How This Guy Makes Real-Life Marvel Gadgets

[Commentator] This man,

DIY engineers superhero gadgets from his garage.

My name is Jake Laser and I'm the real life Tony Stark.

At this point, I've done over 500 projects

of pretty much every imaginable superhero gadget.

[Commentator] Having spent countless hours

over the last nine years in his garage workshop,

Jake has taken Green Goblin's Glider

Ironman's Briefcase Suit and dozens of other devices

from the realm of make believe into a functioning reality.

That idea of going beyond what normal humans can do

is really relatable.

The excitement that you get.

And that like curiosity and a little bit of mystery as well.

It's all wrapped up in there.

[upbeat music]

[hands clapping]

[Laser giggling] [distant chatter]

I mean, every kid loves superhero movies,

so I've loved superheroes my entire life at this point.

I just love that idea of doing cool stuff

like superhuman abilities you know, like flying,

walking on water, running really fast,

all of this stuff.

I think my favorite build to date

is probably the Spiderman Wall Climbers.

It was a lot of work

but I sort of had a vision

and saw it through and it like really worked well.

I was able to climb 14 story skyscraper

and it was amazing.

It was most fun thing I've ever done.

Spider-Man out.

[Commentator] And he's made it his career.

Jake spends his days filming himself

making these devices and then films them in action.

He wants to share his enthusiasm and passion

for the world of comic books

and hopefully inspire online audiences

to try to make fictional greatness into a reality.

In my videos, I like to show the entire process

and it's mostly me failing like 85, 90% of the video

is okay, we tried this, it doesn't work.

Move on to next thing that didn't work either

but we got closer.

And then that just makes the end of the video so much better

when it does work.

[Commentator] For every finished piece,

there are many steps of invention along the way.

Even now Jake has projects in the works

that don't quite function the way he wants.

Okay, so this is my next project.

This is a device that will hopefully let me walk on water.

I'm about midway through this.

I first started out with like floaties on my feet

which didn't go very well.

Look.

[Laser laughing]

It all sort of boils down to like a physics problem.

So, you really just need to push 190 pounds downward.

And then in theory, I'll be able to stand on water.

So I first ordered these propellers

completely waterproof brush less motors.

They would go sort of on my feet like that.

However, I don't think

they have enough power to lift me out.

So, what I just did is it got this much bigger motor

connected it to this bathroom scale.

The more pressure it pushes up

we can read that right on the scale.

So this was able to put out about 160 pounds of thrust

and I didn't want to go any higher than that

because I physically couldn't hold it.

[machine whirring] [Laser groaning]

So the plan now is to take this motor

and mount it to my leg.

So to do that, I first sketched up a design on the computer.

This is the bare bones frame.

Again, this is all trial and error but CNC milled this

you can see sort of the similarities

with computer screen and what we have right here.

So, the way this works

put my foot in like that strap it all in.

There's gonna be straps everywhere

and a motor like this is gonna sit right here

and there's gonna be a shaft like this

that goes through this hole out there

and connect to a propeller up in here.

And then that should provide more than enough thrust

for me to balance and walk, run, skate around

on the surface of water.

And also hopefully swim around underwater

sort of like Aquaman.

[machine whirring]

[Man In Background] Wow.

Right about now I would say I've gotten the concept.

I've done a fair amount of research.

I've played around with a couple different methods,

like the floaties and then sort of settled on a design

that I think will work.

So I'd say I'm building

what I think is the final prototype.

I'd say almost all the processes, trial and error.

Like you really don't know what's gonna happen.

It's you do it, like you can do as much

simulating on the computer as you want.

But especially in the way that I like to work.

I like to make rapid prototypes first and then test.

You can learn so much more from testing

than you can from theorizing and running models

and all this stuff.

Like if you just make a crude prototype, test it

you can get so much information.

[Commentator] These prototypes can have many iterations,

but once Jake figures out how to make a gadget work

he's ready to get into the garage and build.

So I'm gonna be making a Captain America Shield

that actually bounces off walls in the corners and stuff.

Ooh, Ooh, Ooh careful.

Yo, good catch.

So to do that, we through a couple things.

We need to make sure are the weight of the Shield

is light enough so it flies, kind of like a Frisbee

but also we need to make it spring.

So it bounces like a ball.

And so to do that, we're gonna be using some fiberglass.

This is a basically a fiberglass ring

that is about two feet in diameter

about the size of a shield.

So this is what's gonna be on the outside.

To keep it lightweight and also strong,

we're gonna be making the inside of the shield

out of some carbon fiber.

So carbon fiber is naturally like very bendy like this.

So to give it its strength, we're gonna be using some epoxy.

There's two part epoxy, mix them together,

it creates a really hard substance that, you know

fuses the carbon fiber together and makes it very strong.

To do that,

I put a layer of mold release,

put a layer of epoxy down

then put carbon fiber, put another layer of epoxy

and then put more carbon fiber on top.

So it's two layers thick

which should give us a nice balance of strength to weight.

For whatever reason, I never get tired of building.

I just don't know what it is.

I just get in a zone

and it never feels like work, which is amazing.

And I think engineering and superheroes

can be one and the same like

Ironman sort of proves that.

He's not a superhero.

He doesn't have any magical abilities,

but yet he's able to go toe to toe

with a literal god like Thor.

So it looks like the epoxy is dry.

So I think we can pop this carbon fiber out

and get to making it.

So, sometimes if it's not all the way hard

it won't come out of mold completely right

but I think we should be good with this one.

There we go.

Yeah.

Whew.

All right.

So then on this side we have carbon fiber.

[gentle knocking] Pretty hard.

I'm just using standard scissors to trim up the edges.

We're gonna trim it down

so it fits couple inches on the inside of this fiberglass.

So now we're left with a nice circular carbon fiber disc

that should fit inside of the ring right here.

So now we have to coat this in some rubber.

[paper rustling] [upbeat music]

So I'm just gonna have a little more glue

to the inside of this

to just completely encase this in rubber.

What that's gonna do is also protect us from the fiberglass

'cause fiberglass will actually splinter.

It's pretty nasty stuff

but it makes for good Captain America Shield so.

[Laser giggling]

[Commentator] No matter how long a project takes,

Jake can always see the final product

and drives himself towards it until the fantastical

is in his hands.

So I'm just gonna use the mold as sort of a guide.

We don't want to lopsided shield.

Yeah, that's about right.

And then once we've got it lined up

we are gonna to push it down.

Push up on all the rubber and get it to connect.

[soft music]

All right.

So this is pretty much ready to go.

We've got carbon fiber rubber

and fiberglass all connected together.

So the last thing we would have to do is paint it

but this is pretty much ready to throw at a wall

and it'll look really cool.

[shield thudding]

[Man In Background] There you go.

There it is.

The funny thing is the first time

I made the prototype of this shield,

it worked like that never happens.

I was thinking about it for a while.

Just how to physically make this work.

And I was just like,

oh I'll just go to throw together a prototype

probably did it in like five, 10 minutes.

Threw it at a wall and it bounced

directly back to me already.

It was so cool.

And I was like, oh my God.

So I ran inside

and showed my manager Christian and he was blown away too.

We were like, what is this?

And we were like, we're holding like,

it's like we discovered fire for the first time.

It's like, oh my God, this is gonna be amazing.

I think to truly sell the story

of the video and the setting we're trying to create.

I think making it look movie realistic is super important.

We pride ourselves, not only in like making cool stuff

but also more of that artistic eye

to try and really capture

what the movie would be in real life

in a way that pretty much anyone could do it.

[Commentator] The functionality and realism

of Jake's creations bring the magic of superheroes alive

making the world's our comic book icons in habit

a little closer to ours.

I think that superheroes spark so much joy

for a lot of reasons actually.

There's the social aspect of being able to do so much more

and having all of this pressure I think is pretty cool.

And just that out of the norm ability

that superheroes have I think is really relatable

'cause I think superheros also take

a lot of inspiration from animals.

Every kid looked up in the sky and seen a bird

and it's like, wow, I wanna do that.

Then you take a superhero

put it on screen and show it flying.

I've always wanted to do that.

Childhood me would be so excited.

[Laser giggling]

Just thinking about I had all these ideas all through.

I was growing up and finally being able to do them

which is really cool

and you know new ideas that

I never thought would be possible

and getting and finding a way to do those as well.

[soft music]

I hope people take away that

impossible might not be as impossible as they think.

You know, if a dude in the garage can build stuff like this,

you know, why can't you?

I want my videos to be somewhat relatable,

show that this stuff can actually exist

and sort of give people hope that like

I could actually do something like that

if I put my mind to it.

Then I hope in the same way to like

maybe inspire some people to, you know

learn more about science and engineering and stuff

'cause that really is a super power on its own.

You have this ability to create things that didn't exist.

Give yourself these abilities with your mind like

that's to me is amazing.

And I hope I'm conveying that to other people as well.

[soft music]