Workshop you know artifacts from the past projects which I think is unique to what a workshop not a lot of practical effects or effect Studios have a lot of their old work because it goes off to Studios more and more I I mean a lot of places a lot of commercial production will just be like can you get this out of our hair and give you back the prop you built because they don't have a place to store it Studios now it's a real negotiation and it's a key part of w is contract that they keep uh props from most of the projects they work on and so it's just everywhere you look and it's overwhelming I mean like more so than this oh it's like this except picture you know 880,000 square fet of shop space room after room after room where all the walls are lined with like oh you know there's gim's ax in three different scales depending on what they were filming wow right sting in small SC small scale for the little people W so that was amazing and then I came back and so I then you guys stayed did in New Zealand for yeah we did for other days and I want to give recommendations for if you're going to be in Wellington you got to visit Peter Jackson's um the Great War exhibition uh this he and W a workshop uh built this huge Museum Gallery it's a narrative Gallery about the first world war which New Zealand was a had a part in and then also there's a exhibit that um at the tapa Museum free exhibit that W launched last year about the galipoli Battle I tried to go to that the line was two hours long and I had an hour and a half before I had to leave for the airport what's the galipoli battle uh it's off the coast I want to say of Italy where they had several hundred New Zealand soldiers land there and it was like a month of devastating battle their big contribution but the way this exibit devastating battle um and by the way actually before you talk about the exhibit this is a famous and amazing film by Peter Weir called galipoli starring a very young mil Gibson um in fact if you uh when people often talk about iconic film moments they talk about um William sorry not William defo uh Tom Baron no William defo getting shot in platoon right running with his arms crossed but he's dying to Adagio for Strings um that moment if I remember correctly is lifted wholesale from galipoli someone is dying from gunshot wounds to adio for Strings help me out people all right I'm sure this is the poster Corrections in the comments episode of still entitled that exhibit one of the reasons um you learn a lot about the war and and the people the real people who participated but they built um these diarama scenes that are three times the size of normal humans it's soldiers and huge yes three and a half times that's enormous the exhibit's called the scale of our war and it's very int you think about if you're trying to create like a scene of a soldier bleeding holding a gun out and with this anguished look on his his face from beginning to end the sculpting of the face but also the fabrication of the weapons and the costume you can't none of that is off the shelf no three and times is enormous yeah three times yeah so so we saw I wasn't able to get to the exhibit because the line was so long but they had one of the figures in the shop that they were working on and it's like every hair is punched they use multiple grades depending on where it is on the face the heads are giant these figures it's very disconcerting hyper realistic and super realistic World War I as well World War I yeah yeah like the eyeballs multiple layers just so you I mean to to get it so it doesn't look like a wax dummy but to have Real Silicone which means it's got translucency it really it's shocking it's amazing um then I flew from New Zealand to New York to hang out with Tom Sachs and uh also I went to participate in something with Hodgeman oh good um so we had a had a wonderful time in New York but move going from Australia to New Zealand to New York I have never been that jet laed yeah that's a that's a that's a what's the flight from can you do direct from New York to from you have to come through LA or something you have to go I went through San Francisco in fact actually my son was like hey you're going to be in San Francisco for three hours I'm going to come and have lunch with you so he did nice that was an awesome layover um but I so a few years ago on MythBusters I went through a a whole like stress reduction thing where I you know I started eating better I started exercising but mostly I started making sure I was getting exactly how much sleep I need every night which turns out to be precisely 7 hours like that's my zone and on this trip I never got seven hours I was catching naps when naps whenever I could but by New York it caught up to me and I was just kind of a quivering mess for a couple days there when you go on a work trip with Norm you don't sleep 7 hours night he's a cruel if you're sleeping you're not filming you're wasting valuable valuable shooting time and then I came back and I'm I'm furious like you guys can't see it but the whole cave here is total horror show because I'm getting ready for a build at the Exploratorium oh my goodness well it's next week for me now but when this airs it's today it's today yeah oh wow okay so this week uh if you're in San Francisco Adam's going to be assembling and building his his own what are you calling it St based you're still okay I'm calling it St based it's the same design as Tay janson's mine instead of being wind powerered will be human pedal powered okay um and I am a I'm seriously up against it I'm actually so this is now five days ahead I'm I'm genuinely no Friday Saturday Sunday Monday I got to load in on Tuesday Morning um I I'm seriously stressed out about this you this is the most stressed I've seen you since you did the CER since you had to finish the kubric maze yeah which Speaking of that's coming on display in San Francisco this week too yesterday we this past few days we visited uh the Contemporary Jewish Museum also which now has um by the time you're watching this this and viewing listening to this on display the Stanley kubric exhibition which is amazing and you should go see it like seriously go see it it's really worth witnessing his camera I mean they all aspects of his Brilliance from his cameras to his equipment to his research to his pre-production drawings to unproduced films to produced films that you know and love but deep behind the scenes stuff behind them that you've never seen and if you can't I mean it might go to your city sometime in the future cuz it is an ongoing touring exhibition but we also got a tour of it and we'll have a video of that on the site oh awesome yeah we did some wonderful talking to Tim Hepner the original curator and tour manager of the show um and but so yes why this build is complicated and we can compare it to do you remember for people who watched still or watch our videos a long time there have been builds that you've done Adam when we come into the cave like I remember um Paton oswalt's docked octopus yes right you came to that where you read a tweet and you said the idea came fully formed in your head and for many builds beginning to end you know how you're going to build it even with the maze you had I mean you had iteration but you had the idea but this one you don't have that well it's not that I don't have it I it's just that there are so many parts there's 12 legs each of those legs has a linkage to a cam each of those legs is in a pair so each of those six pairs is attached to a cam that's offset by 120 degrees from its neighbor etc etc etc so these are things facts I understand but in terms of how the central structure grabs the legs and what gets in the way of what basically you're exactly right I don't have I can't right now yet put this whole machine in my head I've got it I I busted ass on this yesterday which was my first day full day back all day and I got myself to like 90% but what I the the problem is is if there's a blank spot that's a place where you could lose everything yeah right so I'm trying to make sure that I've kind of sced past all the blank spots so that all the problems I end up with are still solvable on site in 3 7h hour days because that's what I have if I you're doing three s hour days if I need to oh wow um and I can bring in a welder and I can bring in people that help in the exploratory shop is right there so it's a solvable problem I just need to make sure I've put out the real fires before I arrive this is some this is some kind of performance art that you're doing the Assembly of this on site and can I tell you I don't like I don't like working when people are watching me well I mean I it's not that I it's not that I it's just a yeah come on in um it's it's it's disconcerting it can be disconcerting because I get self-conscious right I mean you know I'm solving problems I haven't figured them all out and it's it's I'm I'm putting I'm making myself a little vulnerable and so that's also part of the stress is I'm not sure I'm literally not sure how this is going to go right it speaks how build it speaks to how you problem solve and build because you want to have that that grasp that 3D model so to speak in your head that you can view from all angles but I also want to normalize the not knowing I also want to talk about the not knowing because this is very much a state I was in frequently on MythBusters we're like all right it's time to get in and build this and if it was like a you know Chinese rocket chair I know this is a one-day build I'm going to get it done bang it's aesthetic it's fine but if it's a mechan IAL set of problem solving the difficulty you can run into with a complex mechanical system is the fact that a single choice you made early on can bone you so hard towards the end um so it's about making sure your build is flexible enough to adjust to solving some of those problems do you have a hierarchy oh sorry well no I was just say there and there's a difference between building in your shop where you know all of the all of the things that are available to you both tools and materials if you need to make a game day change up and being someplace where you're not familiar with the shop you're not familiar with the materials on hand even though it's a incredibly well equi shop filled with super smart people who can help you there's a big difference between being in your shop here being in the myth mythbuster shop at M5 yes and and someplace that's you know an a pilgrim in a stranger in an Unholy land exact and there are things that it's like for instance one of the I'm a key thing I'm using in this so I've had to apply a lot of slop there's hundreds of mechanical linkages and if I tried to get too precise which I did at the beginning of my design I could end up with nothing aligning well but but I mean this the original strong Beast don't have that they have tons of slap but they also don't support humans oh right and they're also made of material they're made of right so I this are all I don't know how this is going to respond when I put my weight on top of it it may be SE up right it could totally sees up now I'm ready for that I have I'm not going to say what my options are but I have options for making it run if it doesn't support me anti-gravity yeah exactly um but I also one of for so I was going to say one of the things that can really bone you is I needed Teflon washers half inch ID big fat Teflon Fender washers I thought that'll be easy I couldn't find them my bearing Place couldn't find them for less than like 350 a piece or some ridiculous price you a thousand of them probably yeah I need hundreds and hundreds of them so we made them here um but I got to make sure I have enough yeah because if I need an extra 20 and I don't have them that could really bone me in terms of the ability for things to slip and slide past each other yeah wow all of these things have to be worked out before before I'm on site because I still have to build this thing once I'm on site and are you assembling the entire thing or you going to have like the bike linkage and all that stuff set up ready to go beforehand you think it's a good question I'm not sure yeah so today I am uh my my oh right okay my land Cruise has been in the shop because I had this weird problem of it stalling mhm um and and the stalling is not something my mechanic has figured out so here's a question and I appreciate your comments um it's the edic re if you know a 1982 Toyota bj42 Land Cruiser and I'm sure there's someone out there who does there absolutely I've got a thing where it's I'm hearing the EDC relay click and then the engine cuts out but we replace the EDC relay and that's not doesn't seem to be the problem so if you've got an idea I'd love to hear about ites the EDC relay do it is I'm not exactly positive it has to do with how yeah it's this is obviously it's for everyday I know how to read a manual but it's not like I know what all the terms um so my My Land Cruiser will be part of this build I'm going to bring my shop in it but it's literally GNA it could be monpa Kettle as I'm trying to get there like you know coughing up every as an adult do you still get the dread because like i' I've had I've driven unreliable cars before and do you have the year when you pull into the like the left turn lane and you're thinking is it is it going to start again when it's time to go do you does that still happen to you are you okay with it now you're Comfort confident in blocking traffic should your car not not serve you um I'm I'm okay with that I did once have the worst possible case scenario in which I'm driving through the mission about 15 years ago now driving through the Mission District yeah about 16 years ago and um I'm making a left onto my street I used to live on Bartlett Street and uh I'm behind one of these big low riders you know the big lifted back end and everything and I as I'm turning I accidentally hit my horn and my horn got stuck on yeah that's not what you're looking for and the the four gentlemen that got out of the car were the look they were just they were very impressed with the idea aidea that I was leaning on my horn and my hands are out the windows going my horn is stuck on my horn is stuck on which they then thought was hilarious CU you want to do everything possible to indicate not my fault this is not me being aggro social I'm not trying to set aside to set a road rage thing going so yeah so today um oh right did I mention I'm leaving for Oregon tomorrow to visit family for the 4th of July so I'm got I've got uh my guy welding in here subassemblies and mostly As long as the subassemblies are built that's like 90% of the physical labor it's just the mental labor of how the construction goes that I need to leave him with all the proper subassemblies by the end of today I mean the good thing is once you get the first piece done it should go pretty quickly repetitive right but also realize this thing is going to weigh hundreds of pounds it's going to be like six feet long 5 feet high 5T 6 feet wide um just the Assembly of it is itself a fairly complicated set of Maneuvers problem solving what's going to happen after well it's going to stay at the Exploratorium on display for the rest of the taay Janson exhibit okay um and then yeah your guess is as good as Mom okay figure out I don't know sounds good we have to find some place for it to live yeah so if you guys are around um come by we'll actually we'll also be doing some uh streaming live of the build on our Facebook account so please um click a like on that are you making a video of this whole and we are absolutely filming the whole thing um she'll be on the site in a couple months cool absolutely I think we've covered a lot fat cast do we miss anything on Australia that you guys feel you absolutely have to get out now yeah we can talk about it next week Australia and New Zealand both beautiful countries full of the loveliest people what was your favorite meal oh that is a great question you can pick it up next week if you want Cliff stay tuned stay T is is peard going to be lutus forever find out next week fire see you guys next week thanks for watching thanks for listening to this episode I also want to thank the other sponsor of this week's episode of Z entitled that's Casper mattresses you know them of course they are an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price combining springy latex and supportive memory foams to create awardwinning sleep surface with just the right amount of sink and just the right amount of Bounce Time magazine named it one of the best inventions in 201 5 in fact it's now the most awarded mattress of the decade there's free shipping and returns in US and Canada and you can try Casper mattresses for a hundred nights it's like over three months risk-free in your own home if you don't love it they'll pick it up and refund you everything of course the mattresses are also made in America and for listeners of this podcast you can get $50 toward any mattress purchase just go to casper.com Untitled and the offer code Untitled but you knew that of course and we'll see you next weekhey everybody Norm here before we start this episode of still entitled I want to thank the sponsor of this week's episode that's tunnel bear what's tunnel bear well it's a VPN service that protects your privacy does it give you the creeps when your internet provider tracks your web browsing if today's lack of online privacy brings out your inner grizzly bear try out tunnel bear tunnel bear is a simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet all on your desktop or mobile devices any of them and has a top rated privacy policy and does not log any of your activity you can try it with no credit card required just go to Tunnel bear.com Untitled that's the name of this podcast which will start now welcome to still entitled The itam Savage project I'm will I'm Adam and I'm Norm it's been a while guys yes I had to do that without you I know you did a good I I only listened to the first one cuz we're just recording this a couple of days after the second one went up but you did a nice job thank you thank you I I tried to roll it welcome you know the way ready to rumble you know I get a little no no no no don't that's it's a trademark phrase we can't say that there were several points on MythBusters where of course I wanted to use that phrase and they were like don't say that it's a million dollars is that how much it is really I think that's that may be a full one million comments let us know every time he says it um you guys have been busy we have been we have traveled far and wi are you talking about that we are talking a little bit about it should we talk about that today or should we talk about there's a lot to talk about all right there's a lot to talk about I think briefly what we could say yeah I'd like to talk about it today CU it all just happened it's a fat it's a fat cast boy we went to Australia yeah and then we went so we were in Australia for three four days I love that as soon as I quit you guys pack up and go to Australia um and I got to see I got to see uh you know what I'm going to send this to you to post because it's a beautiful picture I had dinner with my entire camera and directing Department from Mythbusters Circa 2004 wow oh awesome my cameraman Peter Heap Tim Elwood Peter Coleman and Alice dallow and I went out to dinner in Sydney Australia and this was these were the guys like IA you know that's 2004 we're filming the season two of mythb these saw these guys saw your eyebrows flashed off yeah they were there they were on hand was this the the drinking on the treadmill year they're all still really close friends and they're all still awesome and working all the time and it was great that they all got and then the next night I had dinner with my uh cameraman Benny oh that's awesome yeah and we stayed uh close to the cdy opera house which the thing I realize is it's not crowded at all early in the morning you can walk and it's like completely empty well because we had jet lag too we're waking up at like 4: in the morning and so you like by 7 and the Sun is just coming up over Sydney Harbor you're like oh wow Sydney Harbor wins in the postcard Department mhm and and you're walking like this is it feels almost post-apocalyptic like Vanilla Sky like you're just enjoying it for yourself nobody there yeah nobody there except a security guard and for some people jogging there's a beautiful Botanical Garden right on the on the on the uh south side of Sydney Harbor right where the opera house is and it's a gorgeous walk if you ever go to Sydney you should do that walk do the walk yeah um I like having that kind of crushing jet lag cuz gives you the opportunity to be the kind of morning person that I have never ever been yeah it does no seeing a city at dawn is a really unique vantage point on that City because it is like a zombie film yeah um so then we went from Australia after four or five days down to New Zealand so just to be clear Australia in general depending on daylight savings time which falls in different times in different countries in general Australia is seven hours behind except tomorrow so they're the Future Past yes okay and then New Zealand is 5 hours behind but it's tomorrow I know that New Zealand is where you go if you want to buy phones before anybody else that's where the iFix it guys go also very expensive of a because of the vet yeah yeah electronics are incredibly expensive down under and in in NZ and Oz right so are you talking about what you were doing on these trips at all or we can talk about what we're doing uh what we did at New Zealand we visited WETA we visited WETA WETA Workshop yeah no and like to say we visited WETA we had two days there and I think we could have spent a week and a half EAS without ever crossing over the same material WETA is this like rabbit Warren of shops um filled with some of the most vibrant awesome funny uh dedicated crafts people in the world right and we have to clarify this is w a workshop cuz that's that's where we were embedded um when you say something like ilm you know there many different department there's w a digital which does a lot of special the computer effects but the the place that we wanted to see was w a workshop which is the all the Fabricators who built the sets and the costumes armor for Lord of the Rings and our host CH yeah and our host was Richard Taylor who runs w a workshop and Richard childhood friends with Peter Jackson ran the workshop all through all of Peter's films including Lord of the Rings um and very specifically runs it and says this is not an shop that's just one of the things we do we also do public art we also do performance we do films of course we do commercials but it's a like The Artisans get a chance to apply their craft in almost every way that that craft could be applied at one point we're talking to one of their lead sculptors we're in the sculpting room mhm which is like you're looking around at the tops of the toppy shelves in the culing room you're like it's and it's oh it's like freaking you out and the guy says he started at weather right out of college after working in the art department on a couple of projects they had some downtime and he said he wanted to learn how to sculpt and so Richard put him on the payroll for a couple months to learn how to scul Letang amazing like you know lot of you hear about a lot of these effect shops whether it's for digital or practical where there's not a lot of permanent people there there's a lot of freelance and contracted workers where because they go from Project to project that's where the money is yes and I think what's smart about what what Richard's philosophy is that they're they have their fingers in every all sorts of projects from board games to public displays and Museum exhibits and they encourage because they have the space they encourage the the artists there cuz they're all new most of them new zealanders yes um to just develop their skills and work on personal projects and and he's building a he's really building a craftsmanship sort of an army of crafts people who are cross-disciplinary that makes them all stronger it's the thing that we've kind of lost in large portions of America as like shop classes and stuff like that went away right yeah and it's it's difficult because you like Norman is saying here the work is very catch as catch can ilm shut down its model shop and while there are a couple of other model shops up in Marin that have tried to keep the work going and are doing pretty well it's still there are sometimes down times of like 10 months for for a big shop and you just got to send everybody home so Richard bust is asked to keep work coming into WETA and I mean like I can't I've never seen anyone I think that I'm busy until I'm standing next to Richard and then I'm like I've never been busy compared to this gentleman well there's a there's a there's a there's busy for you and then there's busy for a team of people you employ right and those are two different but equally challenging kinds of busy I think um so one of the things we got to do was I got to make swords you made swords I made a sword I made a sword like now hold on did you cast it did you stand on top of a table saw B so let's let's be clear I made a sword blade let's just be very clear Peter lion sword master for weda um builder of swords for all of the Lord of the Rings films um took me as his Apprentice for a day and taught me how to grind a sword blade we're going to this is a really amazing video yes we got it all on film okay but there's my sword oh my god oh that's so good yeah so you so okay so you didn't do like the folding over and hammering it like like no no no these enough time to do that no these are ground and these that's primarily the the types of swords he makes for effects for movies prop um but to be clear with a good piece of Ste the main reason for folding a sword blade like a Damascus style blade is to distribute the impurities of medium to poor Quality Steel okay so that's the whole reason Japanese swords are done that way it is it's basically when you distribute the the problems in steel you make it inherently stronger because you are making sure there's no voids or there's no specific weak spots but if you start with a really good piece of spring steel all you really need to do is grind it I know I know there's going to be all sorts of you guys talking to me about what I don't know and it's clear totally true like this is not my area of expertise but you know he was showing us like at one point he said he brought out Bor meir's hero sword two things that were amazing one is I said I wanted to make a Strider style sword so he goes okay well here's Aragorn's hero sword and he put it on the desk and like yeah what does that mean Aragorn's hero sword oh well that's the one that was carried on film right and then so I pick it up and the balance is amazing and I go the handle the leather and the handle is black I I thought it was green and he said that's very funny that you say that it was green and it started its life as green and we couldn't figure it out and then we realized of course it's black now because of orc blood wow so then he picks up this is just one of the you just like this belongs in a museum well everything does then he picks up Bor sort made of both of these it's a big long great also fatter wider and then he bends it on this Arc that's shocking and he's like this shows you how how strong it is and and joy like can I try that and so Joey takes sword and Joey goes bends it and then Peter says wow yeah that's that's that's impressive that you would bend something with a market value of $450,000 and Joey here you go I'm impressed and poor Joey has a history when we're on location of breaking things well not really breaking things but because he has the camera on his shoulder and he's moving around to track stuff and all that he's bumped into some stuff that's of really high value or maybe like a Stop Motion Set before oh whoops just that one time at at any rate it was uh like that's just one of the dozens of things that we shot and talked to people about at weda um it really was I found it so inspiring I'm literally we're my family we're trying to work out when we can go and spend at least like a week to 10 days down in Wellington to hang out the I have now a bunch of close friends at WETA um so we went out to dinner every night the dinners were wonderful Affairs of many people talking about all sorts of different things um you know there's always amazing people visiting WETA and so it was like it was every night was just filled with the most incredible conversation anytime you get a big group of interesting people with multip multiple multiple multip multidisciplinary backgrounds yeah like you it's it if the if you don't have interesting conversations you're doing something really wrong so at one point we're hanging out in this one department and I'm showing so the word got around I'd made some swords so when I whenever I was around people from weda they were like oh you made some swords let's see so I'm showing that picture I showed you proudly and this one woman says I've got lots of swords in my house and I said how come and she said well I did my husband and I um worked on the sound effects for Lord of the Rings so there's lots of clang clang ching ching I was like oh that's really cool and she said but nothing sounds better than my kitchen knife and I was like what and she says yeah it makes this Shing when it comes out of my chopping block that's better than any other sword I have and I said no and she said in fact it's the sound of the One Ring really and I was like seriously she says yes the sound that the one ring makes when you see it is the sound of my kitchen knife being pulled out of the block plus a s of Tibetan meditation Bowl wow secrets of the fo artist unveiled yeah oh that's amazing so there's there's we're going to be parceling out the coverage we did at WETA for months I me we got tons and lots lots of stuff and and you alluded to being in those different rooms like the sculpting room uh the mold room the cast room the paint room the those rooms were all like as opposed to being one big Warehouse they were it's like a compound and they had just like in Peter Lion's Workshop you know artifacts from the past projects which I think is unique to what a workshop not a lot of practical effects or effect Studios have a lot of their old work because it goes off to Studios more and more I I mean a lot of places a lot of commercial production will just be like can you get this out of our hair and give you back the prop you built because they don't have a place to store it Studios now it's a real negotiation and it's a key part of w is contract that they keep uh props from most of the projects they work on and so it's just everywhere you look and it's overwhelming I mean like more so than this oh it's like this except picture you know 880,000 square fet of shop space room after room after room where all the walls are lined with like oh you know there's gim's ax in three different scales depending on what they were filming wow right sting in small SC small scale for the little people W so that was amazing and then I came back and so I then you guys stayed did in New Zealand for yeah we did for other days and I want to give recommendations for if you're going to be in Wellington you got to visit Peter Jackson's um the Great War exhibition uh this he and W a workshop uh built this huge Museum Gallery it's a narrative Gallery about the first world war which New Zealand was a had a part in and then also there's a exhibit that um at the tapa Museum free exhibit that W launched last year about the galipoli Battle I tried to go to that the line was two hours long and I had an hour and a half before I had to leave for the airport what's the galipoli battle uh it's off the coast I want to say of Italy where they had several hundred New Zealand soldiers land there and it was like a month of devastating battle their big contribution but the way this exibit devastating battle um and by the way actually before you talk about the exhibit this is a famous and amazing film by Peter Weir called galipoli starring a very young mil Gibson um in fact if you uh when people often talk about iconic film moments they talk about um William sorry not William defo uh Tom Baron no William defo getting shot in platoon right running with his arms crossed but he's dying to Adagio for Strings um that moment if I remember correctly is lifted wholesale from galipoli someone is dying from gunshot wounds to adio for Strings help me out people all right I'm sure this is the poster Corrections in the comments episode of still entitled that exhibit one of the reasons um you learn a lot about the war and and the people the real people who participated but they built um these diarama scenes that are three times the size of normal humans it's soldiers and huge yes three and a half times that's enormous the exhibit's called the scale of our war and it's very int you think about if you're trying to create like a scene of a soldier bleeding holding a gun out and with this anguished look on his his face from beginning to end the sculpting of the face but also the fabrication of the weapons and the costume you can't none of that is off the shelf no three and times is enormous yeah three times yeah so so we saw I wasn't able to get to the exhibit because the line was so long but they had one of the figures in the shop that they were working on and it's like every hair is punched they use multiple grades depending on where it is on the face the heads are giant these figures it's very disconcerting hyper realistic and super realistic World War I as well World War I yeah yeah like the eyeballs multiple layers just so you I mean to to get it so it doesn't look like a wax dummy but to have Real Silicone which means it's got translucency it really it's shocking it's amazing um then I flew from New Zealand to New York to hang out with Tom Sachs and uh also I went to participate in something with Hodgeman oh good um so we had a had a wonderful time in New York but move going from Australia to New Zealand to New York I have never been that jet laed yeah that's a that's a that's a what's the flight from can you do direct from New York to from you have to come through LA or something you have to go I went through San Francisco in fact actually my son was like hey you're going to be in San Francisco for three hours I'm going to come and have lunch with you so he did nice that was an awesome layover um but I so a few years ago on MythBusters I went through a a whole like stress reduction thing where I you know I started eating better I started exercising but mostly I started making sure I was getting exactly how much sleep I need every night which turns out to be precisely 7 hours like that's my zone and on this trip I never got seven hours I was catching naps when naps whenever I could but by New York it caught up to me and I was just kind of a quivering mess for a couple days there when you go on a work trip with Norm you don't sleep 7 hours night he's a cruel if you're sleeping you're not filming you're wasting valuable valuable shooting time and then I came back and I'm I'm furious like you guys can't see it but the whole cave here is total horror show because I'm getting ready for a build at the Exploratorium oh my goodness well it's next week for me now but when this airs it's today it's today yeah oh wow okay so this week uh if you're in San Francisco Adam's going to be assembling and building his his own what are you calling it St based you're still okay I'm calling it St based it's the same design as Tay janson's mine instead of being wind powerered will be human pedal powered okay um and I am a I'm seriously up against it I'm actually so this is now five days ahead I'm I'm genuinely no Friday Saturday Sunday Monday I got to load in on Tuesday Morning um I I'm seriously stressed out about this you this is the most stressed I've seen you since you did the CER since you had to finish the kubric maze yeah which Speaking of that's coming on display in San Francisco this week too yesterday we this past few days we visited uh the Contemporary Jewish Museum also which now has um by the time you're watching this this and viewing listening to this on display the Stanley kubric exhibition which is amazing and you should go see it like seriously go see it it's really worth witnessing his camera I mean they all aspects of his Brilliance from his cameras to his equipment to his research to his pre-production drawings to unproduced films to produced films that you know and love but deep behind the scenes stuff behind them that you've never seen and if you can't I mean it might go to your city sometime in the future cuz it is an ongoing touring exhibition but we also got a tour of it and we'll have a video of that on the site oh awesome yeah we did some wonderful talking to Tim Hepner the original curator and tour manager of the show um and but so yes why this build is complicated and we can compare it to do you remember for people who watched still or watch our videos a long time there have been builds that you've done Adam when we come into the cave like I remember um Paton oswalt's docked octopus yes right you came to that where you read a tweet and you said the idea came fully formed in your head and for many builds beginning to end you know how you're going to build it even with the maze you had I mean you had iteration but you had the idea but this one you don't have that well it's not that I don't have it I it's just that there are so many parts there's 12 legs each of those legs has a linkage to a cam each of those legs is in a pair so each of those six pairs is attached to a cam that's offset by 120 degrees from its neighbor etc etc etc so these are things facts I understand but in terms of how the central structure grabs the legs and what gets in the way of what basically you're exactly right I don't have I can't right now yet put this whole machine in my head I've got it I I busted ass on this yesterday which was my first day full day back all day and I got myself to like 90% but what I the the problem is is if there's a blank spot that's a place where you could lose everything yeah right so I'm trying to make sure that I've kind of sced past all the blank spots so that all the problems I end up with are still solvable on site in 3 7h hour days because that's what I have if I you're doing three s hour days if I need to oh wow um and I can bring in a welder and I can bring in people that help in the exploratory shop is right there so it's a solvable problem I just need to make sure I've put out the real fires before I arrive this is some this is some kind of performance art that you're doing the Assembly of this on site and can I tell you I don't like I don't like working when people are watching me well I mean I it's not that I it's not that I it's just a yeah come on in um it's it's it's disconcerting it can be disconcerting because I get self-conscious right I mean you know I'm solving problems I haven't figured them all out and it's it's I'm I'm putting I'm making myself a little vulnerable and so that's also part of the stress is I'm not sure I'm literally not sure how this is going to go right it speaks how build it speaks to how you problem solve and build because you want to have that that grasp that 3D model so to speak in your head that you can view from all angles but I also want to normalize the not knowing I also want to talk about the not knowing because this is very much a state I was in frequently on MythBusters we're like all right it's time to get in and build this and if it was like a you know Chinese rocket chair I know this is a one-day build I'm going to get it done bang it's aesthetic it's fine but if it's a mechan IAL set of problem solving the difficulty you can run into with a complex mechanical system is the fact that a single choice you made early on can bone you so hard towards the end um so it's about making sure your build is flexible enough to adjust to solving some of those problems do you have a hierarchy oh sorry well no I was just say there and there's a difference between building in your shop where you know all of the all of the things that are available to you both tools and materials if you need to make a game day change up and being someplace where you're not familiar with the shop you're not familiar with the materials on hand even though it's a incredibly well equi shop filled with super smart people who can help you there's a big difference between being in your shop here being in the myth mythbuster shop at M5 yes and and someplace that's you know an a pilgrim in a stranger in an Unholy land exact and there are things that it's like for instance one of the I'm a key thing I'm using in this so I've had to apply a lot of slop there's hundreds of mechanical linkages and if I tried to get too precise which I did at the beginning of my design I could end up with nothing aligning well but but I mean this the original strong Beast don't have that they have tons of slap but they also don't support humans oh right and they're also made of material they're made of right so I this are all I don't know how this is going to respond when I put my weight on top of it it may be SE up right it could totally sees up now I'm ready for that I have I'm not going to say what my options are but I have options for making it run if it doesn't support me anti-gravity yeah exactly um but I also one of for so I was going to say one of the things that can really bone you is I needed Teflon washers half inch ID big fat Teflon Fender washers I thought that'll be easy I couldn't find them my bearing Place couldn't find them for less than like 350 a piece or some ridiculous price you a thousand of them probably yeah I need hundreds and hundreds of them so we made them here um but I got to make sure I have enough yeah because if I need an extra 20 and I don't have them that could really bone me in terms of the ability for things to slip and slide past each other yeah wow all of these things have to be worked out before before I'm on site because I still have to build this thing once I'm on site and are you assembling the entire thing or you going to have like the bike linkage and all that stuff set up ready to go beforehand you think it's a good question I'm not sure yeah so today I am uh my my oh right okay my land Cruise has been in the shop because I had this weird problem of it stalling mhm um and and the stalling is not something my mechanic has figured out so here's a question and I appreciate your comments um it's the edic re if you know a 1982 Toyota bj42 Land Cruiser and I'm sure there's someone out there who does there absolutely I've got a thing where it's I'm hearing the EDC relay click and then the engine cuts out but we replace the EDC relay and that's not doesn't seem to be the problem so if you've got an idea I'd love to hear about ites the EDC relay do it is I'm not exactly positive it has to do with how yeah it's this is obviously it's for everyday I know how to read a manual but it's not like I know what all the terms um so my My Land Cruiser will be part of this build I'm going to bring my shop in it but it's literally GNA it could be monpa Kettle as I'm trying to get there like you know coughing up every as an adult do you still get the dread because like i' I've had I've driven unreliable cars before and do you have the year when you pull into the like the left turn lane and you're thinking is it is it going to start again when it's time to go do you does that still happen to you are you okay with it now you're Comfort confident in blocking traffic should your car not not serve you um I'm I'm okay with that I did once have the worst possible case scenario in which I'm driving through the mission about 15 years ago now driving through the Mission District yeah about 16 years ago and um I'm making a left onto my street I used to live on Bartlett Street and uh I'm behind one of these big low riders you know the big lifted back end and everything and I as I'm turning I accidentally hit my horn and my horn got stuck on yeah that's not what you're looking for and the the four gentlemen that got out of the car were the look they were just they were very impressed with the idea aidea that I was leaning on my horn and my hands are out the windows going my horn is stuck on my horn is stuck on which they then thought was hilarious CU you want to do everything possible to indicate not my fault this is not me being aggro social I'm not trying to set aside to set a road rage thing going so yeah so today um oh right did I mention I'm leaving for Oregon tomorrow to visit family for the 4th of July so I'm got I've got uh my guy welding in here subassemblies and mostly As long as the subassemblies are built that's like 90% of the physical labor it's just the mental labor of how the construction goes that I need to leave him with all the proper subassemblies by the end of today I mean the good thing is once you get the first piece done it should go pretty quickly repetitive right but also realize this thing is going to weigh hundreds of pounds it's going to be like six feet long 5 feet high 5T 6 feet wide um just the Assembly of it is itself a fairly complicated set of Maneuvers problem solving what's going to happen after well it's going to stay at the Exploratorium on display for the rest of the taay Janson exhibit okay um and then yeah your guess is as good as Mom okay figure out I don't know sounds good we have to find some place for it to live yeah so if you guys are around um come by we'll actually we'll also be doing some uh streaming live of the build on our Facebook account so please um click a like on that are you making a video of this whole and we are absolutely filming the whole thing um she'll be on the site in a couple months cool absolutely I think we've covered a lot fat cast do we miss anything on Australia that you guys feel you absolutely have to get out now yeah we can talk about it next week Australia and New Zealand both beautiful countries full of the loveliest people what was your favorite meal oh that is a great question you can pick it up next week if you want Cliff stay tuned stay T is is peard going to be lutus forever find out next week fire see you guys next week thanks for watching thanks for listening to this episode I also want to thank the other sponsor of this week's episode of Z entitled that's Casper mattresses you know them of course they are an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price combining springy latex and supportive memory foams to create awardwinning sleep surface with just the right amount of sink and just the right amount of Bounce Time magazine named it one of the best inventions in 201 5 in fact it's now the most awarded mattress of the decade there's free shipping and returns in US and Canada and you can try Casper mattresses for a hundred nights it's like over three months risk-free in your own home if you don't love it they'll pick it up and refund you everything of course the mattresses are also made in America and for listeners of this podcast you can get $50 toward any mattress purchase just go to casper.com Untitled and the offer code Untitled but you knew that of course and we'll see you next week\n"