The Making of a Giant Super Soaker: A Collaborative Project

In this video, Bob and Mark team up to create a massive replica of the world's largest Super Soaker. The project begins with printing out a profile view of the original design on paper and drawing a one-inch grid across the top. This helps them scale up the image to a larger size, ensuring that all proportions are accurate.

To scale up the design, they drew another grid on a full sheet of plywood, working on one square at a time. They focused on getting the shapes right for each individual square before moving on to the next one. Once the profile was complete, they laid out the tanks to ensure there was enough room for valves and other internal components.

After the outline was finalized, Bob used a sharpie to mark the lines that needed to be finely cut. He then carefully cut out the entire profile as one piece and removed the top section, which had a rounded cylinder shape, while the bottom was more of a squared-off pistol grip. To create a duplicate piece for the bottom box, Mark traced the outside of the pistol grip part. The team measured out the long sides of this section and cut down some 1-by-four wood to fit each one.

The project's next step was to attach the pieces together using glue and brads. However, Bob soon realized that this wasn't strong enough, so he pre-drilled holes for screws and used a countersink bit to create flush-mounted holes. With Mark's help, they started to assemble the structure, and it became clear that the scale was accurate.

As they worked on attaching the pieces together, the team needed to figure out the weight of the Super Soaker. They placed tanks in and discovered that they worked much better in the handle section. The top section required mounting in the center of the bottom frame, so Bob added 1-by-4's on either side of it to thicken it up. He used angle brackets to hold the piece in place and then cut them down to the correct length using a dremel.

Once the brackets were attached to the center piece, Bob screwed it into the top of the frame. The top cylinder was quite large, so they decided to create a wooden profile that would be turned into a giant cylinder by the propmaker. Mark used foam to shape and lighten the cylinder, while also screwing on the other side for stability.

The final piece of the puzzle was the barrel, which consisted of poster board wrapped around a central filling material. The team worked together to complete this section, bringing their collaborative project one step closer to completion.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHey, I'm Bob at I like to make stuff. And I'm Mark and I kind of like make stuff.And I'm gonna help Mark turn this into this.I was out in California, and Mark was making the world's largest Super Soaker and asked if I could help make part of it.So, in this video,we're going to make part of it,and then you can go over to his channel, link in the description, to see the rest of it. All right. Let's do it.We printed out a profile view of the original Super Soaker, and then drew aone-Inch grid across the top of it. This helps us scale it up to a larger size.Once we figured out the proportion, we drew another grid on a full sheet of plywood.This is a really common way to scale up an image.You don't have to worry about keeping everything scaled across the entire drawing, as long as you focus on one square at a time.You work on one square get the right shapes, and then move on to the next one. After it's all done,you can go back and make sure all the lines connect and kind of clean up anything that didn't work out. Obviously,using pencils at this point is really good because you can easily make changes and erase lines that didn't work out.Once I got the profile for the gun fully drawn,we laid on the tanks to make sure that we were leaving enough room for all the valves and everything that went on the inside.Once I was happy with the outline, I went back with a sharpie, just so I knew exactlywhich lines to finely cut on, and then I cut the whole thing out. I cut out the entire profile as one piece, and thencut off the top section. The top has a rounded cylinder look to it, whereas the bottom is more of a squared off pistol grip.I just traced the outside of the pistol grip part to have a duplicate piece, so that I could make the bottom box.I measured out all of the long sides on this, and then cut down some one-by-four to fit each one of these sections.My part of this project was really just about the structure and getting the general shape there. A prop designer was going to come backafter this and make it actually look like a Super Soaker, adding all the details and filling in any gaps that I left.Once I had all these pieces fit in place,it was time to permanently attach them to this one side panel. The other one would be removable.I added some glue to the top of each one of these pieces,lined it up with the edges,and then shot in some brads to hold it in place. This wasn't quite going to be strong enough,so after I got everything in place, I went back and used a countersink bit to pre-drill some holes.I flush-mounted these screws to make sure that none of them were sticking out to make it a little bit easier on the prop builder later.And this was the part where Mark actually came and helped a little bit. With this together,we started to get a really good idea of the scale, and then we had to figure out the weight.We placed the tanks in and realized that they worked way better down in the handle.The top section of this actually needed to be mounted right in the center of the bottom frame.Because this piece was eighth-inch plywood, it was too thin to mount on the top by itself.So, I added some 1-by-4's on each side of it just to thicken it up, so that I could add a bracket.I used some angle brackets on the bottom of each one of these mounts to hold it in place.But, because it was centered, these hung over just a little bit,so we used a dremel to cut them down to the correct length.These tiny cutoff wheels on dremels actually work really well for stuff like this.Once I had those brackets on the center piece,I just had to screw it into the top of the frame.The top cylinder on this project is actually really big, so we decided to just make a profile out of wood and let the propmaker turn it into a giant cylinder.He ended up using foam to give it the right shape and to keep it light.We screwed on the other side, but it needed to be removable,so we didn't use any glue here. The last piece of the puzzle was the barrel, and this was a piece of poster boardwrapped up and filled with \"Great Stuff\" expanding foam.We shoved the tube down the middle of it, and then put in an aluminum anglebracket in the foam, so that we could mount it to the top of the frame. At this point.We finally got a real idea of how big this thing was and how much fun it would be to shoot.But at this point,it was still hollow, so we took off the side panel and filled up the canisters, one with water, one with air, and put themback in before we could get a real idea of how heavy it would be. it's heavy,but not too heavy. And that was my part of this project,but there was a lot more work that went into it, and here's a preview of how it turned out.If you want to see the whole thing, which you definitely do want to see, be sure to click right there to go see Mark's video.It's going to be awesome. I've got lots of other videos that you might be interested in, and don't forget to subscribe.That's it for this one guys. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.Hey, I'm Bob and I like to make stuff. Today, (messes up)\n"