TL;DR

Adam Savage spent almost two years reworking a classic WWII-era Emeco Navy chair, drilling thousands of precision holes to see just how much weight he could shave off its iconic aluminum frame. What started as a simple “lighten it up” experiment turned into a surprisingly complex machining puzzle.

Between mapping out hole patterns, wrestling with tooling setups, and tackling unexpected fabrication hurdles, Adam’s mission became a deep dive in material science and workshop ingenuity—proving that even a lightweight icon can get lighter, with the right amount of patience (and power tools).

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