A Tour of Grant Imahara’s Shop [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsCSTO8SaQU

by vo2maxer • 5 years ago

143 49 5 years ago

youtube.com

V__• 5 years ago

It's amazing to see how much respect they have/had for each other and each others work.

IgorPartola• 5 years ago

It broke my heart a little when I found out that Jaime and Adam don’t actually like each other.

lkschubert8• 5 years ago

They definitely aren't besties, but from everything I've read they have a mutual respect for each other creatively and professionally.

iaw• 5 years ago

They aren't friends but to say they "don't like eachother" seems a bit extreme. They both have mutual respect for each other from what I've seen and values the others contributions. They're colleagues in my book.

Gustomaximus• 5 years ago

I had similar response but then also like this is the case.

Especially in today's more divided environment it's a nice example people can get on well, be professional and productive and they don't have to do this based on whether they like each other personally.

It kinda comes down to good manners and courtesies. I feel these are far more important for society than we give them credit for.

Macha2• 5 years ago

The one thing that I find different and sometimes a bit jealous of people who's passion is in some or multiple forms of making is the idea of having a bunch of projects and stuff to show. Of course there's the practical and sometimes relationship implications of finding the space to store it, but a bunch of in-progress woodworking projects looks impressive in a way that a desktop and NAS containing a bunch of in progress coding projects don't.

542458• 5 years ago

As somebody who has those sorts of projects, all I feel is guilt when I look at the unfinished ones. At least with code you can shove it in a folder and forget about it…

abakker• 5 years ago

This is very real. I have a 2000 lb milling machine taken part right now and it just depresses me when I go into my shop and I don’t work on it.

jld3• 5 years ago

I actually had the idea of "hobby as a service". Create a catalog of a few dozen hobbies to start, and build boxes that are a foothold to the hobby.

Could be: - a cheap ukulele, tuner, with a link to some youtube lessons - a drawing pad and box of pens with some tips on figure drawing - a whittling knife and some wooden spoon blanks.

You receive the box and give it a try. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't but you can always put the stuff back in the box and return the items and receive another hobby to try without the dread of having a drawer full of nice spoon carving knives that you thought you'd love but are now just a symbol of your abandoned dreams.

pengaru2• 5 years ago

As someone who often has multiple meat-space projects in flight, I'm convinced there's a very thin line separating busy creative types having lots of physical projects taking up space and any other kind of hoarder.

Whenever I'm getting ready to push through another phase of a big project, or just getting started, the necessary accumulation of materials and tools makes it especially apparent. It's just a small loss of motivation, distraction, or injury away from becoming another burst of hoarded expensive junk.

Consider yourself lucky your project messes can hide away in a NAS...

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

As someone who has a bunch of projects and knows a couple people who have borderline hoarding problems the line is thicker than you make it out to be.

munchbunny• 5 years ago

For programming projects, I personally find that the ritual of setting up all of the infrastructure is very likely to distract me from actually building the thing.

I can be obsessive about doing things the right way, but my most successful projects have always been the ones where the code looks like I dragged it kicking and screaming over the finish line and the infrastructure is basically nonexistent. And sometimes I clean it up afterwards, once I am motivated by the success of the project.

By infrastructure I mean things like CICD or even tests. If I have to choose between thorough testing and being able to finish the project at all, testing can wait.

sixothree• 5 years ago

I've watching this video multiple times now to keep me in check.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1j93RnIxEo

munificent• 5 years ago

I've been getting (back) into making electronic music over the past year or so, and one of the interesting areas to explore is how much to lean on hardware versus software for musicmaking.

There's a whole subreddit, reddit.com/r/musicBattlestations/ where people show off their music setups with lots of expensive hardware. And there is something really cool about being able to occupy a physical space that inspires you and reminds you of what you are. We are physical creatures and it's much easier for us to play a role if we're in the right set with the right props and don't have to imagine it all in our heads. (This is also why working from home for an extended period of time can be hard.)

At the same time, hardware is expensive, takes up a lot of space, can be hard to reconfigure and can easily get mentally overwhelming. It's hard to switch between working on two different songs when each one requires you to unplug a bunch of wires and move boxes around. At the same time, it's maybe easier to finish that first song if you know you can't start the second one without unplugging everything...

Choosing the right space and workflow to be a productive musician is this weird sort of meta-creative process that's surprisingly hard and not talked about much (beyond fetishizing giant studios and expensive gear, or fetishizing minimalism).

busterarm• 5 years ago

I picked up a Polyend Tracker last year and the artificial limitation has made me significantly more productive. I'll hook it up to a couple other bits of kit to sample from but then I'm on my way and working from anywhere.

klodolph• 5 years ago

I prefer reddit.com/r/synthesizercirclejerk, where people post pictures of succulents, talk about how much the next gear purchase will make them happy, and share their live ambient drone albums.

TedDoesntTalk• 5 years ago

Grant Masaru Imahara was an American electrical engineer, roboticist, television host, and actor. He was best known for his work on the television series MythBusters, on which he designed and built numerous robots and specialized in operating computers and electronics to test myths.

imglorp2• 5 years ago

To say nothing of working on R2-D2, BB8, and Robot Wars.

imglorp2• 5 years ago

How nice to have the maker gods remember Grant in his happy place, nerding over his stuff, surrounded by his accomplishments: he would have been thrilled.

bink• 5 years ago

I'm struggling with a mixture of sadness and desire to build my own shop. The answer was obvious for Grant but how does a normal person decide to go all out and build something like that versus just trying to find space in the garage for yet one more thing?

jld3• 5 years ago

Where I live, I think a shop space like that would cost a couple thousand dollars a month. Lots of hobbies cost that much (boats, rvs, cars, vacation homes, etc) so it's not outrageous, but also more than I think I could justify given that making do in my basement has no added expense.

If your hobby is making and building, embrace that fact and decide whether it's worth the leap. It might be a great life choice.

fridif• 5 years ago

If you are not comfortable spending x amount of money on one of your interests (which is totally a valid feeling to have), then it is time to prioritize and innovate! Necessity is the mother of all invention.

new2993• 5 years ago

One of the things that’s interesting about looking at workshops is the “shop-smell” and how it seems to tell you a lot about a project/company.

I remember walking into the workshop at one well funded startup , and seeing they were using dollar store screwdrivers. Practically speaking, for what they were doing you could say it didn’t really matter. But it was also sitting next to a piece of equipment that was never used, and cost $50000.

I wouldn’t say it’s always the case, but it left me with a poor impression and a feeling that something was off.

Later this did indeed turn out to be the case.

leahbarton• 5 years ago

Can we get some more details please...

new2993• 5 years ago

Probably not in a public forum. But if anyone wants to reach out, it’s always fun to chat (contact info in profile).

CapitalistCartr• 5 years ago

I use hand tools, including screwdrivers, daily in my job. So they are good ones that grab the screw and feel comfortable. My tools are made by commonly recognized names. Anyone that uses hand tools frequently should know why dollar store tools are a poor choice. I'd take it as a bad sign, too.

new2993• 5 years ago

Yep, they weren’t directly assembling prototypes but still… probably using on a daily basis.

It’s interesting though. Watching this video you see the CNC mill and think wow that was probably expensive and likely didn’t get a lot of use, but would have been fun (which they confirmed). But the relatively inexpensive drawer of screws really was something you look at and say:

a) oh wow, I want and would use that.

b) this person really had a use for this, thought and cared about what they were doing.

All these little things, and the stories they tell are fascinating to me.

soneil• 5 years ago

I see this a lot when it's things you can compare on paper. The difference between a $200 lathe from banggood and an actual machine-shop lathe is pretty obvious even if you've never used one.

But the difference between a dollar store screwdriver and my weras .. you can't really compare them on paper, you actually have to use it. And that's when it gets interesting to see what choices they made.

fknorangesite2• 5 years ago

Love the 'main engineering' plate outside the door.

splonk• 5 years ago

Since Adam makes an offhand comment about he and Grant having very different styles in terms of precision and cleanliness, here's what his workshop looked like ~7 years ago (although as far as I can tell Google's killed the easter egg where you could find it by going down a manhole in Street View):

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7539106,-122.4206627,2a,75y,...

I believe he also has plenty of videos on Tested that would show the current state of things.

runj__• 5 years ago

I _know_ that all actors on all shows share some kind of relationship. Adam was one of the first I saw to show his off screen life (probably in some kind of persona). It's both interesting and sad seeing Adam relating to a former friend, I've seen him acting and I've seen him "not acting".

I'm thankful they did this video.

literallyaduck• 5 years ago

I know he is a stranger on the television, but seeing the loss of Grant and seeing his colleagues look over his workspace really hit hard. Grant's interest and mastery of robotics was and is still an inspiration to many. I truly believe he loved his work and will be missed by many close friends he never met.

slig• 5 years ago

His WFH desk, from March 2020: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUDavYbVAAAd-VU?format=jpg&name=... (direct link because twitter apparently doesn't like anonymous users anymore).

rhizome• 5 years ago

I feel like my noticing and caring that he's working on one of those flimsy white plastic folding picnic tables is exactly why I (probably!) won't ever be this advanced in my hobbies. Focused on insignificant details from the start (yes I know, a firm work surface is also good ;).

dang• 5 years ago

Url changed from https://www.tested.com/show-and-tell/a-tour-of-grant-imahara..., which points to this.

A Tour of Grant Imahara’s Shop [video]

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