- My name is Alex Horn. I am 26 years old.
I am super excited to test myself
and see what this competition does.
I love challenging myself and always trying something new,
and just pushing my skill level.
In the right moment, I'll blossom and shine.
- My name is Kevin Burkman. I'm 49 years old.
I retired from the Army after 24 years.
My first knife that I got when I was in the military,
I didn't like it,
it didn't fit the gear that I had, so I made my own.
And then I just started from there.
- My name is Pat Biggin and I'm from Elkhorn, Wisconsin.
I started bladesmithing when my grandpa gave me a knife
that his dad made for him during the second world war.
And I started getting interested
in how the process was done, can I still repeat it.
It's just kind of a way to pay homage
to my great grandfather's work skill set
and maintain the tradition through my family.
- My name is Mike Benton. I'm 45 years old.
I have a huge family. I have six kids.
Four girls and two boys.
So, being here, this is definitely a vacation.
Yeah, yeah, my wife actually wanted to come.
But my family is number one to me.
I love my kids, I love my wife.
I mean, they're the reason
why I work so much every single day.
- Bladesmiths, welcome to The Forge.
Each of you is here to engage in three rounds
of timed edged weapon making competitions
specifically designed to test every aspect of your skills
in front of a panel of expert judges that will tell us
which of you is the next "Forged in Fire" champion,
leaving here with a check for $10,000.
Let's go ahead and meet those judges now.
Up first, two-time Forged in Fire champion,
Ben Abbot.
Next, historic weapons re-creation specialist,
David Baker.
And last, edged weapons specialist,
Doug Marcaida.
Bladesmiths, today's competition
revolves around barbarians,
specifically, the Goths who sacked Rome in 410 A.D.
Now, along the way,
the Goths seized weapons of their adversaries
and incorporated them into their own arsenals,
and today we're going to ask you to incorporate
these weapons into a billet
from which you will forge one of these,
a favorite of backstabbers everywhere.
A pugio dagger.
It is believed that the pugio was the weapon used
by the senate conspirators to assassinate
Julius Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 A.D.
Your challenge here in the first round
is to use a Hada technique to combine three or more
of these weapons to forge a pugio
that falls within the following parameters.
The length of your blade must be between eight
and ten inches.
It must have a wasp waist
and be at least two inches wide at the base.
- I know nothing about barbarians
and a very little bit about daggers.
I've never made a dagger before.
So I'm getting a little nervous.
- You will have just three hours
in this first round in which to complete your work.
If you make it to the second round,
you will have a chance to put a handle on your pugio,
making it fully functional so that we can test it
for strength and durability in a shield chop and stab,
and for edge retention in rope slice.
Bladesmiths, pay attention to the details.
Failure to meet a single one of our parameters
is grounds for immediate dismissal
from this forge with no deliberation.
Good luck, bladesmiths. Your three hours starts now.
- All right, so these guys have to combine those steels
into a Hada Damascus billet.
Hada technique is really just layering
of the same types of steel, right?
- It's a really ancient technique of using up scraps.
- We've got our smiths kind of disassembling some knives.
Why aren't these guys just cutting off, like,
shafts and blades and stacking that stuff up?
- Because it's more fun hitting things with hammers.
- Yeah.
- Pros of the Hada technique
is it's all the same type of steel.
The downside is that I then have to make sure
I have enough steel in my starting billet
to be able to get that parameter for length and width.
I am thinking, which are the flattest?
Which are the most similar is size already?
Get rid of all the scale rust,
any type of garbage that will inhibit a weld.
- There's plenty of steel out there
for any of these guys to make an eight- to ten-inch blade.
- But, they're short, fat blades.
They're gonna have to make a good stack
so they can pour it out wide enough.
A base of this blade is about two inches,
two and a quarter inches wide.
- The challenging thing with daggers
is getting them symmetric
and all four faces of the bevel to be even.
That's something I've basically struggled with
when I started making them,
and it's kind of why I stopped making them.
- One of the things that's hard when you start doing daggers
or symmetrical shapes is actually finding that symmetry.
A dagger profile is difficult
and different from a traditional knife,
in that you have to shape four identical sides instead of two
to get that traditional diamond shape of the dagger.
- I've made daggers before,
but this pugo or pahuahua thing,
it's wide, its longer than I normally make.
But you know what, I've never run away from a challenge.
So let's tear it up.
For my stack I want to have nine pieces, or more,
so that way when you do draw this out,
you want to have more metal than you need.
Having more is better than not having enough.
- When you stack a billet,
you want to make sure all of them are the same size.
If there's any that stick out bigger than the other,
you'll get, right at the edge there,
you'll get this cold shut where it rolls over eventually,
and it doesn't make a good weld.
- I am goal oriented.
Goal one is to make it to round two.
Goal two is to get to round three.
Goal three is to be "Forged in Fire" champion.
- I want to make this billet setup
as easy as it can be.
So I grab the straightest,
most square looking weapons that I see.
I grab four of them just to make sure I have enough steel.
My mind's going a mile a minute.
I've never made a dagger before,
and I just got to get the jitters out,
get in my groove,
just making another billet like I do every day.
Right now, I've got my billet welded up.
I've got six separate pieces,
about four inches by an inch wide,
got it tacked up, heating up.
I've still got a few jitters that I got to work out,
but I think once
I've got my billet set, I'm going to be rolling.
- Double edged daggers, I have no problem with.
I've made them.
But the challenge with this weapon
is the weapon has to be symmetrical,
and you can't be off.
The judges will see that, they will know that.
If your measurement's wrong, you can go home.
If you don't do your welds right, you can go home.
I don't want to go home. I want to be number one.
- One of the things I love about challenges like this
is there's plenty of steel out there,
it's just not in the right shape.
- Yeah.
- And it's up to them to take those shapes,
forge all of them together, and make a new shape,
and that material management, that planning, is everything.
- Yeah.
- I hand-hammer to set the welds.
I prefer to do it by hand because I know I'm swinging it
at the right weight, the right speed.
- Kevin, he did start with a nice, uniform stack.
But it looked to me like an inch and a half cube,
a little bit lean on the amount of material for this knife.
- When I know my forge welds are set,
I start drawing the billet out length wise.
I don't want to push out too much metal at one time.
I want to maintain that thickness of the blade
because I know the judges are brutal when they test.
Hot metal!
, I don't know if I got enough material.
- Every time you forge weld,
there's always a chance of failure.
So every time I forge weld, I'm nervous.
My first forge weld is just a nice,
light tap to make sure everything is set.
Then once I know that weld is set,
I can start drawing this billet out.
In this competition I think I have a good advantage
in that, you know, I'm pretty adept at forging.
I've forged probably close to 1,000 knives now
in the past three years.
But you can never stop learning about knives,
and I want to learn until the day I die
and make the best knife I can possibly make every day.
- When you're forge welding, it's a repetitive process.
You have to heat, hammer, heat, hammer.
So it becomes one solid piece of metal.
And when you're forge welding,
its hit it as hard as you can, as fast as you can.
- When you come out of the forge
and you can see different colorations in even stacks,
I mean, you know that they're not connected,
it's not a good weld. - Yeah.
- Once I get this forged and set,
then I'll take it to big blue.
The thing I'm most worried about is my welds not taking.
Because if those welds don't take, you don't have a billet.
You don't have a billet, you don't have a knife.
- Looking on the inside of the bar,
it looks like it's pretty good.
There's no cracks I can see, there's no delams.
It looks like it's a nice clean, solid weld.
- Pat's billet looks a little bit undersized
when we talk about that eight- to ten-inch blade.
- Yeah. - Plus tang.
- Ultimate end for the steel, I'm looking for something
that is a little bit longer
than the parameters in the initial body.
I can then put any extra material
that becomes a little bit too large for me
to deal with for the blade into the tang,
and it can be removed later.
- Bladesmiths, one hour has elapsed.
You have just two hours remaining to finish your work.
- Whoo!
- There goes Mike, working it cold again.
I mean, it's all red.
- I think my forge welds are good.
So now I need to lengthen my steel.
- I think that we're gonna see
some serious problems with those welds.
- But I actually make are good.e - I thins
I turn it on the side...
And it starts to split apart,
and that's not what you want to see.
- When Mike set his first weld, it was really cold.
I mean, it was a dull red, and you really want
a bright whit heat. - Right.
- I'm wasting time having to re-set the forge welds.
That's something you can't afford to do
in a three-hour build.
- We are almost 90 minutes
into this first round of competition,
and I see a lot of shapes.
I don't see any pugio shapes out there yet.
- Here's the thing, the pugio exists
in the Roman Empire for 600, 700 years.
So there are a lot of variations.
That wasp waist is on all of them,
but the head tends to vary a bit.
- I've got the steel drawn out to a long,
tapered, pointy object.
I've got it thick enough that I should be able hand widen
that blade out to where I need it.
- Pat's blade. Are you guys seeing a pugio?
- I'm not.
- The very long tip from that wasp waist.
- It's a very tall wasp. - Yeah.
- Width wise, a little shy on that.
I'm actually a quarter inch under.
At this point I'd have to add steel
to get more width to the blade,
and I don't think I would have enough time.
I'm just gonna continue on with what I'm doing and squeeze out
enough material on both sides
to make up the difference, and I should be good to go.
- It's looking great.
I'm trying to shape as much as I can with my hammer.
My shape's coming along nicely.
I'm starting to see that pugio-looking thing.
I get the hips into it,
but I don't have enough metal for the tang.
I got this piece from one of my weapons
and I'm gonna weld this on as my tang.
Hot, hot. Son of a--
- Kevin-- - There you go.
- I think Kevin grabbed some more steel.
- Ah, got me.
- Kevin made a blade shape,
and then welded a tang right at the junction
between tang and blade, and that's a weak spot.
- Right, it's the junction between the business end
and the user end. - Yeah.
- Welding a tang onto this knife
will create a weak spot,
but it's going to meet the parameters.
And, if I make it to round two,
I'll figure out how to reinforce that weak spot.
- I'm watching Alex right now use the horn of the anvil
and a hammer to create that wasp waist.
- Yeah.
- So right now, I just finished forging my blade.
Next, I'm going to get the profile
of the knife on the grinder,
maybe add a little bit of beveling before heat treat.
But I did a lot of it with the forging,
so I shouldn't have too much to do on grinding.
- His profile is spot on.
- It's feeling really good, it's got a nice weight to it.
I think it should do really good in the chop test.
Plenty of strength in the tip for a stab.
So I'm feeling all right.
- I don't know the quality of his welds,
but Mike has really been able to draw that metal out,
and he's got a great pugio shape.
- Yeah. - Okay.
- My blade's coming together great.
I think that my point isn't quite as drastic
as some of my competitors,
but I think that mine looks more like the example.
It's ugly, but it's good.
- Bladesmiths!
30 minutes remaining in the round.
- I see that my tang is delaminating at the very end,
but I think I have enough steel to cut off
that delaminated part of the tang.
So my knife's finally ready for heat treat,
and the one thing I do not want to do is overheat this steel.
I just spent so much time forging it.
I want to quench this as perfectly as I can.
So I'm just moving it back and forth to try
and even this heat out.
- Alex did manage to do a period-correct Caesar quench.
- Caesar quench? - Yes.
He stabbed that forge 23 times, moving it in and out,
before he went to the oil.
- My knife's looking pretty straight.
It sounds hard, it looks hard. I'm feeling good.
- Well, this is what I've got so far.
I've got to go into the heat treat
and then do a little more finish grinding.
- Kevin just quenched his blade.
- He's file-testing it.
- Yeah. - That was quick.
- That was very fast.
- You've got to be kidding me.
Half of it's heat treated, half of it's not.
That is bad news.
On the second heat treat, I bring it up to cherry red,
and I got the same problem again.
- Kevin may be file checking while it's still hot
and thinking it didn't get hard.
So going for another quench, and then another quench.
- Oh, that makes sense.
- I'm starting to feel the pressure.
I know I got to get on that grinder
to start getting this thing cleaned up.
- The tip looks very hot. - Yeah.
- Come on, dude.
- Nope. What the hell's going on?
I don't know what I'm doing wrong here.
Oh, she's hard now.
Whew. I'm good. I'm good.
- Looks like Pat's gonna start his heat-treat process.
- Yeah, he's got it in tang first,
so he's not overheating the tip.
That's good.
- Looks good and straight.
I'm gonna take it over to the grinder, finish up my profile.
- I don't know how Pat's going to a grinder.
You can't grind metal onto a blade.
- A very subtle wasp waist.
- Like he's making a metal Christmas tree.
- The heat treat/the quench is what hardens your blade
so that when you do chopping or cutting, it'll keep its edge.
So I need it to be fully hardened.
Perfect.
- Mike's really bringing it home with his shape, I think.
- Yeah.
-Ten seconds!
- Yeah. - Not pretty but--
- It'll work.
-Five, four, three, two, one.
Bladesmiths, shut down your machines,
drop your tools, stop what you're doing.
This first round of bladesmithing competition
is over.
- Yeah, boys.
- Whoo!
- I feel good about turning my blade in
looking the way it does.
I feel like I've hit the parameters.
I have a good working knife.
- All right, bladesmiths,
in this first round of competition,
we asked you to produce a pugio
between eight and ten inches in length.
Now, the judges want to see
what you've done with yourselves.
Mike, you're up first.
Please present your pugio to the judges.
- Well, Mike, the profile is pretty Pugi-esque.
There is a wasp waist here.
There is a nice flair, front and back.
Yeah, it's a good-looking blade.
- All right Kevin, you're up.
Please present your blade to the judges.
- I like the fact you've got the waist here,
I like the fact you've got the pronounced shoulders here.
You know, that tip meandering over,
that's hard to get my eyes around that hard lean.
Where you did weld on this added tang,
I can see the top edge of that weld.
You've kind of built in a questionable spot.
So I would do everything you can to reinforce that area
if you move forward.
- Roger that. - Alex, you're up next.
Please present your blade to the judges.
- Well, Alex, this is a really good pugio shape.
You captured the essence of the knife very well.
The only thing that gives me pause
is that there's not a lot of tang here.
It's right to the end of my hand.
So, if you're gonna put pommel on it, or anything like that,
it's gonna need to be extended somehow,
but, other than that, well done.
- Thank you.
- Pat...
unfortunately the judges won't be evaluating your work
because your blade failed to meet parameters.
It is an inch and seven-eighths at the base
and falls short of our two-inch minimum requirement.
And, for that reason,
I'd like to ask you to please surrender your blade.
- A little disappointed,
but I gave it the best try I could for the time I had.
My blade was under parameters on the shoulders.
I even tried to re-widen it,
and when I was doing my final grinding,
I must have just taken a little bit more off the edge
than I really thought.
But I'm planning on making a pugio when I get home
because it bothers me
that I missed the mark on daggers,
and now I'm obsessed with trying to figure out
how to do it the right way.
- Bladesmiths, congratulations.
You guys have made it
to the second round of this competition,
and now that those blades have been tempered,
it's time to make them fully funconal pugios
by attaching handles to them
and correcting the deficiencies from the first round.
In addition to a handle,
you must have a medallion in the handle,
you must have a guard, and you must have a pommel.
Failure to do so means immediate dismissal
from this forge with no deliberation.
You'll have just two hours
in which to complete all this work.
After this round, your blades will be tested for strength
and durability in a shield stab and slice
and for edge retention in a rope slice.
Good luck, bladesmiths, your two hours starts now.
Okay, so these guys have just two hours
to attach these handles with medallions,
with disk pommels and with guards.
- You know, it's funny, the medallion
is gonna be the weirdest little trip up,
'cause it's either gonna be really easy,
you make one out of sheet,
you stick it on either side and you're done;
or you make a more solid one like the example is.
Now you have some fiddly fitting up
of the handle materials to get it all to sit up right.
- All right. - Yeah.
So, I made it to round two, check.
Now I need to bring the tip
back to the center of the blade.
If I was gonna take out Caesar with a crooked blade,
I'd be the embarrassment of the entire Roman Empire.
So I've got to have a straight blade.
I'm grinding off the one edge of the blade
until that tip slowly moves back to the center.
- I do see a lot of good sparks in there,
so he's really grinding in there.
Hopefully just one side to match the other.
- Oops.
- So I'm feeling okay about my blade,
but there's so much handle work to do
that it's just insane trying to do it in two hours.
First thing I'm doing is laying out my handle materials
to see how much tang I need to add on.
- Alex's tang was short,
so he's over there dropping beads like it's Mardi Gras.
- Alex has taken a very hot weld
and quenched that weld in water.
- No! - Oh, yeah.
- I know not to do that.
- Welding something, with the heat at that area,
cooling it off with water is gonna make it hard and brittle,
and they break.
- No, there we go.
I'm so excited to be in round two.
But, uh, I got ten hours of work
I got to do in two hours, I don't know.
There it is.
I need to put a guard on.
I'm going with a thin piece of brass.
- The guard and the pommel,
should it be made out of brass or bronze?
- I think brass or bronze would have been,
uh, would have been correct for the period.
I would probably go with that,
and it's easier to file and fit up.
- All right.
- Not beautiful, but it works.
- Bladesmiths, one hour has elapsed.
You have just one hour remaining to finish your work.
- Fixing the tip put me way behind.
The plan is to get a block of brass
and plunge a hole down the middle of it
so that the tang can snugly fit into it to reinforce
that weak weld point when I welded on the tang.
So close, so close.
Oh, mother of pearl.
I get the guard somewhat firmly attached,
then I move on to the medallion and the pommel.
I cut off four pieces of this brass round stock,
and I'm gonna use two pieces for my pommel
and two pieces for my medallion.
Sexy is not what I'm going for right now.
But then again, you got this.
- I've got my guard fitted up,
and I'm gonna start building this handle.
I need to get a top piece of wood, the medallion,
bottom piece of wood, and the pommel fitted up
before I can even glue and start grinding.
I get these pieces fitted up
and I just really need to get these holes drilled
so I can pin my medallion, lock my handle up,
and then get it ground.
- Okay, that not work.
- Is he drilling all of his layers in one shot or--
- Yeah.
- I can feel the drill bit
start to move through the steel.
- Alex is working with some really big drill bits.
Hopefully he hasn't thinned out his handle material enough
that it's gonna be weak.
- Right.
all: Ohh!
- So I start drilling,
and the tang that I welded on breaks off.
- 30 minutes, bladesmiths!
- Luckily, my epoxy hasn't fully cured yet.
So I pull off that second piece
and rush over to the welder
and try and tack this tang back on.
- It's unfortunate.
Alex did that final weld and then quenched it.
You know, that makes for a really brittle area.
- I'm freaking out that I'm not actually
going to be able to finish a knife.
- Are you kidding me?
So as I'm grinding it out,
I find a small hole in my wood handle.
Look at that.
So I fill it with epoxy.
I'm filling the holes, I'm covering the handle.
Whatever it is, it is now an epoxy-handled knife.
- It's dripping epoxy off of it.
It's, like, oozing off the of blade.
- But that's just it, you can't fill a hole with epoxy
and then let it sit sideways.
The epoxy will run out of the hole.
- These medallions are killing me.
Time's ticking away.
I still got to throw a handle onto it.
- Kevin's handle is literally just the metal pieces.
- I grab some deer leather
and I start cutting strips of it,
and I just start slapping glue on it.
Stretching it and wrapping it,
stretching it and wrapping it.
- There's a work around, a leather-wrapped tang.
- Because that is genius.
- That's what he did, right there.
- I love it.
- Get an edge on this real fast.
I got five minutes for the glue to set up,
so I start getting on the grinder
to put an edge on this thing.
- Did Mike put any medallions on his handle yet?
- I don't know.
- I need to attach my medallions.
Agh!
I can do this with a larger piece of brass
that I used for the pommel.
As I try and cut it, it doesn't work out.
I have to scrap the idea and do something else.
Let's do it.
I don't have time to make it a perfect replica.
I'm doing what I have to to make it a functional knife
that represents what they want.
I find some really big pin stock.
It'll be a smaller medallion.
- The normal construction with the medallion,
sliding it over... - Okay.
- So there's a round medallion in the middle, just like this.
- Okay. - Or you can do a two-piece
construction like this, sandwich it.
As long as visually that medallion exists
as the palm slot. - Yeah.
- It's just a matter of sizing that properly.
- Five minutes bladesmiths!
Alex set himself back with this crappy weld
that he dipped into water.
His tang snapped off, he's had to re-weld it back on.
Now he's scrambling
and you can see that he's a little bit flustered.
- I don't even know what to focus on.
I've got to get this handle shaped down
to at least something you can hold,
and I haven't even touched my blade yet.
I have to cut a few corners
and do as much as I possibly can
to try and finish this blade.
- Five, four, three,
two, one.
Bladesmiths, shut down your machines, drop your tools.
This second round of competition is over.
- Uh, I'm not feeling super great.
I barely have an edge on my knife
and my handle is still super rough,
and that was one of the craziest challenges
I've ever had in knife making.
- Bladesmiths, welcome to the strength test.
The old shield stab and chop.
To test the strength and durability of your edges
and points on your pugios,
as well as their overall construction,
I'll be chopping and stabbing mercilessly into these shields.
I don't really care what happens to the shields in this.
I want to see what happens to your tip and edges.
Alex, you're up first. You ready?
- Let's do it. - All right.
- I'm super nervous going into testing.
I'm not sure how my tang is going to hold up
after I just re-welded it.
My tip is thin,
so I'm just really hoping that it can hold up.
- Well, Alex, first things first,
you lost about a quarter inch of your tip here.
I'm looking at the grain in there,
and it's not as fine as I'd like to see.
It's probably the overheating
during the normalizations or quenches.
That aside, you left some sharp corners
of the wood right here, where the wood contacts the brass,
and it took a little,
a little nibble out of my thumb right here.
But, in total, it's got a good classic pugio shape
and your edge help up really well.
Kevin?
- Let's rock it man. - All right, let's do it.
- I'm a little anxious to see how my knife is gonna perform.
One of two things are gonna happen.
Either that shield's gonna give,
or my blade's gonna snap.
- All right, Kevin.
First things first, the tip came off.
Again, this grain is bigger than I like.
You also lost a piece of your edge right here.
There's a nibble out of it.
We can go to your handle construction here.
- Don't call my baby ugly. - No, sir.
Look, you were under a time crunch.
You chose a method of completing the challenge
in a way that's usable and wieldable.
Well done. - I'm down with it.
- Mike, you're up next. What are you thinking?
- Let's do it. - All right.
- I haven't been nervous until right now,
and I'm going crazy.
My competitors both lost their tips.
If I can keep my tip on,
I don't think I'm going to have any problems.
But this is out of my control.
This is in the judge's hands.
- Mike, your blade doesn't have medallions
on either side of that handle,
and it is a critical feature in a pugio.
And therefore, your blade cannot be tested
or measured evenly and fairly with your competitors,
and it doesn't make the cut.
You did a lot of hard work here, my friend,
and it's an unfortunate circumstance.
But at this time, I have to ask you
to please leave The Forge.
- Good job, guys. Good job, guys.
- If you're going to come to this competition,
make sure you pay attention to the parameters.
It's very important.
The smalalst little detail that you miss can get you off.
This was an amazing experience.
I truly believe that if I had my weapon tested,
I would have went through to the finals.
What's next for me is go home,
and I'll probably make another pugio,
and I'm gonna send a picture to the judges and say,
"This is what I made."
- Alex, Kevin, congratulations.
You guys are in the third
and final round of this competition,
which means that you're both one step closer to the title
of "Forged in Fire" champion and a check for $10,000.
All you need to do now is go home and re-create
this iconic weapon from history.
The spatha.
The spatha was a vicious sword
given to infantry during the Roman Empire.
The double-edged weapon was used to inflict
deep slashes and deadly cuts on their enemies
while the tapered tip was effective for thrusting.
In the third and fourth centuries,
some of these Roman soldiers turned sides
and became Barbarians.
They then used the spatha
in wars against the Roman Empire,
and eventually led to its demise.
Ancient Rome continues to be the backdrop
for blockbuster films like "Gladiator,"
in which the spatha can be seen wielded in battle.
Gentlemen, your final challenge is to forge a spatha.
Your blades must be between 27 and 29 inches in length.
They must have a medial ridge on both sides of the blade,
and it must be double edged.
It must have a wooden guard, and a disk pommel.
You'll have just four days at your home forges
in which to complete this weapon.
After your judges have thoroughly tested your blades,
they'll declare one of you the "Forged in Fire" champion
who walks out of here with that check for $10,000.
Good luck, bladesmiths. We'll see you in four days.
- Good luck. - Kevin.
- So, it's day one in Belleville, West Virginia.
I got a spatha to go make. Let's get crackalackin.
Whoo!
I'm gonna be using 5160.
It's a forgiving medium.
It'll bring some strength to whatever
they're gonna smash, cut, break, kill.
So I'm gonna try big sexy first to bash down
the width of that material to about two-and-a-half
to two-and-a-quarter inches wide.
Come on, dang it. Work!
Four days isn't enough time to make a spatha.
You don't know what the complications are going to be.
Oh, she's getting there though.
I slowly started drawing it out.
I'm about 35 inches long.
You know, it's just patience,
getting the equipment to work right.
Tomorrow, the pressure will be on
because I gotta get this thing quenched.
If I don't, I'm behind the ball.
Whoo!
- Definitely excited to be back home,
back in my shop where I'm nice and comfortable.
I'm gonna do a full Damascus blade
with a little bit of a ladder pattern in it.
I'm really looking forward to going all out
and making something really cool to impress the judges.
First press was just nice and quick and light.
Just push everything together.
This next press will be a little more aggressive.
Probably the most important part of this entire build.
My welds seemed to have stuck pretty well.
I'm going to start drawing this thing out.
I've got one seam that came apart.
I think if I just flux it, get it hot and press it again,
it should be okay.
Let's hope.
This might be a make-or-break moment right here.
I really hope that's the only one,
but deep down I'm petrified that there's
gonna be more of these seams
opening up throughout this billet.
Right there, I can see it's coming apart.
Trying to figure out what I'm gonna do.
So I think my best bet
is gonna be to break this billet in half
and salvage as much welded steel as I possibly can,
and I'll just do a generic random pattern Damascus,
but it'll still be a Damascus sword.
Well, the good news is both of those seem really solid.
So at least got something out of today.
- Today, I need to get the blade done and quenched.
So I got the shoulders put in.
I have the medial ridge where you can distinctly see
where it's starting to come together.
It's time for the quench.
Oh .
Yeah, look at that bend.
We're quenching again 'cause I don't have time
to eff around with a normalization,
'cause I went all the way down to the bottom
and I felt it bend.
I got to go through all the steps all over again.
Still got that bend.
I'm going to temper overnight, and in that process,
it'll start to hopefully normalize down.
It's hit or miss.
It's either going to go well,
or it's gonna go wrong,
and yeah, it went wrong today.
- It's the morning of day two.
I definitely had some setbacks yesterday.
Starting the day with my billet tacked up
and ready for forge welding.
And I'm hoping to end the day
with a quenched and hardened spatha.
First press.
Looks okay so far, but I'm still gonna be really careful.
I've got my billet drawn out pretty close to shape.
I have just enough length here,
and you can see I'm kind of forging in
that medial ridge already.
This is the longest blade
I have ever attempted to quench.
I pull the blade out of the oil.
At the end of the day,
I have an intact Damascus blade.
So first thing tomorrow, I'm gonna get my blade etched
and the handle prepared,
and I'm looking forward to a good day.
- I'm feeling better than last night
because I got the blade tempered
and got it straight.
Still behind the ball.
I'm gonna start to fit up the handle.
Start looking at different parts
and what I think looks well.
So my design plan for this pommel
is I'm going to take the two ends of the deer antlers
and I'm going to carve a lion's head out of them.
Hand-carving anything is time consuming,
so I can't get lost in my head.
I'll set it in on top of glow-in-the-dark resin,
and then I'll fill that in with a clear epoxy.
I'm not walking in there with something plain.
Tomorrow I'm going to put
some bronze metal stain on the blade,
and I'm going to finish this no matter what.
It'll be done.
- I started day four.
The fatigue of the past couple of days
is definitely starting to set in.
The blades been etched in the coffee overnight
to really bring out the contrast.
Yeah, it really darkened up that 1084.
So the spatha needs to have a wooden guard
and a disk-shaped pommel.
So, I'm going to do a stacked handle.
I'm using iron wood for the guard and the pommel
because it's super strong,
and then I'm gonna use black wood
for the main part of the handle.
I've got all my individual pieces of this handle
fitted up nice and tight.
I gotta get this blade sharpened,
and I've never sharpened anything this long before.
But I know how to put an edge on a knife.
I cannot wait to see this thing put to the test.
Word.
- Bladesmiths, welcome back to The Forge.
You fellas have had four days at your home forges
to work on your finale spathas.
Alex, how did it go?
- I definitely managed to find my fair share of challenges,
but it went pretty well.
My blade is about a 50-layer
Damascus steel out of SK5 and 15N20,
with a wrought iron guard and pommel inset,
and I've got iron wood guard and pommel
with a black wood handle.
- Kevin, tell us a little bit about your blade.
- I made a blade out of 5160,
and I made a pommel
out of brass sandwiched with rosewood,
and then I used tagua nuts to make it look like ivory,
and then bronze stained the sword itself.
- Nice, that's why it's got that red appearance.
- It does.
- All right, to determine which one of you
is our next "Forged in Fire" champion,
we will put your blades through three tests.
There will be a strength test, a sharpness test,
and up first, the KEAL test.
Doug.
- All right, bladesmiths,
your spatha swords look amazing.
It's time to find out what kind of lethal damage they can do.
To do that, I will take your weapon,
deliver some killing slashes and blows
on this more than willing ballistics dummy.
Alex, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Let's do it. - Let's do it.
- As soon as I finished this blade,
I was content knowing whatever's gonna happen
is gonna happen, but now that I'm here,
standing in front of the dummy and Doug's got my sword,
I'm starting to get a little jittery.
Yeah, I'm a little nervous to see what this blade does.
- All right, Alex, first up,
I can really appreciate the beauty
that you have with your Damascus pattern right there.
It's really stands out.
Very clean lines.
The medial ridge you have on here, I can imagine,
well, how much work that takes to get it
almost perfectly straight all the way through to the tip.
Your tip is sharp enough to penetrate with a thrust
and lacerate on the way out.
And most importantly,
it will KEAL.
- Thank you. - Good job.
All right, Kevin, it's your turn. So you ready?
- Hell yeah. - Let's do this.
- Alex's spatha just destroyed that ballistics dummy.
And now I'm feeling anxious, excited.
I got the adrenaline going.
- It doesn't have a ridge. - Through to the tip.
No medial ridge on either side of the blade.
It's one of the parameters. - Right.
Kevin, your blade must fall within our parameters
in order to be tested evenly and fairly
with your competitors.
Your blade does not have a central ridge.
That was a parameter that was outlined
before we ever sent you home.
And for that reason,
you cannot be the "Forged in Fire" champion.
Come on, my friend.
- You know, it's just a bummer I can't see it tested.
That's what I really wanted. I want to see how it holds up.
- Nice work on that handle, though.
- Thank you, I appreciate it.
When I was making it, it had the defined ridge in it.
Just with the sanding and grinding,
it just took more of it off.
But this whole experience has been a blast.
Congratulations.
This isn't a loss.
I'm coming home with a $10,000 experience.
- Alex, you made a sharp and deadly spatha.
But not only that, you made something
that is detailed and beautiful.
Your attention to detail has elevated you
to the title of "Forged in Fire" champion.
Congratulations.
Your title comes with a check for $10,000.
Good job, brother.
- This is pretty wild.
I came here to challenge myself
and put myself through a super rigorous test
and I came out on top, and it feels great.
This $10,000,
I'm actually gonna give it all straight to my parents.
They supported me through college
as I was learning bladesmithing
and they're both getting ready to retire.
So it's all going to them.