Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Your favorite books and links
Post Reply
jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15906
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by jacob »

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N2ZN62V/

It's mostly a book about "making" as in creating one-off solutions (such as movie props) from scratch using a wide collection of skills and tools. In my opinion, some of the perspectives presented here translates well into ERE in the abstract once one realizes that every tool is a hammer and one is no longer looking for "best hammer to buy" advice.

FWIW, Adam Savage is an ENTP and Jamie Hyneman (which the book occasionally compares and contrasts) is an INTJ.

suomalainen
Posts: 979
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:49 pm

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by suomalainen »

Relatedly(?), I find Adam Savage's one-day-builds show on youtube to be somewhat calming. It basically looks like he just does these builds in his cramped little workshop and manages the camera by himself, etc. It just has this feel of a hermit building stuff. Some of the stuff isn't that interesting and some of the building techniques are a little unpolished, but it's a bit mesmerizing to watch a hermit puttering around in his workshop talking to himself.

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by Sclass »

I love the videos in his workshop. I guess it is San Francisco? Space may be expensive. It’s really crammed in there. It’s an inspiration to watch him make things...even though a lot of it is “fake” stuff.

A lot of his tool picks are $$$! Stuff I dream about owning. One thing he turned me on to was Knipex cutters. They’re very expensive for what they are but they are the best wire cutters I’ve ever owned...and I’ve owned dozens. It’s all in the steel quality. They cut music wire and stay sharp. The pliers don’t slip on nuts because the jaws are so hard they cut into the surface of the nut where a cheaper plier will slip as it’s teeth shear away. I would have never bought these stupid expensive pliers had Adam not jumped up and down in his childish way and said how great they are.

Oh yeah, he recently did a video on how to use a digital voltmeter. Really good on the basics.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Okay, so I right away had to read this book, because Jacob revealed that Adam Savage is an ENTP (like me), and I am currently having some issues due to perceived need for "room/shop of my own" and how that relates to frugality, minimalism, and personal relationships/space-sharing. I am going to just throw out some thoughts the book inspired.

1) What is the difference between "Copy" in the CCCCC model of mastery and the sort of high-level "Re-Creation" style of making that Adam often accomplishes? It seems to me that it must be the difference between copying instructions vs. results.

2) As a fairly mature ENTP, I have independently discovered some of the same practices as Adam in attempt to overcome similar inherent tendencies. For instance, his practices of creating lists of lists and checkboxes is very much like mine, except I usually use spreadsheets and different background colors in cells to indicate phase of completion rather than checkmarks. I also struggled to overcome tendency towards messiness, but at an earlier age than Adam due to the fact that being young mother of two toddlers put me right over the edge, so I am likely even more successful at being "un-naturally" neatnik than Adam at this point in my development.

3) The very best suggestion I gleaned from this book towards improving my own functioning was his chapter on the topic of drawing, especially his note on how this can help with communication with others. It was like a light-bulb/missing link moment for me when I read this, because I like drawing and similar design or graphic display of information work, but I just don't do it very often. However, I can think of quite a few occasions when I have done it, and it has greatly improved my ability to work with other types/Types of makers. It's like I knew there was a reason why I chose to keep all my colored pencils when I recently downsized to fit all my belongings in my Smart car, but now I know what that reason was!

4) The second best suggestion I gleaned from the book was that he found once he had made all his lists of lists, tackling "the toughest nut first" was most likely to correlate with longer term motivation towards completion. This is important note for those of us who suffer from fairly swift decline from initial enthusiasm. However, deciding what constitutes the "toughest nut" can be more difficult if/when your interests/projects are more abstract. For instance, what might be the "toughest nut to crack" when attempting to create lifestyle design as Web of Goals?

4) I thought it was kind of interesting how he confirmed the engineering truism "fast, cheap, or good; pick two" in a couple rather contradictory chapters on the topics of Deadlines and Tolerance. First he suggests that giving yourself Deadlines is good way to overcome perfectionist procrastination, but then he suggests that when you are working on your own projects which involve attempting something new, giving yourself either more slack/Tolerance in "wasting" materials and/or more slack/Tolerance in "spending time" would be best practice. However, he does go on to describe many ways in which using less expensive materials or creating smaller models as prototypes can also reduce waste.

5) I thought his notes on personalizing shop functioning/design were also very insightful. Reminded me of some of the wisdom in the book "Organizing from the Inside Out" (note to re-read.) I think this must be a highly individuated realm, very much like gardening, because personality, experience, and the sort of particular projects/interests you have will vary preferences. For instance, I prefer more "Russian nesting doll modularity" than displayed by Adam, Jamie or the other work-spaces he described. For instance, in my minimalist organization, I keep all my "fancy/city" lifestyle "tools" which I don't otherwise use on a daily basis (earrings vs. cell phone) in a fancy/city bag. This allows me to grab/have just what I need, but not much more, for just about any situation.

basuragomi
Posts: 418
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by basuragomi »

I like his Youtube channel because he shows off some neat techniques and tool ideas, but the show kind of epitomizes what I dislike about the Maker subculture: The constant focus on generating vast quantities of useless junk.

75% of the Youtube channel are variations on "I test this slight variation on an electronic gadget" and "I replicated this nonfunctional thing from mass media." It's his career, he's obviously good at it, and it's what attracts his audience, but it feels like so much waste and effort to make things that are effectively obsolete the instant they're finished.

I did find the follow-up video where Peter Brown turns the book into a literal hammer pretty funny though.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15906
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by jacob »

basuragomi wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 12:44 pm
I like his Youtube channel because he shows off some neat techniques and tool ideas, but the show kind of epitomizes what I dislike about the Maker subculture: The constant focus on generating vast quantities of useless junk.
At least they're not destroying stuff ala "lets build a replica of Thor's Hammer---now lets smash some old monitors or car windows leaving a giant mess". That stuff really pains my environmentalist sentiments. I think the useless junk comment is more of an eye of the beholder thing. Couldn't the same be said of much of academic research? Perhaps the societal role here is more indirect and to inspire people to learn to DIY and get them back out of the "lets all just get high-income desk jobs and pay others for every single problem"-mentality that the school system installed in the 1990s. At least I eventually came to see my academic research as secondary to teaching the students who would eventually go and do useful stuff. In that regard, maybe the construction of useless junk and the subsequent trash-generation is a necessary cost of turning adolescent minds onto STEM and/or developing some agency when it comes to manipulating the built environment... insofar that is a good thing.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@basuragomi:

Applying "useful" to creation is like applying "duty" to sex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rJJgt_5mg


Savage writes about seeing Star Wars in 1977 when it first came out and he was 10 years old. He remembers his artist father commenting on what a crappy movie it was. Since I was a 12 year old girl in 1977*, my take was more like his father's. So, I have no internal child-like playful motivation to recreate cool things from Star Wars, but my 3 younger sisters and I are still obsessed with Little House on the Prairie, and a teenage NYC model actually asked me for the fancy, overblown, bonnet I created as part of the Prairie costume I made for my DD29's Halloween Weekend Wedding. If you search your psyche, you will likely find that some early iconic influences similarly inspire many of your moments of creativity, as opposed to productivity which can more readily be externally motivated.


*That was the year I cried for 2 hours straight to persuade my accountant father to allow me to see Saturday Night Fever which inspired my creation of the musical Napoleon Fever as my very well received history project the following year. I cast my classmate who most resembled John Travolta as a very inaccurate version of Napoleon, and it may or may not be the case that I subsequently made out with him at The Fort in the Woods where the cool kids went to smoke weed.

basuragomi
Posts: 418
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by basuragomi »

If academic researchers had the same enthusiasm for replicating studies that people apparently have for 3d-printing the exact same Iron Man helmet over and over, the world would probably be a slightly better place.

@7Wannabe5: If creation is like sex, what corresponds to plagiarism?

User avatar
Sclass
Posts: 2791
Joined: Tue Jul 10, 2012 5:15 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by Sclass »

:lol:

At the end of the day it’s entertainment. Sure his Blade Runner pistol is fake. But it’s great to watch him make it from a bunch of film stills using calipers and a calculator. Then he distresses the surface using a variety of techniques to make it look worn out. If I want a shiny brand new functional gun I can visit a gun shop. But that’s not what I get out off his videos . His excitement for esoterica is infectious.

Maybe it’s like watching porn instead of having sex to use a 7Wism. :lol:

A bunch of photons flying off my flatscreen still have value even if they aren’t “real”. Just depends what I’m after.

Hmmm. I like to watch him make things that look good. I don’t learn how to make things that are durable and functional there. The video where he made a walking bicycle had me pounding my fist into my forehead. The video where he makes Chewbacca’s bandolier is genius. He has his zone.

https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/cal ... y-5-7-2016

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by ertyu »

plagiarism: dudes holding their hands behind their backs while fucking their girfriends 'cause they saw it on porn and they never stopped to think that porn actors do it to give the camera visibility and not because that's what you do when you fuck a person

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9369
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Every Tool's A Hammer: Adam Savage

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@basuragomi:

I think what Adam Savage does with prop recreation would be like trying to recreate the Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange kitchen sex scene in “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

Or maybe it would be like studying microbiology and related lab techniques until you could successfully impregnate yourself with a clone of Benjamin Franklin from a few cells left on his museum preserved eyeglasses.

OTOH, those who are simply downloading and following step by step instructions are just functioning at the level of the first C in CCCCC model.

Post Reply