Live and Let Chai: Part 2, The Build

[Music] [Applause] all right everyone welcome back for part two the build so the first step in building this divergent safe is obviously buying a thermos this particular model is the stanley classic two quart version this bigger version allows for fully concealing equipment using the maximum space available but the actual first step in building the thermos diversion safe is safety although you cannot see me i am wearing safety goggles and hearing protection for this project this is no joke as we will be dealing with very dangerous stuff and since i don't want to have a stick shoved up my nose or get entered into a database it would be wise to be overly cautious so as to avoid a trip to the hospital so the absolute most difficult part of this entire project we're going to do first and the hard part is getting this end cap off now at the factory this is put on there with a fair amount of force with using a press of some kind some kind of hydraulic press so to get it off is is kind of a difficult thing to do but the actual way that has worked the most for most of the thermoses we've actually done has been using heat so the first step is to drill holes in or a small hole in the actual body of the thermos and this does a couple of things for one it turns your vacuum bottle into a natural ambient air bottle because it's no longer under a vacuum so we're re-pressurizing that container anytime you're using heat or any kind of construction or building something you don't want to have to deal with any sort of potential explosive behavior right and also likewise we drill a small hole in the very bottom of the thermos as well and this is why we're drilling that hole in the bottom of the end cap as you can see here we're skipping forward a few steps because it was very hard for me to actually film this while doing it you'll notice that the actual end cap is not the final cap right there's actually this this other little bit of hardware that goes in between the actual end cap and the rest of the bottle that's that's the bottom of the actual container and that's how the stanley bottle has the air evacuated from it so that it's a true vacuum bottle but this is a very much a hazard because if you use a blow torch to heat up the end cap to remove it and get rid of all that glue and gunking stuff if you get rid of that using a blowtorch then you have the potential to create explosive results which we do not want so drilling a small hole in the bottom of the end cap and re-pressurizing the container by getting rid of the vacuum part of the bottle that will ensure that it is the safest you could possibly be otherwise you're gonna have some you're gonna you're gonna have some problems once you heat up either around the edge with blowtorch you should be able to monkey with it a little bit and get it to come off now like i mentioned this is the most difficult part of the whole operation you might have to have a buddy come and help you pull that bad boy off and you might have to use a screwdriver to kind of lightly pry it off a little bit without damaging it but once you get it off it's smooth sailing for the rest of the way for the most part so the next step after you get the actual cap off is to use a stack of books or some other kind of mechanism for creating a straight line and this is where we're drawing the line on this particular bottle just above uh if you're looking at the right way up just above the stanley label because we want to preserve that actual stanley label to make it look a little bit more authentic when it's done and you know we're just kind of eyeballing it here it doesn't need to be specific or precise this is about three quarters of an inch from the shoulder of the bottle there as you can see and then once we get that marked we can go ahead and cut that bottle part so as you can see here i'm using a dremel tool and once you cut all the way around it then you now have the inside of the bottle so this is the actual part that holds the liquid and this is the part that we're going to be cutting cutting away to shorten it now that hollow cavity that i'm setting over there off to the side that is the part that's going to hold the actual equipment that we're going to be storing inside this and once again we're going to repeat the process using our marker just just slightly above the actual mark that we made before so that it's a little easier to to do and you'll see once i start cutting it here um how it actually all works as you can see here on this particular one i decided to cut it a little bit further down i would recommend cutting it a little bit further up because you can't quite see it with your eye but the bottle is actually tapered just so slightly so when you cut the bottom of this container off it's going to not fit unless you actually cut pretty close up to the shoulder of the bottle it's going to be too wide and it's not going to work for some reason this particular length worked quite well but on another one this is the other one i did it didn't work at all and i had to end up cutting basically at the same level as the outside outside layer so once you end up cutting this this will fit perfectly as you can see that i tried all kinds of mechanisms grinding it down to get it to fit it did not work but if you do it right the first time you will not have to do what i'm doing here and cutting a second time all right so once you you've made all of your major cuts and you've got got everything all cut apart that you need you can grind that down a little bit so that it's not so sharp this for one prevents you from getting little cuts and also it allows it to stick together a little bit better just by dulling those sharp points down so as you can see i forgot to film it but i went ahead and cut the bottom of the interior uh container and that is it fitted on to the actual containers as you can see all we're doing is cutting out the guts the middle part of that center container that actually holds the liquid and we are making it fit right up there at the very top so that it can only hold a very small amount of liquid and as you can see if you get the cutting part just right the first time it is a perfect fit so we're going to actually attach this now and as you can see we're using jb weld as our favorite favorite adhesive for this this is going to weld the actual container shut so that it remains water tight because jb weld is of course waterproof once it is dried and cured and it functions much the same as an actual weld especially for light use applications like this so this will work just fine for us as you can see here i'm using quite a bit because i don't actually know how much i will need it's a little bit different every time so i just use a good amount that looks like a maybe a tablespoon and then that ended up being a little bit too much but if you wanted to start with a tablespoon of both the actual jb weld itself and the hardener a tablespoon of each roughly that will give you plenty to work with you never want to mix up too little when it comes to adhesives or glues that are two parts you always want to make sure that you've got plenty so that it doesn't harden up on you while you are putting it together so we're going to mix these two together and classic jb weld form everybody knows how to use jb weld and once we get it to a nice good consistency we're going to start applying it to the actual bottom of the container now this is how i chose to put it on the inside you could do it another way this way is slightly messy and as you can see i forgot to mention that you should always use latex gloves when using jb will because it will stick to you and i like an idiot did not i forgot to put on the latex gloves this time and i ended up with sticky hands so make sure that you do that especially when this particular job is not going to be exactly non-messy it's gonna be a very messy job so once you've got it all on there you can use a tongue depressor in my case to smooth it around and make sure that it's it's as uniform as possible remember we're not really going for gray day work here we're going for what works so as you can see here we're sticking it right on there give it a slight little bit of a wiggle and a little bit of a quarter of a turn and make sure it's seated just fine and that will cure for the amount of time for jb weld i gave it a full day just to make absolutely certain a full 24 hours that it is in fact bonded together just in case i didn't get everything quite mixed up together so once your jb weld is hardened you can switch over to the epoxy fill now this epoxy fill is going to do a couple of a couple of things for one it's going to insulate the inside of the container just a little bit so that so as to protect your equipment on the inside from radical temperature changes such as putting a hot beverage in the top part of the container also it's going to add a considerable amount of strength because as you can see here we have cut uh away eliminated a lot of the structural integrity of the bottle itself so what we're going to do is line it back up to where we cut it apart it's not going to be perfect but if you might have to grind a little bit here and there but in my case it worked out quite quite well there's only a very small gap maybe less than 16 of an inch just a hair gap around the edge and what we're doing here is i'm using the tape that i had handy that day which in this case was gorilla tape classic one inch gorilla tape and i'm taping around the edge so as to prevent the epoxy from flowing out now in hindsight i did not know it while filming this but this is not really a great choice because even though gorilla tape is waterproof it's not really great for epoxy because the epoxy tended to interact with the adhesive from the gorilla tape so i ended up using a lot of painters tape which you will see in a minute but here we are mixing up the actual epoxy the particular epoxy i used is just the cheapest stuff i could possibly find on amazon and this was a 16 ounce kit and as you can see here i'm trying to use roughly 75 of each container i actually ended up using all both containers the entirety of both containers uh when it comes to mixing this epoxy because i didn't have quite enough and i want to make sure i overfilled it rather than under filled it so i ended up using both containers together so mixing it up making sure it's nice and mixed and there we are pouring it into the bottom of the container now like i said this adds a nice little layer in there to prevent bumping and scratching and things like that and it also makes the uh joint very very strong now one thing to keep in mind is if you end up putting hot liquids in this most epoxies will start to soften around 165 degrees which is well within the range of a hot you know cup of water or coffee or whatever you're putting inside the actual thermos part so keep that in mind is if you end up using a lot of hot liquids in this thing all the time you might want to get a heat sensitive epoxy and here we go once it's dry 24 hours later and actually in my case it took two days to dry because this epoxy was not very high quality um you can remove the tape and start peeling away some of the extra excess epoxy that may have leaked a little bit once we've got things all smoothed out we have to address the quite obvious elephant in the room this seam right here now you can just leave it like it is and most people won't notice it at all but remember we want to make this as camouflaged as possible so we went on the internet and ordered a bunch of random stickers in this case we chose a hiking slash outdoor themed sticker pack to make this bottle look like it belongs to a hipster or something this is important because we don't want this bottle to be coated with stickers that say glock or smith wesson or anything that remotely seems related to firearms most companies in a firearms and tactical gear community usually ship their products with a sticker or two but it is important to make sure to go out and buy some stickers that aren't conspicuous with which to cover up the seam and finally we can turn to our closure method now for us we've tried out a few different methods of closing this container but the one that is easiest to replicate and the easiest for most people to do is the simple press fit method as you can see here we had a bit of an issue filming this part because we had to make these cuts in a location that is not very conducive to filming but you get the gist these cuts allow the bottom lips to flex and this alone provides enough friction to grip that pesky silver end cap these cuts are definitely needed because this end cap will not come off unless you have them it's just too strong of a bond on this particular prototype bottle we fitted a very strong magnet to the inside of the end cap this allows for a very specific use of being able to use a piece of metal or steel or something to pull off the end cap in a hurry in retrospect this feature isn't necessary or really all that useful but i did want to show it just in case anybody was wondering and that's it that's the basic build of the stanley vacuum bottle diversion safe as you can see the uses of something like this are endless and if you shop around you will probably find other double-walled vacuum bottles that this technique could work very well with there are lots of cheap double walled water bottles on the market nowadays so this is something that you can by all means experiment with to create your own custom equipment so let us know what you think of this setup and if you have any ideas for improvement let us know in the comment section below also make sure to check out our other platforms and resources in the description box below and finally a special thank you to our patreon supporters who make content like this possible and with that we will see you next time and always remember to fight in the shade or in this case the potting shed [Music] [Applause] you