[dramatic music]
♪
[upbeat rock music]
♪
- I'm Cody Santos. I'm 30 years old.
I am a full-time physical therapist,
and I have been a hobbyist bladesmith
for about two years now.
I definitely enjoy the artistic aspect of it
and seeing that change with each knife I make.
♪
- My name's Matthew Sweeney. I'm 44.
I love smithing because I like to make things.
My favorite knife to make is actually tattooed on my arm.
This knife was made
for a retired British Navy submariner,
so he passed it on to his grandson.
- My name is Kayan Cajudo. I am 41 years old.
I am a part-time Filipino martial arts instructor
and a part-time traditional Filipino sword maker.
I got into traditional Filipino martial arts
and blade making through my own heritage.
I've lived in the Philippines for a short time.
I have a lot of family there.
My dad still lives there as well.
I think I'll do pretty well.
- My name is Willow Zietman. I am 32 years old.
I got into blacksmithing 'cause my dad gave me a copy
of "The Lord of the Rings"
and swords and metal just seemed pretty rad.
♪
- Well, bladesmiths, welcome to The Forge.
We've got a hell of a tasty competition for you.
Now, that competition will consist of three rounds,
and there will be an elimination
at the end of each one made by these judges
sitting behind me today.
I hope you're hungry 'cause I've been spending
the past few hours preparing a delicious meal
of soup for all you guys.
It probably would have gone a whole lot faster
had I had an amazing chef's knife.
Now, what makes a good chef's knife
is one that is lightweight.
It's flexible, it's comfortable in the hand,
and it is strong and sharp.
As I'm sure you're already
kind of putting things together and guessing,
that's exactly what we want you to make today.
Now, we ask that these blades
fall within the following parameters.
The blade length will have to be between 10 and 12 inches
from the tip to where the cutting edge ends,
and by the end of the first round,
they're gonna have to be set up
for a full tang handle construction.
And we want your blades to feature a hamon.
- A chef knife seems simple,
but the geometry has to be perfect.
The shape has to be perfect. I'm a little freaked out.
- And in order to make your chef's knife,
you're gonna need what's on the anvils in front of you.
Go ahead and take that cloth off for me.
♪
What you're all looking at there
are bars of W1 good high carbon steel
in the form of round stock.
Now, we've decided to have you make monosteel blades today
because we want to give you the opportunity to focus
on all those minute details that make a chef knife great.
For the three of you
who join us in the second round,
we have a professional chef coming in here
to check your blades for functionality,
and then because this is "Forged in Fire,"
we're gonna check for strength and sharpness,
first starting with a rolling pin chop
and ending with a chef's apron slice.
Now, bladesmiths, we only have three hours on the clock.
Your time starts now.
[energetic rock music]
- This is actually a very specialized challenge.
A chef's knife is kind of its own beast.
- Yeah, if you're doing an all-around chef's knife,
you've gotta use that in a number of different ways.
You want to be able to slice a tomato with it.
You want to be able to split a chicken in half with it.
So that blade and handle have to be comfortable
in a lot of different ways.
♪
- If I put the entire piece in the forge,
I'm afraid that it'll take too long to heat up.
- Kayan probably cut that W1 in quarter.
- You can pull that blade out of that,
but that's not giving you any wiggle room whatsoever.
- You know, you're just running huge risks
when you're working with minimum.
- I've made plenty of chef knives before,
but it's my least favorite thing to make.
A chef knife has to be perfect.
There's no other way around it.
Three hours is definitely not enough time
to make a chef knife, but we gotta do
what we gotta do. It's "Forged in Fire."
♪
- My game plan is just to go slow and steady
but not too slow, rushing around
like a chicken with its head cut off
with a chef's knife.
♪
I am a full-time mom,
and as the cook in the family,
I want to make sure that this knife
does what I would want it to do
when making whatever I'm making for the family.
♪
- I'm really trying to think about, like,
how can I set myself up
to have really good edge geometry on the knife
because that's what makes culinary knives
perform the way they do.
I just want to make sure I remind myself
not to take huge bites on the steel
with the press because that just adds
a ton of extra stress.
♪
- I like what Cody's doing right now.
So he's got a nice, long, rectangular, wide billet
compared to what it was earlier.
- Honestly, what Cody has now,
he could legitimately go to the grinder.
- Exactly.
♪
- My steel is up to temperature,
and then to Big Blu.
[with Russian accent] He's strong like bitch
who fights bears in the forest.
♪
- I like what Willow's doing.
Watching her, yeah, she's got a good tip worked in.
That's actually really good work.
♪
- Feeling that I'm moving at a brisk pace,
but I'm not rushing around frantically
or anything like that.
So at this point, I have a long bar drawn out to length.
From here, I want to refine the handle shape a little bit.
- We talked about the chef's knives
being also something that's light.
When talking about the handle,
something that you can even use just your fingers
to be slicing off.
You don't need to hammer fist
or really grab on to a blade like that.
- I have so much extra steel
still on the back of the handle,
that I might have to just cut some off.
♪
- See, Cody's doing what I would do.
Take the whole bar of steel, stretch it out,
and just when I get what I need stretched out,
then cut it off from there.
♪
Well, Matt's got enough material right there.
He seems to be working Big Blu nicely,
get that tip formed in there.
And he's got a decent amount of height already.
♪
- [bleep] bent.
♪
- Oh, that's not good.
- I'm working my tip in, and like a bonehead,
my foot gets stuck, and I just overpress this.
Folded all over on itself. It's horrible.
It's mangled. This tip is ruined.
Fortunately, I have enough steel
'cause there's no way of fixing this.
It has to get cut off the end.
Now that that's cut off, we're going right back.
This time, we're gonna hammer it in by hand.
♪
- [bleep].
As I start to draw it out,
I realize that I cut off way too little bit of material.
Made a huge mistake.
I was measuring for overall length,
not blade. - The whole length, oh.
- Just a dumb [bleep] move under pressure.
- Kayan's got, like, two inches of steel.
- I'm not going to meet the parameters.
[tense music]
- Kayan's gotta do something here.
- I'm looking at the clock, and I realize
that it's been less than an hour,
so I feel pretty confident I can restart this project.
♪
- Hey, Kayan's starting over, guys,
so hopefully he goes back and grabs more steel this time.
- I got less than three hours. I need to produce a knife.
Oh, [bleep].
- Bladesmiths, you've got two hours left!
♪
Willow, she's moving incredibly fast.
♪
Everybody else is doing a great job,
but she's just way ahead.
- Thinking about all the chef's knives
that I've used, one of the most annoying things
a knife can do is get food suction cupped to it,
to the flat bevel,
so I put a hollow in there
so that there isn't as much contact.
- You rarely see a hollow grind on a chef's knife.
In a chef's knife, you don't want
material to push out.
You want to just slide through it.
- I realize when I'm grinding
that I could forget to put a hamon.
- Willow's taking notes on her arm.
- [laughs] All over her arm.
- Whatever works.
[energetic rock music]
- I don't know about you guys, but my kitchen
always has the later knife in it.
It's the one you never clean
because you're gonna use it later.
- [laughs] - My wife hates it.
- It's very thick at this point.
I want to get it thinner
so then I can then prep it
to mark it to put the bevels on.
- Well, that's one of the things when you get into
balancing a chef's knife--
you balance it from where you pinch it up here,
but if you need to manipulate a knife,
you want to be up here pinching it.
- So I want to set something up
that can be comfortable for either way it's used,
especially knowing there's gonna be a professional chef
using this knife in the test.
♪
- Kayan restarted, still kind of running through
the same process, drawing out.
- I managed to form my second blade.
So at this point, I am reheating it
and drawing it out.
I feel like I'm totally under pressure,
but I still have pretty good time,
and I'm changing my profile
to a Binakuko.
It's a traditional Filipino chef's knife,
which is actually for butchering.
- He's drawing it out and making it smaller,
not making it wider. - Wider's the key.
- Three hours is very difficult to make a functioning knife.
Less than three hours is really pushing those limits,
but I'm gonna give it my best.
- If he got on Big Blu in one pass,
he could get the width he needs--
in one heat.
♪
- Bladesmiths, you got one hour left!
♪
- Typically, a hamon is put on something
that's gonna be for chopping.
It acts like a shock absorber on the back of the knife.
It takes off some stress.
♪
- Oh, all right. Matt is in the oil.
How do you feel about temperature?
- The issue with overheating with W1
is you might see the stress fractures show up
in the tempering cycle.
- [grunts]
I see two big cracks all along the spine of the blade
because I quenched too hot.
- You quenched this blade so hot
that you've actually split the W1 core.
♪
- I'm looking at my knife. It's beautiful.
♪
[groans]
- Matt does not look happy.
- I see a crack.
- He's got a crack. - Oh, boy.
- I'm devastated.
I'm looking at this thing,
and it looks like the Grand Canyon.
- I mean, he's gotta know if there's one crack,
there's likely more.
- I'm heartbroken. I look at the clock.
Oh, [bleep].
At this point, there is no time to start over.
[dramatic music]
My brain is already moving. I know what I need to do.
I run straight to the welder.
Now we gotta get this reprofiled and reground,
then back into the clay and back into the forge.
♪
[energetic rock music]
- So we asked these smiths to give us a hamon
on their chef's knives, and that's not something
I've ever seen in one of these competitions.
So how do they go about achieving an attractive hamon?
- You cover up everything you don't want hardened,
and that clay acts as an insulator,
so that steel never gets to the hardening temperature
when you quench it.
♪
- Wow.
- I feel great about the knife 'cause, as I'm looking down
grinding it, I can actually see the hamon line,
and I am able to breathe a big sigh of relief.
♪
- Once I'm reasonably happy with the grind,
I go over to the forge, and I look down at my arm,
and I remember, "Oh, crud,
I almost forgot the hamon."
Thank goodness for the writing.
Ugh, can you imagine if I hadn't written
all over myself in Sharpie? That would've sucked.
I'm praying that a hamon happens,
and that I've done everything right.
Whoa.
Ugh, it's so beautiful.
Wow.
It worked.
- Bladesmiths, you got 30 minutes left!
Kayan had a pretty interesting
and kind of off-the-wall design.
- That's not the shape of a chef knife
that we're looking for. - No.
♪
- That's screaming.
There is a hairline fracture.
- This is rough.
You do not want to be in this predicament right now.
- At this point, I can't get the crack out.
I have to finish the blade and have something
to present to the judges.
♪
- Five, four, three,
two, one!
Kitchen is closed, bladesmiths! This round's over!
- If they were to test this blade right now,
I'm not sure if it would survive,
but hopefully, I'll be able to fix it
in the next round.
[tense music]
- All right, bladesmiths, over the past three hours,
you took your W1, turned them into
your custom chef's knives, but the time has come
for the first critique and elimination.
Cody, you're up first. Please present your work.
♪
- All right, Cody, you've got a good shape.
It's very identifiable as a kitchen knife,
which is great, but if I were using this
in a kitchen situation, you know,
and I was going to cut my vegetables,
problem is is there's about 1/4-inch gap
between the blade and my cutting board.
You can't get that all the way down,
and that's because of this tail you've got here.
If you move forward, correcting this
would be the main thing to do.
♪
- Matt, you're up. You ready?
- Sure.
♪
- All right, Matthew, good shape on this piece.
The big issues, though, you've got a good warp
on the back third here, and you've got a good crack
right here.
If you don't figure out a way to fix this,
I know there's a couple guys on this panel
that like breaking things in half.
- Yes, sir.
- All right, Kayan, you're up. You ready?
- Ready.
- All right, Kayan, let's talk about your blade here.
First up, good on you for restarting,
and that way, you were able to present us
with a blade, but the one thing
that you're missing is the height of a chef's knife.
Your handle construction, if you don't have that height,
now my knuckles dig in when I make that impact
to try to cut this way.
But the big issue here is that you have a crack
that goes across the edge onto the other side.
If you move forward to the second round,
there is a way to address that.
- Last but not least, Willow. You ready?
Please present your work.
♪
- All right, Willow, right off,
classic lines for a chef's knife.
Really well done.
I would have loved to have seen maybe
about 1/2 inch more in height, but you've got just enough
of a rocker in that blade so I can do
some vegetable chopping, which is great.
For me, it's a little bit small
in the handle. Your edge is spot-on.
I think you did a great job. Well done.
- Thank you.
♪
- Well, bladesmiths, in this competition,
only three of you can join us
in the second round of this competition,
and after discussion, the judges did make
that final decision,
and the bladesmith leaving the forge is...
♪
Kayan, unfortunately, your blade did not make the cut,
and J.'s gonna tell you why.
- Kayan, you're not the only one that has a crack
in your blade, but yours is the only one
that's not recognizable as a kitchen knife
that we asked for.
It doesn't have the right profile, height,
and that's not something you're gonna be able to fix
in the next round.
That's why we're sending you home.
- Kayan, at this point in time,
I'm gonna have to ask you to please surrender your work
and step off The Forge floor.
♪
- Thank you for the experience. - Goodbye.
- The judges were looking for something different.
I don't think I should have tried
to do a traditional Filipino butcher knife.
Nobody knows what that is here.
I enjoyed meeting the other bladesmiths,
and it was a good experience.
- Well, bladesmiths, congratulations.
The three of you are joining us
in the second round of this chef's knife competition.
Now, in this round, we ask that you finish your blades
by adding handles to them.
Now, I'm sorry to say, the pantry is closed.
You will only have access to these cutting boards
right here to finish your blades.
Like I said before, we are bringing a professional chef
into this forge to test your blades for functionality,
and then they're gonna go into the hands of our judges
who will check for strength and sharpness
in a rolling pin chop
and a chef's apron slice.
Bladesmiths, you've got two hours on the clock
to finish your blades, and that time starts now.
[energetic rock music]
- So we gave them plastic cutting boards.
How good of a material is this to finish a blade?
- I haven't seen it in any supply catalogs
or on any show tables, so probably not that great.
- Well, right off the bat, Matt's got a really big issue.
He's got what I would say is the largest crack
that's made it into the second round,
so he's gotta find a way to fix it.
- I'm going straight for the welder.
I'm welding both sides and really get a good
heat penetration into that crack.
- The best thing he can do is get another piece
of W1 that they're using and use the gas torch
and melt that in.
Now, that gives a strong weld with lots of penetration.
Now, if you just do a surface weld,
then you go and grind it, you probably have
a paper thin bond... - Yeah.
- Over the crack.
- I feel like I'm rushing like crazy right now.
I have so much I need to do and only two hours.
I gotta move.
♪
- Willow's gone over to the welder
and is putting weld on top of the tang.
What's the deal there?
- We talked about how skinny her handle was.
- Mm-hmm.
- She's just making that tang a little wider
so when she puts some scales on it,
it'll be a easier situation. - Wow.
- That's not a bad idea.
- If I build out the back side of my handle
with the welder, I should be able
to get the handle to that more comfortable thickness.
♪
[imitating welder crackling]
♪
- In the critique, Dave gave me feedback
that the tail of the handle was a little bit too tall,
preventing the knife from making full contact
with the cutting board, so this is priority number one
coming into the round.
To fix it, I'm going over the grinder.
I'm gonna remove a fraction of an inch
from the bottom of the handle to give better clearance.
- In my opinion, if you're making a chef's knife,
do all those movements that you would do
if you were cutting up a vegetable.
As a matter of fact, we've got vegetables
right there on the table.
Grab some of those... - Go for it.
- And see how it feels in your hand
and adjust accordingly.
- That's what we're looking for.
♪
- I decided to use blue for my handle
so that it would be color coordinated.
This is the goofiest stuff ever.
It's a weird material.
I'm going to make the handle comfortable.
Then I look down, and I think I'm bleeding.
♪
[screams]
I just let them bandage up my hand,
and I just-- I don't stop working.
- And look at Willow holding on to the cutting board
with her teeth.
- Don't think I'd be putting anything in this shop
in my mouth.
- Thank you so much. - Yeah, no worries.
- [imitates chomping]
Start having an early lunch. Thank you.
♪
- Cody's moving along well.
I mean, he's already got the holes drilled.
- So now my handle is reprofiled.
When I first go to the grinder, this material is awful.
It's melting. It's sticky.
- So smiths have to use this cutting board
and nothing else aside form pin stocks
to finish these blades out.
So what makes it so challenging
using this material in particular?
- It is a softer plastic.
You just gotta be careful about melting, scorching,
and stuff like that. - It's going terrible so far.
This stuff is disgusting. - It's horrible.
It just turns into putty.
- I would definitely not suggest this
as handle material.
- The weld filled the crack, but the heat
ruined my heat treat, so now I gotta quench again.
- My issue with doing an edge quench
when you've only really heated 1/2 inch
of that material is that material
is never gonna get hard.
- You just deal with that one little dead space
and hope for the best. - Yeah, exactly.
And hope that space isn't what hits the rolling pin.
♪
- Son of a...
- I find another crack.
I'm freaking out.
I don't know what to do with myself.
[bleep].
But then I see how small it is.
I'm going right for the grinder.
I'm grinding this one out.
I'm doing my best that I can.
I don't even want to know how much time I got left.
All I need to worry about is what tasks need to be done now.
[energetic rock music]
- I have a little bit of a problem with my blade.
It's called J. Neilson.
He has a penchant for bashing things
really hard.
♪
So I actually go with quite a lot thicker
of a cutting edge.
I just want to make sure that this knife functions well
and survives testing.
♪
- So now I'm trying to put a final grind on my blade.
And while I'm doing this, I'm noting a small divot
on the cutting edge of the blade
from where the blade got a little bit too thin.
- Now, I wonder if that's gonna impede the blade
from making full contact.
- If there's a gap of any kind,
well, this is good for opening bottles now.
- Oh, yeah.
- It's definitely concerning for me
because it's so thin there in the blade,
it's definitely more prone to damage during testing,
but at this point, I'm thinking this divot
is something I'm gonna have to live with.
- Bladesmiths, you got 15 minutes!
♪
- I've fixed all my problems,
so now I need to get a handle on this knife
and sharpen this blade.
♪
- It's good to see him get past the issues
he had at the critique. - Yeah.
- He's reshaped that blade into something
that's gonna work.
- I'm grinding on my bevels and flats one more time.
I need to put a sharp edge on this blade.
It's gotta cut nice, or I'm going home.
♪
- Five, four, three,
two, one!
Bladesmiths, put down your tools!
This round is over!
- I'm feeling exhausted.
After these two hours
and how much work I've put into it,
I am so happy.
I love the way my knife looks.
Handle looks like crap, but it's smooth,
it fits good in my hand.
It's gonna work.
♪
- Bladesmiths, welcome to our functionality test.
First, I'd like to introduce our expert
from the culinary world, Chef Plum.
♪
We're gonna have Chef Plum do some slicing and dicing
on these vegetables, this way he can use
a variety of knife handling techniques
as well check for the versatility,
comfort, and function of your chef's knife.
Willow, you're up first. You ready?
We gotta do this, yeah? - Okay.
- All right.
♪
- The thing that scares me is tomatoes.
It takes a really sharp knife to get through a tomato.
♪
[energetic rock music]
♪
- All right, Chef, what do you think overall
about Willow's chef's knife?
- Well, Doug, the knife itself is very heavy,
but the handle feels really good in your hand.
Cutting the onion, as you can see,
it wasn't quite as easy to get uniform cuts on it,
but when cutting the pepper, the dexterity of it,
feeling versatile, and I could move it,
it felt very, very comfortable.
- All right, Willow, overall, it will cut.
- Yes!
- Matthew, you're up. You ready, sir?
- Yes, sir. - Let's do this.
♪
- Due to the weld that I had to do for the crack,
I'm worried on the sharpness on the front of the knife,
and I know that's a sweet spot the chef
is gonna be looking for. I'm definitely nervous.
I'm hoping that my blade doesn't break.
[energetic rock music]
♪
- Yeah, so I couldn't get all the way through with that.
♪
- All right, Chef, what do you think
of Matthew's chef's knife?
- It wouldn't rock like I like to have a knife rock
through an onion, and cutting the pepper itself,
I feel like I had to put a lot of pressure in there.
A lot of pressure is a scary thing.
It usually means a dull knife.
A dull knife is a dangerous knife.
And cutting the tomato itself,
you know, when I tried to slice that paper thin,
I had to really kind of get in there
and do the sawing back and forth action,
but I do love the color of it. It looks beautiful.
- All right, Matthew, overall, it will cut.
- Thank you.
- All right, Cody, you're up. Are you ready?
- As ready as I'll be. - All right, let's do this.
♪
- I know my knife is very sharp,
but I'm a little bit concerned about the overground spot
on the edge.
Definitely could affect how easily it is to cut.
♪
- What do you think of Cody's blade?
- Doug, this handle feels really nice.
It might be the best feeling handle we've had so far.
It does have this little notch in the blade.
As you saw when I cut the green onions,
I think it got stuck in there.
However, the edge is nice,
and I really do like the feature here
how he kind of made it a sharp point on the end
so if you're gonna cut something small,
you can do that.
But overall, I like this knife.
- All right, Cody,
it will cut.
- Thank you, Doug.
- All right, Chef Plum, thank you for gracing us
with your expertise today.
Next up is a dynamic strength test with Dave.
♪
- All right, bladesmiths,
welcome to our dynamic strength
and sharpness test.
Kitchen knives usually last a lifetime,
so we're gonna just sort of speed up the process
of all the abuse it would take over those years
and put it into one test.
Willow, you're up first. You ready?
♪
I'll take that as a yes.
♪
[heavy rock music]
♪
- [gasps]
- All right, Willow, the changes you made
to your handle, that flare at the back
gave me a lot of retention. Super sharp edge.
It went right through the apron with no problem,
and all in all, it held up beautiful.
Nicely done. - Thank you.
- All right, Matthew, you ready?
- Do it.
- We'll get through this.
♪
[heavy rock music]
♪
- [bleep].
♪
[bleep].
♪
- So Matthew, first off, you can see on the apron
those lines are torn more than they're cut...
- Yeah.
- And that's because this whole section right here
just isn't sharp, but the weld you did
to fix that crack, excellent job.
- So nicely done.
- Thank you. - All right, Cody, you ready?
- You bet. - Okay.
♪
[heavy rock music]
♪
- Mm-hmm.
♪
- All right, Cody, right there where my thumbnail is,
do you see that discoloration?
There was a teeny, little crack there
that I didn't see, and just going in and out of that wood,
it caught it.
I would love to continue testing with it,
but, you know, one more hit on that,
and that blade will probably go flying,
and that's-- it becomes a safety issue.
- Cody, you did a phenomenal job,
but you have a massive chunk out of your blade.
We consider that a catastrophic failure,
so unfortunately, we cannot continue testing your blade,
and for that reason, your time in this competition has ended.
I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off
The Forge floor. - Thank you, guys.
- Thank you.
- I think where the blade broke was so unexpected,
and I didn't see any cracks on the blade
when inspecting it several times
throughout the challenge.
The experience has been a lot of fun,
and I've learned a lot.
I'm proud of myself for how far I went in the competition,
and I can't wait to keep making more knives.
♪
- Well, Matthew, Willow, congratulations.
The two of you have proven your skills
and are joining us in the third and final round
of this kitchen themed competition.
Over the past two rounds, you've both built
a small chef's knife.
In the next four days, we're upping the ante
and asking you both to build
a slightly more intimidating blade
from the culinary world.
Bladesmiths, we want you to build this.
♪
The hog splitter. - Bring it.
- The hog splitter is an evolution of size
and strength of one of humanity's oldest tools,
the butcher's cleaver.
This monstrous tool features a broad, square blade
with a sharp, straight edge designed to be strong enough
to hack and chop cleanly through thick slabs
of meat and bone, and a long handle
to aid with precision.
Its size and power are so renowned,
its inspired many gruesome recreations
in pop culture, including the video game "Bloodborne,"
where the title character's main weapon is a saw cleaver.
Bladesmiths, this massive cleaver blade
will have to be between 22 and 24 inches long
and be no less than 4 inches tall
throughout the entirety of its length.
The handle needs to be between 14 inches
and 16 inches long, and on top of that,
we want you both to include a maker's mark
that resembles an animal.
- A hog splitter is this giant cleaver
for splitting entire pig carcasses in half.
That's awesome.
I mean, it's not kosher,
but, like, that's okay.
- Bladesmiths, one of you will leave this forge
as a "Forged in Fire" champion and get a check for $10,000,
so good luck.
We'll see you both in four days.
- Let's go.
♪
It's beginning of day one,
I'm gonna start making a hog splitter.
I've never made a weapon this big before.
The challenge is drawing it so wide
and so far out.
I'm starting with 36 layers of 1095 and 15N20.
♪
I have some wrought iron around here.
I'm gonna do Damascus San Mai,
and it's gonna look awesome.
[bleep].
I think I got a little overzealous
and banana'd my top layer.
♪
We're gonna pull it off and go from there.
It looks beautiful.
♪
I've got the wrought iron all drawn out.
♪
It's time to get our full billet together.
End of day one, I have a successful forge weld.
I'm happy. Let's keep moving.
All right, good.
♪
- It's the morning of day one.
My plan is to make this hog splitter
out of San Mai Damascus
with a core of 80CrV2.
♪
I set up my Damascus billet, and I chuck it in the forge.
Oh, my God.
Dear God, it's heavy.
♪
I am starting to get a little worried
because it's just such a hard material.
It's just so much to move.
The billet is an inch and 1/2 wide.
I'm aiming for a 4 1/2-inch wide blade,
so I clean it up and then restack
and triple my layer count.
At the end of day one,
I have a 72 layer Damascus.
I'm feeling reasonably good so far.
Here we go.
♪
- First thing I need to do this morning
is draw out my billet.
♪
Looking good.
Looks like I need about another inch for my width.
It's going pretty smooth.
Now that we're forged to length and width,
it's time to grind the profile and get a shape on this blade.
♪
I'm starting to see a few
little inclusions on the spine.
♪
Getting cracks is one of the worst things
that could happen to a blade of this size.
When the judges go to test it, it would definitely fail.
I'm at the edge of my parameters right now,
so I don't want to grind any farther,
so I'm just gonna fill it with weld
and make it solid.
I'm happy with this result.
Hopefully we can make it through testing.
♪
- Morning of day three, I still have to draw out
this hog splitter to size.
♪
It's just taking forever.
Carbon steel is really, really hard.
It feels like pounding on a rock.
♪
I am worried that I just won't have enough width
in my blade to make this work and to meet parameters.
- I'm running out of material to get my hog splitter
to the size that it really needs to be.
I thought I had enough, but I don't.
Time is limited,
so I decide to weld a 1-inch piece of bar
onto the spine so that I meet width parameters.
[energetic rock music]
I am just praying that, when I put it in the oil,
it doesn't bend or warp.
♪
It is straight. Nothing seems to have cracked.
I'm feeling tentatively triumphant,
but tomorrow might be terrible. Who knows?
[bleep] jeepers, my goodness.
I think I'm done for the day.
♪
- Day four, we gotta get an edge on our blade,
and we gotta do all our handle work today.
Yesterday, we got a quench done,
and then I painted a bear paw
with nail polish, so when I etch this,
when I clean off the nail polish,
it will leave the negative image
on bare steel.
First thing I'm gonna do this morning
is clean off that nail polish.
I want to see that maker's mark pop.
Looks great.
It's time to get the handle ready.
♪
It's the end of day four. This thing is awesome.
It is sharp. It is sleek.
I can't wait to see it cut.
I'm happy as hell right now.
♪
- Day four, I have a fully hardened blade.
I just need to put the rest of my handle on,
etch, sharpen, and put an animal on it.
I go for an etch, and it's beautiful.
It's not as bright as I'd like,
but you can't have everything in this world.
♪
I need to engrave a dragon into this thing.
I'm carving a dragon because they're kind of my signature,
one of the things that I teach and that stands out
about my classes is that we always finish
by making a silly, little dragon face.
♪
Now I can get to my fit and finish work.
♪
It looks really good,
and it feels really good in the hand.
I guess I'm done.
[dramatic music]
♪
- Bladesmiths, welcome back to The Forge.
It is time to find out which one of you
is going home with the "Forged in Fire" champion title
and a check for $10,000.
Now, in this final round, we asked the both of you
to go back to your home forges
to build another culinary blade.
This one is a beast, but before we test them,
I want to hear about 'em.
So, Willow, how'd the build go for you?
- Kicked my butt.
♪
The core is 80CrV2 San Mai'd over
with 144 layers of 1080
and 15N20 on each side,
but it wouldn't take an etch.
I don't know if, like, a sheep peed in my etch--
- A sheep?
Do you have sheep? - I do have sheep, yes.
- Okay, good.
- And the bucket was right out near the sheep.
[laughter]
Matthew, how about you? - I had a blast.
♪
36 layers of 1095 15N20, and then I jacketed that
in 1800s wrought iron from an old anchor chain
with Caribbean rosewood for the handle.
- Right on.
All right, bladesmiths, well, the time has come
for us to find out which one of you is going home
with the big win.
Now first, the KEAL test with Doug.
♪
- Bladesmiths, welcome to the Kill test.
♪
In keeping with our culinary theme,
I'm gonna take your hog splitter
and try to use it like a butcher
to split this hog in half.
Willow, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Let's go full hog. - All right, let's do that.
- I want to throw up.
I want to curl up into a ball.
In order to meet parameters, I had to add some steel
along the spine.
All I can think about, is it okay?
Will it cut?
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[laughter]
♪
- All right, Willow, let's talk about your hog splitter here.
First up, the overall look, kind of unique.
I like that point at the tip over there.
It kind of gives it a different look.
Holding onto it was nice and smooth,
and with a very heavy, top loaded blade,
I can control even with light cuts to make sure
that I can split a whole hog in half.
And overall, your hog splitter,
it will Kill.
- Yes.
- Matthew, you're up. You ready?
- Do your worst. - All right.
- Going into this test, I am close to [bleep] myself.
It was a heck of a huge weapon to build.
I definitely had some struggles,
but it's awesome. I love looking at this thing.
♪
[dramatic music]
♪
[bleep].
♪
- Gentlemen, this does not look like its within parameters.
It looks smaller. What do you guys think?
- Had to be at least 4? - Yeah, 4 inches.
- Throughout the entire-- - Through the entire--yeah.
It has to be a minimal of four. Let's just find out.
♪
- What are we at?
- He's at least an 1/8 of an inch short,
1/8 to 1/4 short. - All the way through.
- So it's a parameter failure. - Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
♪
- [sighs]
- All right, Matthew, we got a bit of an issue.
With this blade, we had a series of parameters,
one of which was that it should not be
any less than 4 inches throughout the entirety
of the blade, and it seems
that you did not meet that mark,
so this is considered a parameter failure.
We want to say thank you for coming out.
You're clearly a talented smith,
but unfortunately, your time in this competition has ended.
I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off
The Forge floor.
- Before I ground my edge, I knew I was darn close
to get parameter, and I must have just gone
a little bit too small. It is what it is.
But overall, this experience was awesome.
I would definitely do this again
if I was invited back.
- Well, Willow, congratulations.
That makes you a "Forged in Fire" champion.
You'll be receiving a check for $10,000.
- I had an absolute blast. I have learned so much.
I'm, like, 20 times the bladesmith I was
even a week ago.
- Thank you. - Creative work around--
- Hey, can I give you a hug?
I know you're very big and scary, but can I hug you?
[laughter]
- I'm not very big. - Well, you're bigger than me.
- All right, sure.
♪