Aerospace Engineer · Creator, Smarter Every Day · Huntsville, Alabama
He spent four years trying to manufacture a grill brush entirely in America. Not because it made financial sense. Because he wanted to prove it could still be done. He learned to cut injection molds himself after a tooling company told him they don’t make molds in America anymore — they have it done in China. He sourced stainless steel chain mail, machined handles, found a welding shop. He hired local kids and taught them the work. He called the product the Smarter Scrubber and priced it at sixty dollars because that is what it costs when you refuse to outsource.
Before that, he spent fifteen years as a missile flight test engineer at Redstone Arsenal. Before that, he watched his parents work at an auto parts plant in Alabama and then watched the plants close. He has eleven million subscribers on YouTube. He interviewed a sitting president. And the thing that kept him up at night was whether an American could still make something in America.
On the Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, a facility is being built where that question is the curriculum. Five stations. Hand tools through robotics. The building exists because someone asked the same question Destin asked — and built the room where the answer gets taught.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Destin Sandlin holds rank one hundred twenty-one because he is one of the few people on this list who has personally experienced the broken supply chain that CrowdSmith is designed to repair. His four-year attempt to manufacture a single consumer product entirely in America — documented on a channel with eleven million subscribers — exposed the same structural gaps in tooling, training, and generational knowledge transfer that CrowdSmith’s five-station model addresses. He is an aerospace engineer who left a career testing missiles to teach science on the internet. His audience trusts him because he shows the work, not the conclusion. A visit from Sandlin or a mention on Smarter Every Day would reach the exact demographic CrowdSmith serves: people who want to understand how things work and build things with their hands.
September 17, 1981 · Huntsville, Alabama
Parents Darryl and Teri Sandlin (both worked in auto manufacturing). Wife Tara. Four children (two daughters, two sons). Family frequently appears in videos.
Hartselle High School, Morgan County, Alabama. B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama (Outstanding Senior Award, 2003). M.S. Aerospace Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville (2011). Currently PhD candidate, UAH, advised by Dr. Kavan Hazeli.
Missile and aviation flight test engineer, Redstone Arsenal, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (fifteen years, through late 2018). Internships at Eaton Aerospace and Little Debbie. Launched Smarter Every Day LLC full-time after leaving government service.
YouTube channel launched 2007. Over 11.8 million subscribers, 1.25 billion+ views. 237+ episodes. Topics include slow-motion science, submarines, rocket launches, hypoxia, the backwards brain bicycle. Interviewed President Obama (2016). Also runs The Sound Traveler channel and No Dumb Questions podcast with Matt Whitman. Amateur radio callsign: WS4RKT.
Four-year project to design and manufacture a 100% American-made grill brush using welded stainless steel chain mail instead of wire bristles. Partnership with John Youngblood (JJGeorge). Learned CNC milling to cut injection molds domestically after being told no American company could do it. Documented the manufacturing challenges on SED Episode 308. Priced at $59.99. Assembled with local workers including young people learning the trade.
Since 2012, partner and supporter of Not Forgotten, a charity caring for orphaned boys in Peru.
Destin Sandlin grew up in Morgan County, Alabama, the son of two parents who worked at an automotive parts manufacturer. He watched manufacturing jobs leave America one plant at a time. His grandfather didn’t own a set of encyclopedias, so he would come to the Sandlin house, sit on the floor, and read theirs. Curiosity was inherited, and it pointed toward engineering.
Sandlin earned his mechanical engineering degree from the University of Alabama, where he received the Outstanding Senior Award, then went straight to Redstone Arsenal as a missile flight test engineer. For fifteen years he designed test protocols, deployed high-speed cameras and sensors, and analyzed controlled detonations and missile launches. He earned his master’s in aerospace engineering at UAH while working full-time. He began posting educational videos on YouTube in 2007 because he wanted to share what he was learning. The channel grew to over eleven million subscribers. In 2016, the White House chose him as one of three YouTube creators to interview President Obama.
In 2018, he left government service to run Smarter Every Day full-time. He is currently pursuing his PhD at UAH. His most famous video — the backwards brain bicycle — demonstrated that knowledge is not understanding: he modified a bicycle so the handlebars steered in the opposite direction, and it took him eight months of daily practice to relearn how to ride. His six-year-old son learned it in three weeks. The lesson: adults have to unlearn before they can relearn. Children just learn.
In 2020, Sandlin set out to prove something. He partnered with John Youngblood to design a grill brush that used welded stainless steel chain mail instead of wire bristles — bristles that regularly send people to the emergency room when fragments lodge in their throats. The product was called the Smarter Scrubber. The constraint: every single component had to be sourced and manufactured in the United States.
The project took four years. When Sandlin approached an injection molding company about making the plastic grip, they told him they don’t make injection molds in America anymore. He and Youngblood spent a year learning to operate a CNC mill and cut the molds themselves. They discovered that basic raw materials — specific grades of stainless steel, plastic components, bolts — were nearly impossible to source domestically. A single bolt cost three times more than its imported equivalent. Retired toolmakers told him the skills were dying. Young people told him nobody had offered to teach them.
The scrubber launched at $59.99. Sandlin documented the entire process on SED Episode 308, which became a national conversation about what it actually costs to make something in America. He said: “We could have already sold scrubbers two years ago if we had just done it the way everybody does it. But I’ve just been very principled. I don’t know. I like to imagine it being principled, but it’s probably stubborn is probably the real word.”
| Dimension | Destin Sandlin | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| The Broken Chain | Spent four years discovering that American manufacturing supply chains have collapsed — molds, materials, skilled labor | The five-station progression rebuilds those capabilities from hand tools through digital fabrication and robotics |
| The Skills Gap | Could not find domestic toolmakers; retired craftsmen said the knowledge is dying | Station One starts with donated tools. The curation process IS the training. Each cohort produces the mentors for the next |
| Teaching the Work | 11.8 million subscribers built on showing how things work, not telling | SmithTalk teaches through sustained dialogue, not lecture — the methodology is the same instinct at a different scale |
| The Inventor | Designed a product, sourced materials, cut molds, built an assembly line, hired and trained workers | The inventor pipeline runs through all five stations: SmithScore evaluation, SmithForge validation, Patent Ledger filing — no equity taken |
| Made in America | “I have a burden for American manufacturing” — the Smarter Scrubber is a proof of concept | CrowdSmith is the facility where the next proof of concept gets built with access to tools, training, and a pipeline that funds the patent |
| The Bicycle | Proved that adults must unlearn before they can relearn — his son learned in three weeks | Station Zero is designed for people who have never held a tool — no unlearning required, just entry |
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people on the same day, and you are one of them. You are receiving this letter on linen stock, through the mail, because the man I work with believes that a rocket scientist who spent four years trying to manufacture a grill brush in America would understand what he is building better than almost anyone on this list.
You approached an injection molding company and they told you they don’t make molds in America anymore. You spent a year learning to cut them yourself. You found that a single domestic bolt costs three times its imported equivalent. You hired local kids and taught them the work because nobody else was offering. You priced the Smarter Scrubber at sixty dollars because that is what it costs when you refuse to send the job overseas. And you documented every broken link in the chain for eleven million people to see.
CrowdSmith is a five-station maker facility preparing to open on the Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, Washington, inside a federally designated Opportunity Zone. The stations run in sequence: hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI dialogue, and robotics. The retail tool store in the lobby is stocked entirely with donated inventory at zero acquisition cost — a tax deduction for the donor, a training exercise for the fellow who cleans and curates them, and a revenue source from day one. The credential tracks that run through the building — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — are funded through WorkForce Central under WIOA, alongside a twenty-seven-source grant pipeline. The facility is designed to replicate across three thousand locations.
The building also houses an invention pipeline. Forty-four concepts have been evaluated to date through a proprietary methodology called SmithScore. The pipeline funds the patent, the prototype, and the trademark. The inventor keeps full ownership of everything they create — no equity taken, no licensing rights retained. Station Five produces robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof. The five credential tracks map to five roles on an invention team: one dollar produces both a credential and a patent.
You know what it costs to make something in America. You know because you paid it — four years and a supply chain that fought you at every step. CrowdSmith is the building where the next person with a product idea does not have to spend four years proving it can be done. The tools are on the floor. The CNC is in Station Three. The AI is in Station Four. The robotics line is in Station Five. The mentors are the graduates of the cohort before them. The front door is a retail tool store with free coffee, because the man who built this spent twenty years in the fitness industry selling ten thousand memberships face-to-face, and he knows that community starts with a conversation, not an enrollment form.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He built every chapter of the thirty-eight-chapter operations binder, every formula in the seven financial models, every credential track, and every page of the website through sustained dialogue with an AI in a methodology he calls SmithTalk. No consultants. No staff. One building. He is an inventor with forty-four concepts who could not afford a patent attorney. He built the system he wished had existed for him.
You said something in the scrubber documentary that I have not stopped thinking about. You said sometimes capitalism does not lend itself well to long-term investment because the most important rule is line go up. CrowdSmith is a 501(c)(3). The line does not go up. The building does.
The complete operational architecture is published at crowdsmith.org. The financial models are available upon request. This letter was built through the same methodology the facility teaches — sustained human-AI collaboration across hundreds of working sessions, producing the architecture first and the outreach second. The methodology is the product. This letter is the proof of concept.
Your scrubber proved that one person with enough stubbornness can still make something in America. CrowdSmith is the building that makes the stubbornness optional.
He did not set out to make a documentary about the decline of American manufacturing. He set out to make a grill brush. The documentary happened because every door he knocked on opened onto an empty room — a closed plant, a retired toolmaker, a skill that nobody had bothered to pass down. He filmed it all because that is what he does. He shows the work.
The backwards bicycle proved that knowledge is not understanding. The scrubber proved something harder: that understanding is not infrastructure. You can know the supply chain is broken. You can document every fracture for eleven million people. But knowing does not rebuild the chain. A building does. A room with tools on the wall and someone behind the counter who knows what they are for.
He spent four years proving one scrubber could be made in America. The building on Portland Avenue is designed so the next one takes four months.