Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Adam Savage’s 10 Maker Commandments”.
Hello maker faire, can you guys hear me? Ah that’s fabulous. Look at all these people wow. How does it feel to rival comic-con in size and scope? Yeah man, i’ve been to every one of these since its inception and it gets bigger every year and more awesome. Every year look most years, i’ve come with a with somewhat of a prepared talk and then kind of winged it this year i was thinking what could i talk about and i thought well what about lists humans have loved lists since moses, so i thought maybe ten Commandments of making i wanted to talk about ten commandments of making, and so i wrote them down. I came up with nine, unfortunately, that things never quite turn out the way that you planned, but in the end on my way down, i came up with the tenth.
So finally, i have a list of ten solid things that i would have loved someone to tell me when i first started burning and cutting myself in order to have the things that i needed to have. The first rule of making, i will say, is make something anything cook weld carve, sculpt anything that you need to make it’s important that you make it humans do two things that make us unique from all other animals. We use tools and we tell stories and when you make something you’re doing both at once, you’re telling a story about your desire, you’re telling a story about something that you want. You’Re telling story about something that you see needs to be made, and you are using your tools to improve yourself and improve the world around you.
When you make new things, you are joining in the most ancient dialogue that humans have ever had so commandment. The first make something make anything it may feel like it’s totally insignificant, but it’s vital that you do it number two make something occasionally that actually improves your life from a toilet paper holder that actually works to a a toaster. That’S uh, it’s slightly improved when you make something that you use every day as opposed to something that’s useless. I can’t even tell you how good it feels even like a handle on a drawer if you make a handle in a drawer and you’re using it every single day, the patina of your use that it gets feels really good again and it’s another story.
Okay, here’s one there’s a million different skills being displayed out here and i’m sure a lot of you are walking around and thinking i wish i could do that. I wish i had that skill. Several of these commandments have to do with skills. The thing is: is that a lot of times we stop ourselves from moving forward with a project, because we don’t know how to weld or we don’t know carpentry, and my advice is start now start right now to do the thing that you want to do. There is no time like right now and do it with the things in front of you. If you want to weld a car frame, but you don’t have a welder or a car or a frame go ahead and mock it up out of oak tag and cardboard. There’S a beautiful sculptor here in the bay area, who made himself a 747 out of manila file folders, it’s one of the loveliest things. I’Ve ever seen, four, four four! Yes, i can’t learn any skills unless i have a project to learn with, i need a goal. I need something well, it’s like. I need to need something. I need the thing that i’m trying to attain. I can’t learn to weld just by someone showing me that it should sound like frying eggs and you set the dials like this. I need to end up with wolverine claws or a sword or a pair of stilts, or something like that always try to find a project that will get you interested in the thing that you want to build almost halfway there. Five ask ask questions: ask for help: ask for advice: ask for feedback you’ll find when you make stuff that it’s actually kind of makes you vulnerable to ask for feedback because it totally does. But if you find someone, you trust, ask for advice and when you find someone you trust, ask for feedback. I’Ll, tell you it’s very funny among adults.
We rarely actually turn to each other and say what do you think of the work that i’m doing and it’s because that places us in a very vulnerable spot. But again, if you can find a teacher or a mentor or someone whose opinion you really respect, asking them very specifically about how they think you’re doing can give you incredible insight. I’Ve done it a few times in my life and every single time. I’Ve gotten a tremendous perspective on what i was actually doing share now. There’S a lot of talk about the sharing economy. I’M sure etsy is totally present here at maker faire and we trade stuff and we trade knowledge that is really really important. There is nothing that makes me angrier when somebody does something beautiful and you ask how it’s done and they say it’s a secret, no secrets.
What are you protecting nobody’s gon na, take your technique and then steal your id. Nobody has a monopoly on being you and if you think that your technique is what makes you interesting, you’re being ridiculous, so share your techniques, because when you do someone’s going to come back to you with a better way of doing it and you’re going to learn Something from them seven, please recognize that discouragement and failure are part of every single make project, not something that happens every now and then in every single project. You will find yourself discouraged and you will fail at some point if you recognize that boy, these balcony railings are terrifying. If you recognize that you’re going to fail, at least when it’s about to happen when you are getting discouraged, because you hit a snag and you don’t have the part and it’s sunday night and it’s 4 a.m at least, then you know that that’s part of what’s Going to happen and that the next morning it may be a little harder to get started. But if you know that mechanism you can actually keep going.
I personally – and i’ve said this many times before whenever i’m making something about seventy percent of the way in. I actually think i have no idea what i’m doing and i hate what i’m building and fellini even said that he knows that one of his films is almost finished when he totally despises it and frankly, that 70 80 90 mark the closer you get to the End the more scared i get, because it turns out that i hate finishing things: i’d much rather keep working on them and keep getting that endorphin rush of the ebay research and finding that part that i didn’t know existed actually getting all the way to the end Is a little bit difficult, but if you recognize what your mechanism is, where the places you’ll get frustrated, they are your friends you can welcome them in. This is also part of mindfulness and meditation understand that those thoughts are going to happen and embrace them look. They still are gon na suck.
I’M not gon na lie to you. It sucks to fail. It hurts to cut yourself, but it’s going to happen in every single project. Eight measure carefully measure carefully so for the younger builders in the audience, when you have two things that fit tightly together, that’s called a close tolerance when you have two things that fit loosely together. That is a loose tolerance, knowing the prioritization, knowing when to use a tight tolerance and a loose tolerance is pretty much everything that separates the expert from the novice. I have messed up so many projects.
Even three days ago, i screwed up a project because i tried to work with tolerances that were too tight. It’S just you have to know where you can be tight and where you can be loose. Measuring carefully is the way you do that number nine make things for other people. I can’t even describe to you how much pleasure i get when i make something, and then i give it to somebody else and they get a story. They get the thing that i’ve made, they get the the fruit of a couple of hours of my time and concentration and they get to possess it there. It does make you vulnerable.
When you give your stuff away, you should recognize that giving your stuff away does actually place you in a slightly vulnerable position, but it is also a really magical one, so occasionally, when you’re making stuff give it away, give it to other people number 10. Now, if i could go back in time in a time machine and tell my young self one thing, one thing about making that i really wish i’d known at the beginning, i would have saved a lot of money time and hurt bent fingers. The last commandment use more cooling fluid yes, gold metal cuts much better than hot metal. Those those are my ten commandments of making.
I love maker faire, see you guys next year, you .