The full story...

The journey begins - James starts uploading acrobatics and other videos to the Youtube channel. It's a time of experimentation. No team, no formal business - just a guy in a garage with a box of scraps.

Although James first uploaded videos to Youtube all the way back in 2006, the Hacksmith journey began in 2012 when he created his first "make it real" projects in his garage (a set of Wolverine claws).

By 2015, James formally founded Hacksmith Industries and the YouTube channel exploded in popularity thanks to projects like the first Elysium Exoskeleton and a whole lot of Batman tech soon after. The channel quickly surpassed 100k subscribers, then later 1 million in 2017

2019 marked a pivotal year as Hacksmith transitioned from a garage operation to a full-scale workshop, materializing ambitious projects at a bigger scale than ever before. Some of our most popular projects come from this era - like our first lightsabers, Captain America's shields, Stormbreaker, and much more...

On the heels of Tesla's late 2019 Cybertruck announcement, we built a 1/2 scale version 4 years early! Next came Kylo Ren's Lightsaber, Iron Man suit tech, our first stab at Aquaman's Trident, and...

We surpassed 10 million subscribers on Youtube, and cut the diamond play button in half with a Lightsaber! 

In 2021, we finished up the Power Loader, made Mario Karts, the Iron Spider suit & Spidey Senses, and even a Plasma Cannon. We even learned to fly with Jet Packs!

Our shop was full to the brim with cool inventions, we knew we'd eventually need to upgrade...

In 2022, we moved our headquarters once again -this time to our permanent home - HERC, The Hacksmith Engineering Research Campus. Next we begin transforming the property into a destination where anyone could come to innovate and create new ideas and technologies with us!

This year we collaborated with Mr. Beast and built the world's largest Thor's Hammer!

Finally at home in HERC, Hacksmith Industries continues to expand. This year the company launched the amazing mini-saber V2, built John Wick's bulletproof suit, the world's first self-contained lightsaber Pike, and translated the main channel into multiple global languages. We even built a Youtuber a new bionic hand thanks to our partnership with bionic-limb company Psyonic! 

Live Action 'Avatar the Last Airbender' came out this spring, but we were already focused on conquering the elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth... We built a mega-flamethrower to celebrate our V2 Minisaber, drank our own fluids with a DIY Dune Stillsuit, zoomed through the seas with Aquaman's Jet Trident, piloted an F16 up in the clouds, conquered the land (well at least a Battlebots arena) with our new Orbitron design & a bulletproof armored truck, and even made a water-powered Jet Pack that let us double jump.

What will we build next!?

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