01x05 - A Shadow of a Doubt

[bunniefuu]

[buzzing]

[somber music playing]

[whirring]

Ivan, Tom, Lou, Rae, congratulations.

Right now,
there's only two challenges left

standing between you
and the Metal Shop Master

and that $50,000 prize.

In all competitions, there's
winners and losers. They're opposites.

Just like sharp and dull, hot and cold,

shadow and light.

I know. What are you looking at?

I didn't know Jo was missing a finger.

Did he cut it in
one of those hot plasma cutters?

No. Was he in a welding g*ng,
and he's throwing up the sign?

No, you guys. It's neither one of those.

But when I do this,

it's no longer a hand.

It's a wolf howling at the moon.

[howling]

[chuckling]

I know it's ridiculous, but that's
what your next build is gonna be.

You're gonna combine sculpture
with light to create a shadow.

[Rae] I've never done shadow art before.

Quite frankly I'm kind of scared,
but I got a college education to pay for.

So, I can't go nowhere.
Your girl's staying.

[buzzing]

This is our way of testing your ability
to think beyond the form itself.

The sculpture must represent one thing,

then, when the light shines on it,

the shadow that it casts must represent
something completely different.

Using these pieces
of square tubing, rod, and sheet metal,

you have eight hours to create a sculpture
that will tell two stories.

I call my story the hand who cried wolf.

[howling]

[Ivan chuckles]

I don't know.
Uhh, his standup's phenomenal but yeah.

I'm not sure if he's writing this stuff.
It's some pretty heavy dad jokes. [laughs]

This is a challenge
that requires a lot less fabrication

and a whole lot more sculpturing.

It's completely different from what
you've been doing on the other challenges.

And these must tell two different stories.

You guys have great choices
of materials over here.

You have some tubing. You have some rod.

I want to see you use these materials
in ways that might impress me.

I don't want to see that piece of rod
still look like a piece of rod.

[David] Exactly.

Welders, after today's challenge,
half of you are going home.

And the top two will remain.

It's gonna be a double elimination.

If I wanna f*cking stay here,
I have to bring my A game.

Your eight hours start now.

Go! Go!

Oh man, they're starting now.

[David] This is real.

[Jo Koy] For this challenge,we asked
our welders to build a shadow sculpture.

They must combine sculpture
with light to create a shadow.

Their design must
reveal two different images,

one physical and one in shadow,

and using only the materials provided.

They will have eight hours
to complete this build.

-[clattering]
-[David] Yes! Love it!

-Love it. [claps]
-[Jo Koy] That's Ivan.

[Lou]
My sculpture consists of five components

that each look like different stages
of an eclipse.

When the lights turn on,
the shadow that is cast

will actually create an image
of a three-dimensional sphere.

In order to create depth in the sculpture,

I'm spacing each layer
approximately 3 inches from the next.

Then, I'm also staggering them
left to right.

So that way, they don't look
stacked on top of each other,

and you can identify each
different parts of the eclipse.

At first, I tried to bend the heavier rod
to create the crescent shape.

Spent some time doing that,
but it took forever.

It was t*rture, to be honest with you.

This is insane.

[sighs] Man, I'll define the shapes first,
and then I'll go from there.

So instead of bending the heavier rod,

I used TIG rod again 'cause it
bends quickly. It's malleable.

And I make really generic templates

to kind of give me a guide down the road
when I go to bend the heavier stuff.

I'm gonna get the shape
that I'm looking for way faster.

Unlike the other challenges,
I am 1000% more excited about this,

but using a shadow
is a completely new medium for me.

I need to get into the unknown
right off the bat

so that I have some sort of control
over what's going on.

Otherwise, the experimental process
would be at the end which could bite me.

Creatively, is this one
of the most difficult builds?

-Yeah.
-[David] Yes.

[Stephanie] We're asking them to build
basically two things in eight hours.

It's going to be very hard to turn that
into a sculpture that we're gonna love.

And at the same time,
have that shadow effect going forward.

-So, very complicated build.
-Yeah.

[Stephanie]
With this being a fine art challenge,

Ivan's history using negative space

could really give him an advantage
in this challenge.

I was trying to think of what to do,
and I had a dream last night about my dog.

My dog passed away while I was here.

Art can be very therapeutic.
And my design on this challenge

is gonna be a sculpture of this
old boxelder tree I have in my yard,

with a swing hanging from it,
and the shadow it's gonna cast

is gonna be me with my dog Zophie.

I've never done one of these before,

but I figure the easiest way
to do it is gonna be like...

coloring, trying to stay inside the lines.

Like back to kindergarten.

But instead of coloring with crayons,
I'm coloring with a shadow.

The most difficult part of this challenge,
they asked us to tell two stories.

One story with a sculpture,
one story with a shadow.

That threw me for a loop. I've never done

a sculpture like this,
where the shadow is the focal point.

I'm gonna start by making the tree, so

I'll take a bunch of 8th-inch rod
that I found in the scrap bin,

and start welding it together,
bending it up.

That'd make a nice looking tree,
be really easy.

Bundle them together. There's a trunk.

Spread them at the bottom for roots,
branches off the top.

I've seen this on the Internet,
but you have a pile of junk,

you shine a light for a beautiful shadow.

They're asking for a sculpture
that tells a story,

and have the shadow
tell a whole different story.

That part is gonna make this
more complicated.

Yeah, I'm a little nervous. There's only
two spots so half of us are going home.

[vibrant music playing]

-Sculpture-wise, you're kinda that guy.
-[David] Yes.

I want to see those rich,
rich textures in this sculpture.

I've been seeing a lot of fabrication,

but no, this challenge
is all about the sculpture.

[Tom] I'm mentally
packing my bags right now

because the challenge
is something I've never heard of,

casting a shadow off
a piece of art that looks different

than when casting the shadow.

Figured if the challenge is complex,

why not make it
something I'm comfortable with?

I figured building a race car
and a spaceship meet the criteria.

Maybe I don't need
to pack my bags just yet.

For my sculpture idea, I came up
with a space shuttle launching off,

and the shadow that it casts
will be the outline of an Indy car.

These are two things I both really enjoy.

[buzzing]

So what I'm doing is
I'm building up a nose cone,

by MIG welding
thinner material on top of it,

so I can match the nose, and also
make the external tank of the shuttle.

This process takes a little of time,
but is the backbone of the sculpture.

If this is off,
it will be setting me up for failure.

[whirring]

The three other people I'm competing
against are very skilled metal artists.

That means on this challenge,
I'm gonna focus on the details.

Decisions in this competition
can clearly cost you $50,000.

-[Stephanie] Hello, Rae.
-Hi.

What's going on?

So, my middle name is Monet.

You would think the first artist I'd
ever be introduced to is Monet, right?

No. Ninja Turtles.

Michelangelo.
The Sistine Chapel, the hand.

The sculpture is gonna look like
a pile of junk on the outside,

but on the inside, I'm going to do
Michelangelo's hands from the chapel.

So the hands represent God and Adam.

I'm going to try
to paint that image with light,

highlighting the details in shadow.

Almost like a negative.

The other competitors might
be doing negative space on the outside.

-Yeah.
-[David] You're doing it on the inside.

-So you're cutting these...
-With sculpture.

You'll literally never know what it was
until the light shines through.

If I can get the hands detailed out,

and the light to come through enough,
to where the hands will be detailed out,

and the lighting process,
then I should be in good shape.

This is like reverse art.

I have this strange feeling
it's gonna be really difficult for me.

I'm having a hard time envisioning exactly
how these hands will turn into a face

because this is very outside
my realm of knowledge.

It's very outside mine! [chuckles]

Have you worked this out already?
With the...

No, but hopefully if I see what's
in my brain, I can get it to come out.

All right Rae,
we'll let you get back to work.

Thank you. I'm gonna paint by light,
so I'm gonna create shadows

that are the definition of the hands.

So after I grab a bunch of rod,

I started tacking everything together
in the shape of hands.

This is not gonna be easy.

It'd be super easy to create
the hands with plasma cutting,

but instead, I decided
to go with multiple pieces.

I want to challenge myself.
I don't want take the easy way out.

Almost.

[buzzing]

Looking around the room, Tom back there.

I love that he put himself into
his design, but I just hope it's not flat.

I agree completely. Let's just hope he can
get out of that fabricator rut

and do something sculpturesque.

So I made the cone of the Indy car.

And it will also be the top

of the external tank
for the shuttle, as a sculpture.

So now I'm cutting
the bottom of the barrel out,

to cut out a bunch of random-shaped clouds
to attach to the bottom of my sculpture

to look like the clouds
coming out of the rocket.

Gonna beat the crap out of this.

This is an assembly line of junk.
I have to go factory work on this.

One process at a time
and just repeat over and over.

David said he wanted to see texture.

To me, that is very important

'cause again that detail
could win or send me home.

Texture, texture.

I have a whole random amount.
I went Rae on this.

I didn't care.
I just cut out a bunch of funky shapes.

And you get a car doing a burnout,

or when you turn it on,
the smoke coming out of the rocket.

So obviously, I'm just trying
to get the bulk of it filled.

And then I will go in and kind of
conform pieces to fill in the details.

The welding going in this challenge is
so different because what you're welding

is not what you're looking at.

Usually, you look at what you're welding,
but I get everything held up...

[imitates zapping] And I zap it.
Strangest thing I've ever done in my life.

We're a couple hours into the project,
still have to build the spaceshuttle.

Uhhh.

I'm feeling kind of nervous
because everybody else in that room

is used to building sculptures.

If I turned off my precision and my OCD,

probably get a lot more work done
because I'm measuring five times.

-[Ivan] That's looking cool.
-That doesn't look too cool.

Yours looks crazy.

I can't see this thing,
but all I see is wires.

I know you're a master at what you do,
that'll turn out to be like,

-the Mona Lisa. You'll be all right.
-[Ivan] Yeah, right?

You stand back and look at my piece,
it's still just straight,

rods sticking up in the air everywhere.

But now I'm starting to work on the swing.

I'm gonna make some
aluminum rope for my swing.

You gotta clamp it lightly,
or it'll just break off. Like this.

[whirring]

[Ivan] Here's our rope.

Nice and clean and even,

and kind of looking like rope.

The most difficult part of this challenge
from a technical standpoint,

really is just trying to keep it
figurative and still fill space.

I've a lot of space that I have to fill
to get the shadow I'm looking for.

I'm separating things out
so it won't have any

look of an image at all in the shadow.

I want it to be a tree.
I want it to be like a scene in a yard,

with a little guy
on the swing and everything.

If I have to at the end, I'll toss in
some random pieces just to fill it out,

but hopefully, I won't have to do that,
and can keep it looking as if

it's just this sculpture of a tree
and a swing, a little man on a swing, and...

When you hit it with the light,
it turns into something else.

That's what I'm going for.

[upbeat music playing]

[whirring]

[David] Lou, he has a conceptual mind,

so he thinks about these things
in such a different way.

The cool thing about his too,
was he wasn't attacking the shadow piece

on a dead, like straight on light.

He actually is turning
his piece on a 45-degree angle.

He might be able
to get more depth out of his piece

because of the angle he's choosing to use.

[Lou] I get all my templates made out.

They have a crescent shape
representing a solar eclipse.

My plan is to start with the first piece
being completely solid,

so it creates the darkest shadow possible.

Then slowly but surely,
I will allow more light

through each layer
to create that gradient in the shadow.

No, that looks horrible.
I feel like it's too simple.

Oh, sh*t.

Although I'm starting to wrap my mind
around the shadow,

I still don't really understand
what shapes are doing in space,

and what they'll look like
to cast a correct shadow.

Man, I don't know, the competitors
are really bringing the heat on this one.

Ivan's blowing my mind
with what he's got going over there.

Tom's project
is just good usage of materials

and the two different concepts.

And I look over at Rae's,
and it looks like a disaster.

But I start to see what she's doing,
and she's like a mini Michelangelo.

I'm starting to get worried,
like I may be going home.

Does that read like a sphere?

-I mean, it looks like it's radius.
-Looks round.

It looks round. If that's a compliment...

I'm a nervous son of a b*tch.

I'm totally inside my head, yeah.

[buzzing]

Out of the four, who do you think
has the best skill set for this challenge?

There's not a clear winner
among any of them.

You have Lou, whose conceptual,
outside-the-box thinking will give him

a total advantage with the shadow part.

And Tom's fabrication skills
will help master these scrap materials.

Then you have Rae and Ivan's
history with doing metal art,

which will only help them.

But it is important they don't get
too wrapped up in the sculpture

and forget completely about the shadow.

Yeah.

[Rae] That won't work.

I can't even get my hand in there.

Just everything
that could go wrong is going wrong.

It's too tight.

My gloves kept
getting in the way of the shadow,

it was blocking
everything I needed to see.

So I'm struggling all together,
from the very beginning.

I couldn't get the shadows
to come through the hands

the way I wanted them
to come through the hands.

So, now I have to do something else.

[David] It doesn't look like
she knows what she's doing.

You know what's weird?
The other three competitors all started

with a piece of paper
and a flashlight shining on it.

Rae was the only one
who just had her vision and started on it.

I get it. It is sculpture.

But the other half is shadow,
and you have to do those calculations.

You have to work through the light,
the shadow, that negative space.

Rae's great at improvising,
but it could come back to bite her.

There's too much detail,
and I don't have enough time.

I'll have to go with plan B.

She's scrapping her piece.
She's starting again.

-Oh, man.
-[Stephanie] Oh my God.

Ivan!

Can I use that tape?

[Stephanie]
She just threw her stuff to the side.

She grabbed a new piece of paper.

She's at the halfway point right now.
She has four hours left.

If she completely abandons ship,
how do you come back from that?

Everything fell apart,
so I decided to just start over fresh.

See what else I can do.

I'm not gonna give up.

I don't have enough time
to get those holes to work right,

so I'm gonna have to go somewhere else.

So, my new f*cking design idea

is I'm going to create a g*n
with a woman's face in it.

Women in sexual as*ault
and sexual abuse situations

are always swept under the rug,
and we're not allowed to talk about it.

And so I was inspired
by the silence and wanted to use that.

This is literally probably the hardest
sculpture I've ever done in my life.

I literally can't even see a shadow.

I gotta get out of this light.
f*ck it, I'll go on the ground.

Oh my.

So I'm totally f*cking up this build.

I'm not gonna lie, like...
My stomach fell out of my butt.

[Ivan] So it's the final three hours,

I'm still manipulating branches.

But as I'm going, I'm also working on
other pieces, jumping around.

Now I'm starting to work on the little man
that'll be sitting in the swing.

That's gonna be me.

[buzzing]

[Ivan] I just took a piece rod
for the skeleton of it.

I'm shaping out a body
with pieces of sheet metal.

To make it look more like
a full body of a human.

Tom, you wouldn't have any pieces
of twenty-gauge sheet, do you?

[Tom] Uh, like a small piece?

[Ivan] Anything you're not using.
Small is fine.

-[Tom] That's yours.
-[Ivan] Appreciate it.

So I'm taking sheet metal,

and I'm plasma cutting out birds,
just random freehand.

Those are gonna represent my dog Zophie.

As she's... as she's leaving.

[buzzing]

More hollow space than I wanted.

The most difficult part of this challenge,
from a technical standpoint

really is just trying to keep it
figurative and still fill space.

I have to make that shadow full.
I have to fill in all those pieces.

I have to get it to where
it casts the image I want it to cast.

[buzzing]

[Lou] I was able to weld
the first couple stages of an eclipse.

But I realized that although
this project is one of the smallest,

it's definitely the most challenging
one that we've encountered yet.

I've been an artist for a really long time
and this is something that I've seen.

But I've never tried myself, and yeah.

It's pushing my patience.

I'm struggling to find a way
to add dimension and separate the layers.

Different way.
Different way. Different way.

The judges are looking for diversity
in materials, usage, and processes.

I see a bunch of scattered,
kind of random parts.

So to cast that shadow,
I use a couple pieces of sheet metal.

And welding wire
to basically feather in every transition

from one to the next.
It started to look cool.

I think I can pull this off.

[chuckles]

You a bad mama jama!

Anything that's dark
is actually further away from the eye.

And anything that is bright white
is the closest to the eye.

And that gives a sense of something
being either farther or closer away.

And that helps us
take a two-dimensional object,

and make it seem like it's
a three-dimensional object.

Go to school, kids.

Oh my.

How do we make
a shadow sculpture with no shadow?

I dropped it, and it ended up breaking,

and losing things that was
already creating the shadow,

so I ended up having to start over again.

Changing course,
I'm going back to the old plan. [laughs]

I'm going to do
Michelangelo's hands again.

Rae's basically changed course
what, three times now?

How many hours do we have left, a couple?

Okay, we're gonna make this work.

But I've been scared about Rae before...

-Yeah, and she's in the top four.
-And she is in the top four.

[buzzing]

[Rae] I created God's hand
with plasma cutting.

Okay, there's my hands.

Yes, much better. Like, much, much better.

Adam's hand, I'll make with a bunch
of different rod, different material.

Okay, I think I'm finally figuring it out.

I don't know how I'm gonna do this,
but I'm hoping I can pull it off.

This is the first time
I get to show the judges I do sculpting.

I think they think I'm only
a sheet metal and measurement guy.

So for my space shuttle, I cut
a piece of half-inch solid bar tubing,

MIG welded the c*ck area.

After doing some grinding,
put three little boosters on the back

and welded it to the external tank.

I guess the tricky part of building
this thing is, the Indy car actually

is just a bunch of layers
of beat up sheet metal.

So manipulating all that and actually
overlaying it to look like smoke,

but to cast the shadow of an Indy car,
is very tricky and time-consuming.

Welders, you have 30 minutes left!

-Thirty minutes!
-Oh, wow.

30 minutes?

[whirring]

[buzzing]

[Rae] I did this with the first build,

I had to take everything apart
and put it back together.

I'm going to the
m*therf*cking championship, boy!

[whirring]

[Tom] I have to test out my sculpture...

[groans]

...'cause the flashlight in my little
projection board just isn't accurate

with the different lights.
They're casting multiple shadows.

And I definitely notice
there's some errors there. [scoffs]

A challenge like this can go so sideways
and look like a pile of crap at the end.

[Ivan] Time to move faster.

[Lou] Oh, sh*t. Ah, sh*t.

Five! Four!

Three!

Two!

One! Put your tools down, everyone.

[clapping slowly]

Are you worth 50 grand? We'll find out.

It's gonna depend on how they feel
about what that shadow looks like.

Welders, it's time to shine the light
on what each of you have created.

Lou, let's start with you.

-Hi Lou.
-[Lou] Hey.

I didn't start with a sculpture.
I started with a concept

that was gonna be created by the shadow.

From that grew this idea

of using five different layers,
and these turned into different phases

of the moon cycle.

Super interesting how
you went a little bit at an angle.

I was worried if I stacked these
all in front of each other,

you would look at it
straight on and see a circle.

-Are you ready to show us? Let's see.
-Absolutely.

-Badaboom.
-[Stephanie] Look at that. Wow.

It looks like
a legitimate sphere right now.

Lou, tell me a little about
the story your shadow tells.

[Lou] It takes me back to art school,
how far I've come in my art career.

Lou, you've come
a long way since then, man.

So Tom, tell us about your piece.
What does it represent?

For the sculpture part,
the shuttle program.

The shuttle's launching
through the threshold of the clouds.

Moment of truth. Let's turn that light on.

[Stephanie] This is fantastic.

[Tom] I'm in motorsports.
I wanted to have

space shuttle here as the sculpture,
and it's going to project an Indy car

with a hell of a lot of tire smoke.

We might need to be saying
Tom the sculptor,

not just the fabricator-artist.
You're a sculptor.

Rae, tell us about your sculpture,
and what it represents.

It's about the distance
between what you see

versus what it projects.

Michelangelo was my inspiration
on this one.

-[Stephanie] Holy crap. [laughs]
-[David] That is unreal.

There's so much movement...

-[David] That is insane!
-...and anatomy in creating a hand shape.

You did negative space on the inside.

-Yeah.
-When one thinks of shadow art,

one kind of thinks of going
on the outside, the silhouettes.

Yeah. I was like, "You know what,
I've gotta challenge myself."

So I was like, "Why not pick
the hardest effing thing in the world?"

-Thank you, such a great job.
-Thank you so much for showing this.

Hi Ivan, tell us
a little about your piece.

When I got here, my dog passed away,
while I was here on the show.

Her name was Zophie.

[clicks lips] Oh.

[Ivan] It's me going home, knowing she's
not going to be there, waiting for me.

It's a boxelder tree in my yard,
where she's buried.

Got a little grave marker for her there.

So this is representative of her leaving.

That's me, sitting on the swing.

-[Stephanie] Hat and all, huh?
-[Ivan] Yeah.

Let's turn that light on.

Holy sh*t. Totally stunned
by what I'm seeing, from that to that.

[Ivan] The sculpture represents
what I'm going home to.

The shadow represents what I left behind.

-Nicely done. Thank you so much, Ivan.
-Thank you so much.

Judges, it's time to decide which two
go to the finals and which two go home.

Ivan, please step forward.

Your piece absolutely blew us away.

It was legitimately like
looking at two totally different pieces.

[David] Your ability to make
the entire vision come together

was completely next-level.

Ivan, only two people
are going to the finals.

And we can say with confidence
that you are one of them.

This means the world to me.

This is what I do for a living.
It took me a long time to get here,

and having the opportunity
to maybe actually win this thing,

I'm on cloud nine.

Only one of you
will move on to the finals with Ivan.

And the other two
will be going home immediately.

[Rae] If I go home on this piece, I'm
proud of myself 'cause I actually did it.

I'm totally proud of it.

I feel good about what I've done,
but everyone's work is looking amazing.

[Tom] Knowing that two people
are going home,

I still feel pretty good,
but I guess it's up to the judges now.

Lou, your sculpture was clean,

and I love the gradient aspect
to your shadow.

However, greater separation
between your two stories

would have created
an even bigger wow factor.

Tom, the shadow
and the sculpture were utterly clear.

But you could've taken it
from amazing to all star status

if you had thought
about the sculpture from all angles,

not just the front.

Rae, what you were able to do
with that shadow blew me away.

To make those hands using negative space,

isn't just extremely difficult,
but it shows your immense talent.

Your shadow was next-level,
but your sculpture was too abstract.

All four of these
works of art were so top-notch

that it was very hard for us to choose.

It was probably one of
the hardest things we've ever had to do.

Unfortunately,
there's only room for one more.

The welder joining Ivan
in the first ever finals

of Metal Shop Mastersis...

[suspenseful music playing]

Tom! Congratulations.

[somber music playing]

-Good job.
-[Rae] This is probably one of

the most challenging
things I've ever done,

but I'm 100% proud of myself
for everything I've done,

and pushing myself
as hard as I pushed myself.

And I still didn't give up.
I still didn't quit.

Thank you for the opportunity.
It's been an honor to be here,

and I would've loved to continue on,

but I tried my best
and did what I wanted to do

so I feel like I went out on a good foot.

Ivan, Tom, you're just one build away

from the title
Metal Shop Master and $50,000.

I've made trophies
my whole life for everybody else.

I worked on race teams
to make other people winners.

I could be the winner,
and I'm gonna try my damn hardest.

Going into the end of this,
up against Tom,

I'm feeling nervous.
Tom's a very detail-oriented person,

very clean fabrication.

But I didn't come here to lose.

Even without prize money,
I still would've come.

It's the competition I love.

Let's head back
to the workshop for one final time.

All right, go! Get out of here.
No, finally, go.

[laughing]

[upbeat music playing]