How to Build a DIY Sledgehammer Lamp
Published June 11, 2021 · 12:28 · 174,239 views
About This Video
A gift-building tutorial for Father's Day: the Destroyer Lamp. I love this build. A 10-pound sledgehammer with a wooden shaft, a Home Depot heat lamp, 4-inch vice grips, plumber's epoxy, and a plywood base with felt feet. The standard version barely holds together; the deluxe version uses the vice grips to lock the clamp and the epoxy to stabilize it permanently.
Van prices it out (more expensive and harder than buying something store-bought) and that's precisely the point. Your dad will love it and your mom will hate it, or vice versa, and that's the perfect symbiosis.
Transcript
hey i'm van neistat with the sledgehammer man and today we're going to show you how to make a destroyer lamp okay so the star of the destroyer lamp is your sledgehammer this is a ten pounder i have an eight pounder on my desk make sure you get the wooden shaft and this detail is very important it should have a little ring in here the wood should protrude to through the iron because we're going to need to drill into here and the reason we're going to need to do that is because though the base is very stable well relatively stable this way once we put our lamp on here it'll pull itself over without a base so we're going to make the we're going to make the base right now so we want our base slightly bigger than the head of our sledgehammer so just take the combo square measure the sledge hammer and then go i don't know half an inch bigger just draw your little square here i like to do a light sanding just to prevent splinters just a little basic geometry to get the center point right just do a little corner to corner we're gonna drill a hole through there this is very hard wood so we're gonna be just a little bit narrower than the edge outer edge of the threads it's a three and a half inch screw so you're gonna go all the way to the base of the of the bit and just try to nail it right in the middle let's countersink the bottom so this is ac plywood this is the a side the nice side and this is the c side the not as nice side so let's countersink it's a little bit protruding but i think it'll pull it flat once we get anchor it into the shaft of our sledgehammer all right so this is a little weird you got to kind of hold it like this so you can get good leverage and do not this is dangerous do not not physically dangerous but dangerous to the project don't snap this long screw so kind of oh no dead battery oh yeah yeah it's really snug it's nice and snug so and this is kind of up to you if do you want it on a diagonal so that when it's on dad's desk you know it's up to you i have mine on my desk it's i have it so that it's basically perpendicular to the i have it on my desk like that diagonal looks great too it'll hold the lamp and it won't fall over all right so that's the that's the sledgehammer part of the project and now we'll do the lamp part of the project 14 at home depot it's called a heat lamp don't get the one that's like a clip light it's just not as high quality and the clamp isn't as strong and it won't really work so it comes with these little guards that go in to protect you from accidentally touching the heat lamp and the way you use these is you open the garbage can and you throw them in and then they'll work forever like that basically the reason you buy the heat lamp is because it has the stronger it has the strong clamp here and there's no such thing as a good clip light so this will take some mods to get it to get it to be an acceptable clip light i like these ones the best because they're held on with this nut like a ceramic nut they're ceramic so they're really high heat this is agonizing and annoying this this connection and i'm showing you how to build the standard version of the destroyer lamp and then i'll show you how to build the deluxe version so for the standard version you just you use the like the stock the stock clamp and like you got to get it in there just right and it's it's a pain in the neck and if you loosen this too much the whole thing falls apart and it it kind of barely holds the lamp in place but this is the standard version this is the fast one for you to build for your dad and there you go there's your lamp without lamps there would be no light okay this is the deluxe version so you'll notice it doesn't really stay so okay here's the key the four inch vice grips they're the little teeny tiny ones you don't want heavy ones because they'll pull the lamp over but these little teeny tiny ones they go right on the clip and they hold the thing nice and then you can adjust the lamp however you want it and it's fantastic that took years for me to develop okay another thing in order to hold this clamp in place so that it doesn't fall apart when it's loose you use plumber's epoxy not jb weld it comes in a little stick like this there's a brand called propoxy this is called plumbing hand mold moldable specifically for plumbing repairs this stuff dries in like five minutes this is also crucial for any off-road motorcycle adventure you need to have this because if you punch a hole in your oil pan you can plug it with this in five minutes and keep riding and if not you are so screwed but i cut this off in little discs you mold it until it's a one solid color and then you just kind of play-doh it around it holds the clamp together and then after five minutes it's there and it you know you don't have to worry about it again okay so that's the clamp part now we'll deal with the wire oh i've made a mistake okay good that means i can do that means i can do this more sexy okay i like to do chords so that they have natural they sort of go naturally how they want to go this particular cord has been bound up uh so it's all it's like wrinkled but so okay so we'll do a little bit of we'll do a little like this it could be more beautiful than this but that's what we'll do don't buy the one dollar a bag zip ties buy the four dollar a bag zip ties you can take a heat gun and go in there and heat up the wires and get it to be a perfect swoop but i think two of these like one right here and then one right here right and now clip clip okay the base i paint i love this poster paint this acrylic poster paint it's for like arts and crafts for preschool and i painted the the wood with this poster paint i love it because it's matte and then then i cut after it was dried and it allows you to write in pencil in black and you can still sort of read it i love i i love that and then i also i love one of the things i love in life are the our feet these are the these are like white felt feet and you know these here's brown ones if you want to be able to slide the lamp you put the felt feet on if you wanna if you want the lamp to stick you put either the like acrylic feet on or the cork feet which are even more beautiful this could be considered pretentious but this is one of those like really high quality labels i hope please don't tear please don't tear please don't tear yes it is okay you could do this like this put it on here even though that's like it could go either way but just like i don't know it makes it look amazing it's like made in mexico which is badass it's got the old glory on it which is also badass i like this company collins axe it's either eight pound or ten pound which is the one we did for the standard version and uh that's it put it in a box 80 bucks to ship to your dad so the prices it was like this is five bucks or seven bucks this is five bucks this is probably five bucks the plywood is 15 bucks the lamp is 15 bucks this thing is 10 bucks maybe 8.99 for the vice grips you know buy the four dollar bag of zip ties so i don't know we could do all the math for that and maybe the math is now in a title on the screen and then the shipping so this isn't a thing you make because it's cheaper than buying your dad something it's more expensive than buying the store-bought thing that you're gonna buy your dad and it's harder to do and you gotta ship it unless your dad lives in the same town but uh all those things are felt when it's on your dad's desk he'll he'll love it and your mom will hate it or your mom will love it and your dad will hate it and to me that's kind of the perfect symbiosis and that's called the destroyer lamp the destroyer lamp is the perfect gift for any kind of fathers stepfathers grandfathers fathers fathers even the church kind oh oh yeah all right man yeah yeah i was afraid that was going to happen because of the goddamn thing you sure you're okay try your arm and stuff yeah i'm fine all right you're wearing leather up the lamp though to get on film yeah we got it you