I feel the same. This has been a saving series for me, but also has inspired more personal projects around the house even though I don't consider myself a maker.
Damn it, I just spent 5 Minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with my internet connection just to hear Adam say "Sorry I was low-res for a while!".
Adam, I am a graphic artist and printer. Many years ago, as a young man, I worked with a gentleman who had, in his day, been a quite successful and notorious counterfeiter. He was also an example of how the rehabilitative aspect of the criminal justice system can get things right. He rarely told "war stories" and conscientiously avoided glamorizing what he had been and done. Nonetheless, from time to time he'd share interesting bits of his knowledge, often in an offhand way that seemed like just mundane "shop talk." One of the things I remember him talking about, lamenting really, was the difficulty in making counterfeit currency look legitimately circulated and used. He described a number of things he'd done, but the one he seemed like best was putting the money in a feed sack or pillow case with coffee can's worth of roadside gravel and leftover fresh coffee grounds, then tumbling it for a couple of hours without heat in a clothes dryer. He'd laugh about bribing laundromat attendants to let his crew in after hours where they would load dozens of dryers with scores of bags of "money" to be aged. And, of course, immediately point out that it wasn't perfect since he'd been caught more than once. He was, if nothing else, colorful.
Hard coffee soup + light weight (or diluted with water) wood glue (not the acrylic type) + green dust used in making maquettes + and a few pinches of salt. Mixed well on a hot plate at around 20C for about an hour. Paper dipped, dried, dipped again, dried again, dipped a third time, dusty pillows beaten in proximity, left to dry then a good tumble with a steel barrel filled with broken chunks of hardwood for half an hour to an hour.
@@kj1h5kj At the end of the day the dead giveaway to fake money is the serial #. Every bill has its own unique serial #. Many counterfeiters dont bother changing the serial # as they are just using the same plates or images to make their money. All you have to do is compare a handful of bills to see that they are all using the same serial #'s.
about this blood colour question; for a video we did some experiments and a mix of 70% cocoa and 30% tomato mash [leave this for a few days] gives a convincing result. dark, brow and a little reddish. Simple and effective
My friend had a remote control for his 60s era TV. It was a broom stick with a nail driven into one end to push buttons and a notch cut into the other to turn knobs. The TV was just close enough to his bed that he could reach it with the stick without having to get up. I think it was one of the most clever, most lazy things I've ever seen.
I inherited an old TV that was of the pre-remote generation when I was a kid that was in my bedroom. I had a fake spear that was made out of bamboo that I discovered would serve the same purpose.
That brush is something similar to what we use in the uk, it’s called a “tarmac brush” generally used to rubbing diesel or your tools when your laying tarmac to stop it sticking to your tools
So now I learn this, how many paved drives have I closed up with bitumen and gravel, only to have my tools get sticky with bitumen. It's not quite as bad as the resin in a cable joint, but still not nice.
I'm very grateful to have Adam and his heartwarming personality he shares with us, his process at making and sharing his thoughts and problem solving. As much as I miss mythbusters, I am thrilled to have his Tested channel. Inspiring.
The part where he raised the brush above the money bucket, and I was sure that he was going to just toss the coffee down in droplets. But no, he smashed the brush into the bucket
Also, along side the random British money fact I posted, I really want to thank you, and your team. Your daily uploads really have helped to break monotony of our current situation. I can well imagine I'm not the only one to be so grateful. Cheers Adam, all the way from the little town of Washington, in the North East of England!
Adam PLEASE keep making the *"Week 1,356 of lockdown joke"* , not even being sarcastic. Some of us have to keep the Dad jokes alive 🦾. It's even funnier when you explain that you should stop doing it, and then do it again 🤣.
I don't know if you read the comments, but I just wanted to say that you're a huge inspiration and a hero to me! I loved watching MythBusters as a kid (still do but I rarely watch TV anymore) and everything from your cheery and energetic attitude to your love for your craft somehow just really gets to me. I'm not a maker myself, but a general lover of science and (hopefully) a future medical doctor, and your continued nerdy antics always cheer me up! - A hello from Finland, I hope you never stop doing your thing
This is exactly how they know that it's someone pretending to be be random. Real randomness will have sequences in it that people find a meaning in, meaning that doesn't exist in the math. In a real random sequence you're going to occasionally get five zeros in a row, or four through eight in order. But because humans find those patterns to have significance we won't choose them when we're trying to be random.
@@FossilFishy instead of trying to be "random" its easier to just fold every 10 bills the same way and then when you put them all together and mix them up they come out as actually being random folds.
Actually the fastest way to find fake random over real is fake lacks groupings. Take a coin, flip it 100 times and record that H and T on a piece of paper. Then, go to a bar, bet your friends 100 dollars that if you give them a piece of paper and a coin to toss and then walk away you will be able to tell when they are done if they actually record coin tosses or just right down random numbers. Look at your real coin tosses and you will be surprised how many more groupings of 3 4 5 and 6 occur the more tosses you do.
Adam, You are my favorite person on this planet. I remember when i saw you at your mythbusters convention and even shook your hand. Thank you for being my hero sir.
one of the good things this pandemic has given us is more adam videos. last month, we had more than double the videos of him that we got in the entirety of last year.
The tech aspect of Adam having to setup his own shots and deal with problems like low res is super relatable and makes these videos a bit more personal and awesome.
DJFelixChester Neat fun fact, let me follow up with another one: Only 8% of the worlds currency exists physically, the rest are just numbers on computers everywhere
Plastic is easy. Put them in your washing machine at the hardest cycle, no heat, with a few chunks of hardwood. No sharp corners. It's actually harder to do prop money from "paper" because it tears so damn easily, unless you use the same material, at which point you get into trouble. I have a friend who does a lot of prop stuff for a few studios and he and a couple of our friends and i brain stormed various methods for a flick about a robbery or some shit like that. Funny thing is he went to their spec, but they showed so little in the flick that it wasn't even worth it.
Thank you for keeping us sane during lockdown without your RU-vid videos I think we would all go mad. You even persuaded me to get a router and play with it !? Never used one before! They are great for improving woodwork it makes it fun
This is the tested I know and love. I have missed the one to one you and a camera just having random conversations or thoughts and builds or walkthroughs of the shop. Do these every day and I will watch everyday.
i think both stacks at the end sell as different ends of a spectrum, the neat stack sells well as freshly minted, entering circulation bills while the second sells well as a stack of old, beat up, possibly illicitly obtained bills. great work adam.
I liked his point about not being sad about props that were made to be destroyed. In a way, the prop is not truly complete *until* is has been destroyed. There are props who's purpose is to look a certain way to the eye at rest. Other props' sole purpose is to look a certain way for a very brief moment in time, and that *moment* is the art.
Austin Shoupe I know that they own the rights to them, my question was out of curiosity if Adam, or anyone who read the comments have heard about a physical release. I’ve always been a big fan and watching the explosions in full 1080 Blu-ray quality would be fun.
Just found your video because I was trying to figure out how to make prop money look aged, and you were WONDERFUL! Your directions worked great, and my prop money looks perfect. Thank you so much… (I also love to play with prop money 😂, glad you enjoy it too)
@@pileofstuff I don't know about that. I've caught a couple live on his youtube channel and I'm not a tested member. He usually does them in the middle of the day (noonish Pacific time) when he does stream. They had to turn off the chat when he started due to his poor internet.
I think there might be Website called Vimeo,It really is kind of stupid that RU-vid considers this illicit content, he's not encouraging people to Try to pass this as real money or leave it where people could find it and try to spend it, but RU-vid doesn't have a sense of humor apparently and are pulling down videos for all sorts of ridiculous reasons maybe this can be found on Patreon ,
They are livestreamed on this channel, but when the stream finishes they are immediately made private and are then chopped up into sections and released as edited videos like this. I wish that they just made them unlisted rather than private, as it is super annoying watching live as if you pause for any length of time and resume it ends up cutting off the stream before you finish watching it.
Hi Adam, I'm not sure if you read these things but I wanted to let you know how proud(that sound daft but I can't think of a better word) I am of you. I've always enjoyed watching you, but your recent Twitter comments really show your character, well done sir. Respect from the UK!
Adam: Getting excited about durable cotton US money. Everyone in Europe looking at their polymer notes: I can boil this in a stew for 6 hours, then just wipe it and it's good to go.
As an Australian, one thing I really like about our plastic money is the transparent windows and the iridescent foil, I think it looks really neat. One thing that's really cool is the accessibility features of our money. Each value of note is a slightly different width and length, so if you have a stack in your hand you can tell how many are of each value without looking, and some values have a small design embossed. Also each value is a different colour, so you can tell what the notes are at a glance, even without my glasses (I'm very shortsighted) I know immediately what note I'm looking at. Even our coins are all different sizes and thicknesses with different lines around the rim. In addition to all of that, the money has special printing that only shows under UV light. It's very difficult for a counterfeit to have all those features (not that the average person carries a UV torch to use at every transaction).
24:44 : If my literature classes are of any help, I'd wager a dollar or two that 150°F won't make paper burn, and that you'd have to ramp it up to, say, something like 301°F more...
My favorite part about prop money is getting to test all the different counterfeit detection methods. I own an iodine pen and a solvent pen, and have access to one of the blacklight bill checkers that has a guide to all the UV stripes and security features labeled on it. Doing it with kids is awesome.
38:35 - I love that you use the word excelsior... as someone who's lived in SF, it feels like a very SF word, and yet, it's more than just the name of a place. :)
When I was in graduate school Boggs did a lecture And afterwords we went out with him and he bought us all drinks with one of his $50 bills I also got him to sign a camel buck and do a little drawing on that. He was one amazing artist.
*I.R.S.:* _My, that looks like a lot of weight you're carrying, let me take some off your hands!_ *F.B.I.:* _Hold on now, I need to look at it first for... uh... "research purposes"_
Adam, Twitch has live chat and that is actually one of the biggest draws of the platform. Video creators chat with their audience live and there is a lot of fun back-and-forth. Sounds perfect for you!
@@ericstoverink6579 Obviously not. Everybody knows that you run it through the heavy soil cycle of a washing machine, warm - no bleach - extra rinse, then, tumble dry on low, do not iron. Duh.
First I was just wondering if that's what he meant... Then I was asking my screen out loud if that's what he meant... By the 23rd time I was yelling at the screen to STOP SAYING IT BECAUSE IT MADE MY EARS BLEED! 😂😅
My favorite color is Burnt Sienna; it's incredibly versatile for weathering. As for Adam's suggestion of "a reddish-brown paint," an experimental mixture of Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber - vary the proportions until you achieve the desired result - might be your best bet.
I love these videos but sadly this one is unwatchable. I cant see any detail on what Adam is doing. I will come back and hope a higher quality version is uploaded.
In the UK, our notes used to be made of paper and linen but when it was updated recently it now has plastic in it and that makes it waterproof and even more difficult to rip and forge.
Household oven: The inside surfaces will get considerably hotter than the set temperature and the temperature will overshoot while warming up. Learned these while curing some epoxy in urethane molds.
A popular story about ww2 Germany was that a man takes a wheel burrow full of money to the bank and he leaves it outside for whatever reason. Another man sees the wheel burrow full of cash and dumps it out and steals the wheel burrow.
Words from a cashier. The easiest way to weather bills then just stuff them in the back pocket of your jeans for a few weeks. You can fold them sure or just wad the bills into your pocket. The amount of bills I get that are ripped, torn, missing a bit of it, crumpled beyond belief, etc. would boggle your mind. This is the easiest way to do it truthfully. Soaking some in sweat or a sweat like substance (as gross as this sounds it IS true) will also add a realistic look and feel
My country moved to plastic money a couple of years ago, and this video made me realise that I miss the smell of money really quite badly, like you miss an old friend or a drug you're recovering from an addiction to.
Sorry in advance if someone has already pointed this out but Canada has plastic bills as well. Very cool designs and much closer than downunda if you wanna get your hands on some.
If you make a precise machine imprecisely is it still a precise machine? This is the type of question we now ask ourselves in these times of isolation.
I love that he's explaining how to recreate blood, when the easiest way is use blood. Some of best art has my actual blood on it/ in it. Weather's beautifully, especially on nice old style paper and canvas.
14:09 Here's some feedback. Love the videos that you personally feature in. Your one day builds and other 'doing stuff' ones are just entertaining to watch and your voice is pleasant to listen to. This even more so in these mostly stay at home times where we need to find in-house entertainment. Please keep doing them. Drops in quality are no big deal - these really do help save someone's sanity believe it or not. Thanks for doing them.
Regarding randomness, I have been painting some pictures for the past few weeks which occasionally need flowers, and it's been interesting trying to emulate a natural organic randomness of the spread of daisies or dandelions across a field. They aren't evenly spread, they are in clumps of busy patches loosely connected with emptier patches, and it's trial and error to make it look right. The tendency is to even things out in a balanced way, we fill in empty spaces and things just look too uniform, when really there are always big empty spots.
I made a lot of props for the TV show "The Carbonaro Effect". Lots of magic props. But we also did a lot of tricks with money. Most of the money tricks used fake money because we had to build it to be special in some gimmicky way. So we circumvented a lot of the counterfeit rules by making our own money. We found great paper that matched the feel of US currency after we worked it a bit. It was quite amazing. But we aged our fake bills in similar fashion by beating and staining it with coffee. Bending the corners to 'break' the stiffness.
Back in the late 1950's I had a friend who made the most amazing copies of British bank notes. I never thought of him as forger but just a brilliant artist. It's funny but your right, now I think about it old bank notes used to have a strange but distinctive smell, until we shifted to plastic.
I believe the brush was used for gluing up large posters when they were common for things like the circus and shoes coming to town. When you would "plaster" the town.
Dried blood effects? I use Windsor & Newton inks (ink solutions are so much better than paints/washes) mixed with weak coffee solution (but note that coffee solution has a tendency to grow fungus after a long while, if you keep a prop for years). The red ink shades can be mixed and matched to reflect the 'age' of the blood. (Brick Red, Deep Red, Vermilion, Scarlet, Orange, Burnt Sienna, Nut Brown if you need the actual shades). Use a pipette for measuring the percentages of mix, and make card swatches with the information written on (useful if you need to do it again at a later date). Let them dry for a couple of days, and see which mixes give you the desired effect.
My store got successfully passed one of these exact fake 100's! It was TOTALLY FUN and I'm totally bummed I wasn't the cashier that day and didn't get to NOT pen test the bill or even look at it long enough to know it was fake! I didn't even get yelled at by my boss! The company LOVED IT.
i like that while un-ruffeling the bills you organized them mostly all face up, like someone who does the same for the money in their wallet, also the flash point of paper is 451F/233C, as long as it isn't touching the heating elements it shouldn't be a problem, but like all things involving possible fire it should for sure be watched.
Years ago I needed “money” for a play. I had art students draw the money. I had a picture of the school’s mascot, said it was the school’s cash, and was an inch longer and an inch longer that a US bill!
