One Day Build: Adam Savage’s Ultimate Duck Army

Last month, Adam built his first duck bomb from his duck army. Now that he’s recruited more ducks (and some flamingos) to his army, it’s time to build the ultimate duck army bomb. Time for a One Day Build!

Shot and edited by Joey Fameli

Comments (48)

48 thoughts on “One Day Build: Adam Savage’s Ultimate Duck Army

  1. I lol’d.

    This is absurdist art, also, Will’s constant punning during One-Day-Builds is perhaps my favourite part about them :p

  2. while i like you guy’s working on stuff (even this build).

    I more enjoy the other builds that make more sense and are more geeky =D

  3. I am not as into the duck bomb as Adam is, but I LOVE how into it he is. Maybe have a cord that is the length of a “duck” + 2 inches or so from the central duck line and attached to the bomb housing. That way when you pull the pin it doesn’t clatter to the floor?

  4. Hi guys,

    I’ve been thinking about the teaching-knots-to-non-knot-people problem for a while. The difficulty is that many of the most effective knots are non-intuitive and have more than one step, making them difficult to remember if you don’t use them often.

    My solution, untried, is to teach a bunch of knots based on the figure 8. The figure 8 stopper knot, the figure 8 bend (which has a sheet bend embedded), the figure 8 loop (which has a bowline embedded), the packers knot (which uses a figure 8 stopper as its base).

    These knots are all strong and effective.

    By teaching knots which rely on the same structure you get skill transfer between them, but even better, the figure 8 is tied in (sort of) a single step, making it easy to remember.

    The constrictor knot is also very useful and easy to tie once you know the trick. Not based on the figure 8 though.

  5. Need more ducks…. come on Adam… where’s that Mythbusters attitude we’ve come to expect. 100+ duck bomb or bust! Kickstarter it if you have to…

  6. What does Jamie think of this thing? Perhaps he needs to experience the full might of …. hrm. On second thought, maybe not – you guys might not survive the experience 🙂

  7. I love how excited Will was to hear the real Mythbusters countdown!

    And the entire video, because it’s awesome!

  8. Love it when Adam reveals his problem solving method.
    “I have determined by… thinkin’ about it…”
    Nice! It’s a duck bomb. No science required.

  9. Indeed, it is often better to simplify and stick to one multi-purpose knot than trying to teach 5 knots where nobody will remember any of them.

    The one caveat of figure-8 knot: Don’t use it to join two ropes the “simple way”, where you have both rope ends parallel and just tie a figure-8 on the loose ends. It has the tendency to flip over on itself repeatedly until it goes over the ends. Figure-8 Bend is of course fine, but involves a lot of threading-through and takes time.

    For a quick “knot on two ends” to join ropes the overhand knot is actually much better, and in fact quite secure as tests revealed (very hard to untie though). Like this:

    http://www.canyoneeringusa.com/techtips/tying-two-ropes-together/

    Fun fact: joining two ropes with an overhand knot is actually used in canyoning, and is called the “European Death Knot“. It has less risk of getting stuck when pulling the rope out than other bends. Contrary to its name it’s actually quite a strong knot – do it with a figure-8 though and you probably will die…

  10. hate to be the one to break this to everyone, but they’re pelicans not ducks, took me ages to find them online til I found this out, ha

  11. Adam, this really needs to be in the form of a sandwich, at least 50 ducks long. Thinking a pole about 10-15 feet long, with a pair of ducks hanging off each side. Then sandwich that entire length with a series of 1x4s or so, lengthwise so they won’t warp given the length. I still think the weight of the ducks in this build might have an effect on each other. Plus, you need to source ducks with different notes.

  12. The boards that surround the “ducks’ should have a cord attached to it as well that leads up to the top and is tied off. That way when you pull the pin, the board swill fall but not hit the ground and add a thud noise which distracts from the first few moments of the duck noise.

  13. another one for knot nerds (apologies to everyone who’s not a knot nerd):

    My favourite bend (knot to join two ropes) is the Zeppelin bend:

    http://www.animatedknots.com/zeppelin/

    Very simple, very secure, looks pretty and very easy to untie even after high load. The myth goes that it was the knot used for mooring Zeppelins… (but probably not).

    I haven’t used it for climbing though (only discovered it recently), and the opinions about its safety are divided – mostly because it hasn’t been tested as rigorously as other knots, and nobody you’ll be climbing with has ever seen it and will think you’re nuts. My opinion is that it is very similar in topology to the alpine butterfly, which is a trusted and very secure knot, so I think it should be fine. Some say it’s even better. Would be interesting to test thoroughly… mythbusters anyone? Probably not exciting enough for TV though…

    PS: duck bomb is awesome – I laughed so hard during this video. Adam’s reactions are gold 🙂

  14. Why not just put grommets into a sleeping bag storage bag with compression straps. Then it’s just a bag. Pop the rip cord. Easy to stuff to boot.

  15. I’ve often marveled and Adam ( and the team’s) crafstmanship on the one day build projects, and have been impressed by most of them. This one……I stood and applauded. I also cried a little due to the beauty of the thing they made.

  16. I was thinking about more of a compressed air ram to compress the “birds” so you can easily reset the bomb.

  17. So if you where to take a ratchet strap you can compress them easier. then you can attach the box, release the strap and the bomb is live. It should only require one person to load.

  18. Fun as this was, it probably could have been done far more elegantly with a 6″x18″ piece of ripstop nylon and some heavy duty sew-on velcro at half the cost of a single toy.

  19. Schill Agreed, I was certainly not suggesting using the figure 8 the “simple way”.

    The feed-through method of tying the figure 8 bend is the right way for the experienced knot tier, but for teaching beginners you can get them to overlap the two working ends and tie a figure 8 stopper. There are problems with that method, and an overhand bend would work just as well, but I’m aiming for memorability and choosing knots with the same structure is key to that.

    A downside to my list is that the figure 8 needs to be laid up properly to be really strong. I don’t think there is a perfect answer to teaching knots.

    Also, Zeppelin bend is a cool knot. I used to use it all the time.

  20. That is one of the worst, most horrifically wonderful things I’ve ever seen/heard.

    Not the most elegant design, but it works.

    Oh, and the noise woke up my fiancé. Either that, or it was my laughter at it.

  21. Is there a specific reason you author your content in 23.976 fps? Since this is a YouTube channel and most people have their monitors set to 60hz I’d think choosing 30 fps would be a lot better as 23.976 fps doesn’t play back very nicely on 60 hz… at all. It goes doubly for testing video cameras like the DJI Osmo you did earlier.

  22. I would suggest that you hang the birds from a board in a circular patter in order to give them more breathing room by spacing them out. Furthermore you can adjust the length of each cord so they are the same height when fully compressed making sure they are all equally squeezed. The center ones would be the shortest and outer the longest.

    Also, I find it hard to believe that after months of visiting here this is what got me to register for the site.

  23. Total unadulterated, immature fun. LOVE IT!!!. Though if my mom was till alive you would have been properly throttled Adam. 🙂

  24. Yay knot talk! I went a little nuts learning all sorts of knots a couple years ago. After a while I just retained the easiest and most useful. Bestest knots that everyone can find a purpose for (aside from the ones everybody already knows like the square and the shoelace):

    Slip knot tied mountaineering style (loop and pull through). This one would have been quicker in video to tie duck feets. Also there is a technique to make it much faster to untie. See vid:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipOCj2WEhv0

    Bowline. Check this video by a shipwright:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozskWrDM-F4

    Clinch knot for fishing line.

    Trucker’s Hitch, dual slipknot style (no extra wraps)

    Clove hitch

  25. I wonder how many people caught the duck press joke. Nice one Will. You and Adam can carry on some delightful banter.

  26. Love these videos. Anyway you guys could do a one day build with Adam and Jimmy Diresta? I think the two of them in the shop would be great together!

  27. I did watch this when it was first posed up, but didn’t comment. But it was, and is, hilarious.

    But the reason I’m commenting today, is, I watched CHAPPiE fir the first time since it was released earlier this year. And CHAPPiEs rubber chicken was obviously made by the same people. lol

  28. the world’s largest whoopee cushion? We bought a friend a toy cow that worked like this. If you squeezed it a little, it let out a mournful moo. If you squeezed it real tight and let go it sounded like a cow in ultimate agony!

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