Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Iron Giant Bolt!

For this week’s One Day Build, Adam digs up a garage kit that he’s been looking forward to putting together for a while: a bolt from The Iron Giant! We get to assembling the electronics of the kit, and then Adam and Norm each take different approaches for the painting and finishing. Watch a bonus video from this build here, in which we tour Adam’s electronics station!

Shot and edited by Adam Isaak
Music by Jinglepunks

Comments (38)

38 thoughts on “Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Iron Giant Bolt!

  1. If you haven’t already put it together, I’d love to see you put together a Doctor Theopolis kit I believe you have. I played a small part in putting the kit together, creating the artwork for the printed acetate sheet representing some of the internals.

  2. Thank god the soda can Adam took a drink out of in the beginning wasn’t the one he keeps the dull X-acto blades in…. pheewwww.

  3. The soldering iron is a Weller Pyropen that runs on butane. Great for field work as it also emits heat sideways away from the tip which works great on the shrink tubes. 🙂

    However, personally i prefer a corded soldering station with a much slimmer handle whenever i can.

  4. I think I can guess, but what is a garage kit? When I googled it I got info about building your own garage 😛!
    Does a garage kit have to be a movie prop? Does it have to be cast? Are there garage kits that use 3D printed parts? Just wonderin’…

  5. Great video guys 🙂 That style of soldering directly onto the chip is sometimes referred to as “dead bug” or “dead bug prototyping” because the chip looks like a dead bug on its back. Easy to scorch a chip if you’re not careful.

    Semi-related, Norm I see you still have your Pebble, now that the software and apps have matured a bit, will you do any follow-up videos?

  6. Garage kits are low production run kits, usually comprised of resin parts cast in silicone molds. Some kits may also have laser cut or photo-etched brass parts as well. 3D printed parts aren’t often used (except as patterns for molding) but they certainly can be. There are garage kits made for not only movie and television props but also models, creatures, almost anything. They are called “garage kits” because they are, in many instances, produced in garages, not out of professional shops, and can be produced with relatively little machinery or equipment (i.e. no injection molding machines needed).

  7. I would guess any auto parts store or place that sells car wax. I am not 100% sure exactly what they are using but it just sounds like an Automobile wax that you buff out.

  8. Is there a good resource to get other garage kits like this? When I try to find them on Etsy or eBay I typically find 42:1 model kits that are literally cars in a garage or there’s a lot of resin casts of sexy anime girls.

  9. the digital readout in the back pulsating makes me think you should one-day-build some set decorations that strobe/pulse/whatever. maybe some interesting parts of movie sets that can then be part of adam’s shop ‘set’?

  10. Needs to be combined with a sphero to have the automated movement. See the sphero Bb-8 toy and you’ll see what I mean.

  11. I’m always grateful for Adam using Tested as his platform. Especially in these post-Mythbuster days. Where is Jaimie?

  12. youll find it at pretty much any arts and crafts store, in a variety of colors. i know both hobby lobby and michaels carry it here in the midwest.

  13. Adam, I worked on Iron Giant and When Mondo finally came out with this as a limited piece I was so excited to have something from one of my favorite productions I worked on. I know this was available as a kit on the RPF for a while before Mondo got their hands on it. I would love to go back and add the sound chip so it beeps with the blinking light. Brad Bird was such an inspirational director and wanted us all to animate like the old men from Disney. I animated the sequence when the deer gets shot in the woods and the Giant had to learn about death. So many years later and still one of my favs that I animated on. I like how you distressed the screw. Mine is still the pure cell paint colors But I really like the weathering. Thanks for another fantastic one day build. Derek Thompson.

  14. Where does someone get garage kits?! I want to start trying to get into them but I don’t know where to get them! Preferably somewhere online because I’m based in Singapore and would need to be shipped

  15. Love the one day builds! If there was one thing I would say it would be that there’s no need for time lapse. I would gladly watch an hour long build to see all of the details involved and also I like putting on a video while working on my own projects. Keep em coming👍

  16. Just a random thought that occurred to me when I saw Norm using the wire stripper.

    As someone who occasionally does some (very) amateur electronics and wiring I had always dreamed of having a nice pair of wire strippers. I am an engineer by profession so tend to spend more time designing things than actually building them but I work with a lot of technicians/electricians who DO build this stuff.

    The thing I discovered while watching them work is that NONE of them ever use actual wire strippers like the ones Norm used. They just use sidecutters to grab and strip the wire. When I asked about this they said unless you are doing very large amounts of wiring with the same cables all the time, its way quicker to just use sidecutters. You don’t need to constantly adjust the tool for different gauges of cable and also don’t need to carry or reach for another tool.

    I asked about accidentally cutting strands in the core and they said you only do that when you suck (meaning I still have lots of practice to do!) and once you have some experience you almost never damage the cable using this method. They seem to generally frown upon such superfluous tools and told me only “bench techs” or engineers use those wire strippers. The former for reasons of efficiency, the latter for lack of skill 😛

    The only time they use dedicated strippers are for specific types of cable that might have a lot of shielding etc where they need to only cut through specific layers (coax is a good example). Then they use a stripper specifically designed for just that cable. Still not the type Norm is using.

    Anyway. Random thought. Just something I found interesting when I discovered it.

  17. and , is it possible to build a few kits then send them out to the Tested audience? I would love to do a build just to go through the motions then send them out to the fan base(testees)!

  18. Hey Adam & Norm,

    you ask for new garage kits… which made me veryvery happy, because i have just finished the prototypes of my very first kit(s) from a (quite weird) SciFi-Classic…

    It would be very nice of you if you could tell if you are interested in general or not.

    I have already sent you an email with a picture to tipsand additionally left a comment in your yt-channel, but so far no reaction. Either the Tested-team is overwhelmed with all the suggestions or you are all on vacation. 😉

    Greetings from Germany,

    Felix

  19. I Love the one day builds but i seem to notice they are getting shorter and more edited i myself have no problem watching an hour or more worth of video so my solution is to make two videos, one for typical free youtube world and one for premium members like myself same video just more content, like side conversations and just watching the stuff get built in realtime instead of the fast monologs THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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