[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[rock music]
- my name is bryan dana custance.
I am 41 years old.
When I was 14 years old,
I made a screwdriver,
and as soon as I saw a hammer hit hot metal,
there was never any coming back.
♪ ♪
- I'm evan seahawk.
Full-time, I am a graphic designer.
I work a normal nine to five job.
I come home, pour into my family,
put the kids to bed,
and then from 10:30 till 3:00 in the morning,
that's my forge time.
♪ ♪
- my name is walter baranowski.
I'm a fourth generation metal worker.
My grandfather in the philippians was a bladesmith,
my father was a welder,
and there was always, like, a deep calling.
I started making knives when I was 18
and haven't stopped since.
♪ ♪
- my name's paul destefano, I'm 26 years old,
and I'm an emt for the new york city fire department.
For me, bladesmithing is purely an artistic outlet.
I like blades as forms of art
because it's brutal, but it can also be elegant.
That's kinda something you don't see often
in other forms of art.
[dramatic music]
- gentlemen, welcome to the forge.
Today you're about to take part
in a forging competition unlike any other.
We're gonna have three rounds of competition.
At the end of each round,
I'm gonna ask you to present your work
to our panel of expert judges.
Those judges are
two-time "forged in fire" champion ben abbott.
Next we got historic weapons recreation specialist
dave baker.
And edged weapon specialist
doug marcaida.
And you guys are gonna be competing head to head
for the coveted title of "forged in fire" champion
and a check for $10,000.
Today in the forge, we're gonna put a twist
on one of our classic forging competitions.
You guys see you've a cloth in front of you.
Why don't you go ahead and pull those off for me?
♪ ♪
you guys have a choice to make.
You either make your blades
out of that big suspension bridge cable
or the small piano wire.
Each one of those is a viable option.
They both have really good high carbon steel,
but they'll different methods to make your blades.
Regardless of what steel you guys choose,
I want you make signature blades
in your signature styles between 13 and 15 inches.
- I'm considering the piano wire.
I'm looking at, and like,
I don't think there's enough here
to really make what I want.
I know there's too much with the other one.
That is gonna be tough.
- Now, round two of the competition,
you're gonna be adding handles to your blades,
turning them into fully functioning weapons,
and we're gonna test for strength and durability
in an animal horn chop
and check your edge retention in a water tube slice.
All right, bladesmiths, work hard,
but keep your eyes on the clock.
You will only have three hours to complete this challenge.
Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
we got a big cable out there,
and we've got a spool of smaller wire.
What the different steps you guys would take
with each different option?
The big cable, you weld both ends together,
heat them up, tighten the twist
so the things are more bound together,
get it up to a forge welding temperature,
and pack everything together. - Okay.
- Then with the piano wire,
you're gonna pack it in a canister with 1095 powder
and do a typical canister weld.
- I'm looking at the two cables,
and I'm the big cable's gonna be easier
to get a 13 to 15 inch blade.
I'm scrubbing it down with acetone first
to get much of the grease and gunk out of there as I can.
- We've seen a lot of times where cleaning upfront
saves you restarting later.
♪ ♪
- I decide to go with the bigger cable
rather than the piano wire.
Piano wire's not something I have a lot of experience with.
♪ ♪
I probably don't need all of these pieces,
so I'm gonna pull two of them out.
- Here's the issue I have with what walter's doing.
With cable damascus,
you usually have little frayed cables
that will spread out while you're welding.
You need a bit of waste metal
that you can get rid of,
and when you have just a minimal amount of material,
it turns into an issue.
♪ ♪
- I'm gonna work down each one of these smaller pieces
into its own billet,
make a stack,
forge weld them together.
Bladesmithing runs in my blood.
I wanna bring pride to my family name,
and this is something I love to do.
♪ ♪
- no, cable. - Yeah, cable, cable.
- Cable.
- Nobody wants smaller wire. Why do you think that is?
- If you haven't done a canister, it's risky.
- I didn't even look at the piano wire.
I've made cable damascus before.
Big thick steel cable, this is what I'm gonna have to go with.
Everyone's breaking down this cable
to where they have these small little strands,
but I'm just gonna use the whole thing.
- Paul is doing it the way I would do it.
It's just weld both the ends up
so they don't come unfurled,
toss it into the forge.
- I'm trying to keep it thick
so that when I go into the grinder,
I can dig deep
and carve out any bad welds
along the edge of the knife.
- Good time management it seems too.
Every time he puts it back into the forge,
he's running out and working on a design.
- I wanna just make a simple camp knife,
and I'm on the clock,
so I just wanna make something solid that I know will perform.
- I've got the big cable apart.
What I'm trying to do by welding the top and the bottom
is keep it in one piece so that when I start to twist,
it's not gonna fly apart.
If there's a weld flaw
and something goes wrong in the steel,
not gonna be good for me
in any way, shape, or form.
- What twisting actually is doing
is applying a pressure from all sides
and top and bottom all at the same time.
♪ ♪
- I'm twisting my cables.
I wanna get it twisted up as tight as I absolutely can.
♪ ♪
[grunts]
the material is much harder to twist than I expected.
♪ ♪
as I'm trying to get my billet correctly compact,
and I realize that my twist isn't tight enough.
If I cannot get these strands compacted together,
I won't have anything to show the judges.
I've gotta try to drive everything together
by smacking the billet down on the floor.
Hoping that my welds will be better.
Looks like it's compressing my material just fine,
so I'm feeling pretty good.
- You see all the untwisted cable by paul's work deck?
He doesn't need that area at all.
He could cut the whole thing off,
and he's got plenty of steel.
- All right. Paul is gonna go choppy choppy.
- There you go.
- [as arnold schwarzenegger] get your billet to the chopper!
- With cable damascus,
the outside is always gonna have bad welds
no matter what.
So I want to grind most of that away.
- I don't know why he's grinding.
Come on, paul, why don't you hammer it into a shape?
Draw that out to where you want it, then grind the edges.
It's a step you don't need to take right now.
- It doesn't matter how long it takes
grinding all the welds out,
if I don't do it,
I won't have a knife that can pass any performance test.
- One hour down!
You've got two hours remaining on the clock!
[dramatic music]
- I keep looking at these bars,
and I'm really telling myself,
"dude, you don't have enough steel."
aw, man, I'm freaking out.
I ain't got time to sit around
and think about what the heck I'm doing.
I decide I'm gonna go with making another bar.
One more. Do one more.
- Walter seems to be the only one
that doesn't have one working billet now.
- He's created some issues for himself for sure.
[rock music]
- whoo!
I love taking this piece
of lifeless junk
and making a tool that's gonna be around
hundreds of years after I'm gone.
I got started when my wife got me a lesson
with a master bladesmith,
and that's a decision
she's regretted ever since.
It's solid, it's looking good.
So I'm moving over to the chop saw,
and what I need to do
is preform my tip.
It's gonna be a big time saver.
- Evan's starting to get some shape going on.
Bryan's well on his way.
- I'm forging a fighter with an indexed handle
and an upswept blade.
I'm hammering the tip into shape,
and I'm gonna leave the rest of it for big blu.
♪ ♪
- bryan's got about the largest piece of steel
out here right now.
- Honestly, I don't know that his piece of steel
is any larger in volume than paul's is,
but paul hasn't drawn his out at all.
- It must be disconcerting to watch
paul really stare into his billet
that much when your grinding.
I'm like, "what are you seeing?"
- I have no idea how long I've been standing here grinding,
but if I don't get all these bad welds out,
they would just show up all along the knife.
So I have to do what I have to do.
- I don't think he's finished forge welding yet.
- It's time to throw it back into the forge.
Something's not welded in there.
- Yep.
[clanking] - you all right?
- I'm chasing bad welds for, like, half an hour.
Trying to grind them all out, they're not coming out.
- Zero hop in paul's step.
- Same with walter.
- He still doesn't have a working billet.
- But the weight of that clock's pretty severe,
and I'm starting to freak out.
Do I really have enough time?
- Basically, I'm looking at two smiths that are in trouble:
Walter and paul.
This is a smith who's gone into his head.
- The minutes are ticking down.
I know this is taking more time than it should.
- I'm starting to freak out.
This isn't good.
I don't know if I'm gonna make it.
[dramatic music]
- walter seems to be the only one
that doesn't have one working billet now.
- I get the third bar made,
and I need to get these three bars forge welded together.
At this point, I have zero room for error.
- Walter's way behind.
You've gotta start shaping a knife.
- Yeah.
- I finally finish grinding.
I think my welds look solid.
- Looks like paul's in the press now with his billet.
He's starting to form what looks like a tang.
- Now I have to try and hurry up and forge out the blade
because I've lost time grinding.
♪ ♪
- I don't think it's gonna come down to the wire
unless something unforeseen happens.
Right now I'm finishing up,
trying to get my proportions right,
and then it's just grind, grind, grind
until I feel like I'm ready to quench.
♪ ♪
- so we've got everybody with a pretty well shaped blade.
- I'm getting ready for the quench,
and I'm going to heat treat this
with a little trick I brought from home,
which is table salt.
Table salt will melt
at around 1,474 degrees.
So I use the table salt to tell me
when I'm up at critical temperature.
Salt just makes everything better anyway.
[rock music]
- bryan just quenched.
We'll see if bryan likes that hardening.
♪ ♪
- it's crazy how fast things can turn.
I thought was paul was gassed and gonna be out of it,
and walter didn't even have a billet,
and now, it seems like
they're both really turning the table.
- I didn't quite get to everything I wanted,
but I'm happy with the knife I finished for this round.
♪ ♪
- paul went in.
- This is the right time to be quenching.
I like it.
- I feel good.
- Right now, the clock is ticking down,
and I stick the blade into the forge,
just try and please, god, get hot enough.
- Going for a quench. - Yeah.
♪ ♪
- walter is shaking his head yes.
- She's singing like a canary with the file.
It sounds good to me.
- I have just over ten minutes.
I'm grinding my raker into the blade,
and something unforeseen has happened.
I notice there's a weld flaw
at the worst possible time.
- Oh, no. - What's happening?
- Are you guys seeing what I'm seeing on evan's blade?
- Can I get past it?
Is it just shallow?
And the more I grind,
the more I realize this isn't going away.
- Aw, man, evan is back to the flux now.
- Aw, that's not a good sign.
Is this a hail mary?
- It's a hail mary.
- It's time to go back to reforge weld
because if this doesn't get fixed,
I'm going home.
- We've got paul, walter, and bryan all quenched.
Evan's the only one lagging behind them.
- He's running out of time.
- Get it?
I think so.
I get forged back together.
I don't see any obvious problems with it.
♪ ♪
- quench it! It's hot enough.
That's hot enough there.
- Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
- And at this point,
it's either gonna be or it's not.
- Five, four, three,
two, one!
Bladesmiths, turn off your machines!
Put down your work! This round is over!
♪ ♪
- let me tell you something... [sighs]
I had to dig down deep to pull that one off,
but she's hard,
and I'm happy I'm turning in a blade that meets parameters.
- All right, guys,
it's now time to see what the judges think of your work.
Bryan, you're up first.
Please present your weapon.
[dramatic music]
- all right, bryan, let's talk about your blade here.
I like the profile that you have on this blade,
and everything is solid,
but there's a lot of metal that you have here.
If you make forward,
you'll have to lighten this blade a lot.
Good job. - Thank you.
- All right, evan, you're up next.
Please present your weapon.
♪ ♪
- evan, stylistically, I like where you're going with this,
but the issue is, is that
big delamination that runs along the edge of this blade,
and it looks fairly deep.
Then there are numerous more visual ones,
and I have no idea how deep those go.
There are things that could happen
to fix these problems,
but they are significant.
- All right, walter, you ready? Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- all right, walter,
there's still a lot of meat to this blade.
It's gonna take a lot of grinding,
and I do see on the edge
just whispers of lines
that are between some of the cables.
Those have to be gone.
Even the tiniest little crack across that edge
can be a stress riser
and initiate a crack that goes all the way through your blade.
But nice job.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, paul, please present your weapon.
♪ ♪
- well, paul,
you are by far the most meticulous smith out there.
You paid a lot of attention to grinding your forge welds
after they were done.
I was nervous that you were spending too much time,
and it does seem like you had to rush at the end.
I would address the handle most,
make sure that gets to be
a comfortable well-proportioned handle,
maybe doesn't have so much hanging off the back.
So it's just aesthetics from here.
♪ ♪
- you all did great work on your weapons,
but unfortunately, somebody does have to go home today.
The bladesmith leaving the forge is...
♪ ♪
evan.
- Evan, you did a lot of really good work out there,
and you blade that was developing a really nice shape,
but in the end, with all those delaminations,
those are structural issues to the blade
that none of the other competitors have.
♪ ♪
- evan, it's time for you to surrender your work
and please leave the forge.
♪ ♪
- little sad.
I didn't come here to lose. I came here to win.
I'm not gonna let this beat me.
I'm not gonna let this define me.
Gonna go home, kiss my wife,
drink a beer, get back to work.
♪ ♪
- all right, guys, you can take a breath.
You're making it into round two of the competition.
We're gonna ask you guys to add handles to your blades,
making them fully functioning weapons.
You'll see on your work stations,
you each have two spools of wire,
one tin and one brass.
You'll need to twist those
and incorporate them into your handles.
At the end of round two,
we're gonna test your blades for strength and durability
in the animal horn chop
and for edge retention and edge sharpness
in the water tube slice.
Keep your eyes on the clock.
So you only have two hours for this round of the competition,
and that time starts now.
[rock music]
- all three bladesmiths have a lot of grinding.
- Oh, yeah.
- My first objective in this round
is to get all that material ground off
because they told me it was too heavy.
If I don't get moving fast enough,
I'm not gonna be able to use up these two hours as I need to,
and I'm not gonna have enough time
to get everything I need done.
♪ ♪
- the first thing I do,
I go over the handle material
and try to find a big block
that I know will fit the width of the handle that I forged.
I tried to forge out the handle with enough room
for me to shape it to fit my hand exactly.
In the first round, I didn't get enough time to grind it
completely to my hand.
- Ben, it looks like paul's taking your advice
on the handle.
He's working on making it fit better.
♪ ♪
- my main concern
is getting a majority of the meat off of this blade.
Then I wanna make sure that there's not gonna be
any major inclusions.
- But I think that walter has a lot of grinding to do.
He's gotta get down
through all of those welds on the sides
and see where things are.
- A lot of those inclusions
that I had seen on the surface,
they're all fading away.
I'm feeling pretty good.
- Bladesmiths, you guys have one hour remaining.
♪ ♪
- I spent about an hour at the grinder,
and I'm realizing that it's time to move on to my handle.
My plan is to put these two pieces of wood together,
super glue them just a little bit
so that I can get a hole through both slabs of wood
at the same time and keep everything lined up.
- Look how tiny those scales are.
- I got my two holes drilled.
Now I need to take them apart.
Come on now.
I may have used too much glue.
I'm worried about spending too much time on this.
I've got to move on to the next step.
I don't have time to go and start a whole other handle,
so I decide to go over to the band saw and cut them again.
- He already cut them apart
just to glue them together and cut them back apart.
Now he's back on the grinder going down even further
taking that glue off,
but you were saying
they looked pretty slim as they were.
- They look small in every dimension.
- Yeah.
♪ ♪
- my handle's feeling good.
Now I'm going to focus on twisting up the wire.
- The easiest way to get a wire attached
is to drill a hole where you're starting,
cut a channel for it to sit in,
wrap it, drill a hole,
slide it all way through the handle material
and glue it here going over.
Paul's kinda gone down that road
that I was hoping he'd go down.
♪ ♪
- my blade's looking good.
I start setting myself up to make the knife scales.
- Is walter cutting the shape out right now?
Bad move.
- To me, it's a waste,
'cause he's gonna have to get up to that grinder
and reshape those once they're on anyway.
- So you would wanted to see him
glue them on the handle itself?
- If you're gonna use that technique...
- That kind of tack glue.
- Ah!
I just screwed up big time.
I ended up grinding the radius
on the inside of the handle scale.
The radius is the curves
on the handle of your knife.
- Uh-oh. Walter does not look happy.
- I just made
probably the simplest mistake you could make.
- Walter cut his scales to shape,
contoured one side correctly,
then contoured the wrong side of the other scale.
Now he has two right side scales.
He's gonna have to redo it.
- So this is a classic tale
of you should've put it on the blade before grinding.
- Yep.
- I can't flip flop them. I have one done.
This is gonna me some time, but I have to do it over.
[sighs]
- two seconds of grinding just set him back 30 minutes.
[dramatic music]
- ah!
I just screwed up big time.
- Uh-oh. Walter does not look happy.
- I ended up grinding the radius
on the inside of the handle scale.
I--son of a...
I have to do it over.
- If all the three knives test out equally,
the handle is quite often something
that is pushed to the fore as a reason for elimination.
- I just gotta relax,
accept what happened,
and keep moving on.
[rock music]
- I've done wire inlay before
but not quite under this sort of an extreme circumstance.
- Guys, you got 20 minutes remaining!
Coming down to the "wire."
[laughter] whoo!
- Bryan's using the dremel
to start probably putting the grooves for the inlay.
- Yeah.
- On those amazingly small handle scales.
- I plan using four pieces of twisted wire
and laying them at opposing angles,
like that.
- I think it's time to work on the blade edge.
♪ ♪
when I rock the blade back and forth,
it's to create the convex edge,
or an apple seed edge,
where it brings the edge in so it's sharp,
but it leaves a little bit of extra meat,
so the blade edge should be stronger.
- The thing about an animal horn chop
is that horn allows the blade to dig in quite a bit,
and if that edge is too fine,
it'll actually get stuck in the horn,
and if the blade rolls at all,
it'll just snap its section out.
- My blade isn't as pretty as I wanted it to be,
but I'm just hoping that my edge holds up to the horn test.
♪ ♪
- I've not done any kind
of twisted or grated wire like this on a handle before,
but I need to make it happen fast.
My plan of attack is to run
two strips of the wire
kind of on an angle,
inlaid into the handle.
- He's doing, like, a 3/4 wrap.
So when the scales go together,
the ends of the wire will be between the tang
and the scale.
- I'm running out of time.
I'm going into panic mode.
So I glue the handle scales on,
and I'm not gonna sit around
and wait for everything to dry.
I'm gonna start putting the finished edge on this knife.
[dramatic music]
- five, four, three,
two, one.
Put down your tools. Put your blades down.
This round is over.
- Good job, man. - Hell yeah, brother.
♪ ♪
- I'm feeling good about my knife.
I'm a little bit concerned that the edge
might not be strong enough
'cause I think I did grind a little bit too much away,
but it might be able to hold up to the horn.
♪ ♪
- bladesmiths, welcome to the strength test:
The animal horn chop.
♪ ♪
to test the strength and durability of your edge
as well as your overall construction of your knives,
I'll be chopping into these animal horns.
Remember, this test is all about
what those horns do to your knives,
not what your knives do to the horns.
Bryan, you're up first. You ready?
- Yes, sir.
- All right.
- It's antler chop, and that's a pretty rugged thing
to be putting the blade through.
I do not normally check my knives with antler.
I normally check them on my fingernail.
♪ ♪
[sighs]
- well, bryan,
you took a lot of the weight out of this blade,
and thank you very much for that.
Your edge held up great.
The handle is a bit small right here.
I am not getting a good grip on my pointer finger
where I really get a lot of control,
but in all, it's a strong blade,
it's a good looking blade,
just a little bit of issue on the handle here.
- Thank you very much.
- All right, walter, can you hear your heartbeat yet?
- It's in my throat. - [laughing]
♪ ♪
- oh, boy.
My heart is just a-jamming.
I don't know what's about to happen.
I don't know if my blade's about to blow apart
into a million pieces.
♪ ♪
I'm pretty nervous about this test.
♪ ♪
- all right, walter, this is a...
This is a cool knife. I like this thing.
As for the edge,
there is one deflection right there.
It's a deflection of the edge,
and also a delamination of one of the wires of the cable.
So it's kinda popped out,
and it's sharp if I run my finger this way,
but the rest of your edge
is still nice and sharp.
All in all, nice job. - Thank you, sir.
- All right, paul, you're up. You ready for this?
- Eh. - Yeah.
- All right, cool.
♪ ♪
- seeing the way ben hit those horns
with bryan and walter's knives
got me a little bit worried about how thin my edge is.
I might've taken a little bit of strength
out of the edge trying to sharpen it.
I'm not sure if my edge will hold up.
♪ ♪
- all right, paul. This is a chopper, man.
As it stands, there's a little edge deflection right here.
You can feel it, you can hear it.
Moving back to your handle here,
the contouring you have on this handle
is just a little too narrow in the front here
and in the back here,
but all in all, it's strong, and it did really well.
- Thank you.
♪ ♪
- all right, bladesmiths, this is the water tube slice.
♪ ♪
to find out how sharp your edges are,
I will take your knife, try to cut through these water tubes.
Bryan, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Absolutely. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
- I'm very concerned at this point
that because we're so even,
it's gonna be left down to the details,
so I'm really hoping that it cuts
straight through the tubes and doesn't shatter any of them
or push them around.
I just do not want to get sent home.
♪ ♪
- I'm very concerned at this point.
♪ ♪
I'm really hoping it'll go through the water tubes.
♪ ♪
- splashed in here. - [laughs quietly]
♪ ♪
- all right, bryan, let's talk about your knife here.
It is a light and fast blade,
and it cut cleanly.
That's one of the cleanest cuts we've had on water tubes.
Overall, sir, it will cut.
- Thank you.
- Walter, your turn, sir. Ready?
- Let's do this. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
all right, walter, your edge is sharp.
It's got a clean cut through the water tubes.
What I like about this is,
the balance is right to be able to control this blade.
Overall, sir, it will cut.
- Dream come true hearing you say that.
- All right, paul, your turn. You ready?
- I'm ready. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
all right, paul, your edge here
cut cleanly on these water tubes.
There is some weight to this blade,
but it will cut.
- Thank you.
- All right, guys, you all performed extremely well,
and it came down to extremely minor details.
Somebody's not gonna be moving forward
into round three of the competition,
and that bladesmith is...
Paul.
Ben abbott's gonna tell you why.
- Well, paul, all of the blades out there
had either a handle issue or a blade issue.
Unfortunately, yours had both.
- Paul, you clearly put out a lot of effort,
but it's time you leave the forge floor.
- Thanks, guys. I had a good time.
Congrats, you guys. - Great work, man.
- Good job, man.
- I'm pretty disappointed I'm going home,
but I'm gonna at it, keep making knives.
I came to try and win.
I didn't win, so I'm not particularly happy about it,
but I had a fun time.
♪ ♪
- bryan, walter, congratulations.
Both of you guys are moving forward into the next round.
Round three of the competition,
we're gonna be sending you guys back to your home forges
to build an iconic weapon from history,
and that weapon is...
♪ ♪
the sword of saladin.
- [laughs]
- this 12th century sword
belonged to saladin,
a powerful muslim leader,
and the first sultan of egypt and syria.
Believed to be forged from steel
far superior than any other weapon of the time,
the sword is rumored to be the sharpest in history.
Featuring a thin edged geometry,
the lightweight curved blade
is designed to effortlessly deliver deep cuts
and lethal chops.
With the help of this deadly weapon,
saladin founded a dynasty that ruled much of the middle east
for the 12th and 13th centuries.
The sword is a prominent feature
of a statue memorializing saladin
that stands in front
of the ancient city of damascus in syria.
- You guys need to follow these parameters.
Your blade length as measured from tip to guard
needs to be between 28 and 30 inches.
The blade needs to be curved.
You need to have a crossguard and a boot shaped handle.
- I'm absolutely excited.
It's a lot longer than what I normally build,
but yeah, we can do this.
- You guys will only have four days to complete this weapon,
so we'll see you when you get back.
Good luck.
[rock music]
- we're back here, baranowski knife & tool,
in good old springfield, new york.
I'm ready to get after it.
You know, saladin's sword,
a lot of history.
You know, we're talking back to the great holy crusades.
Day one, I really wanna get this blade forged
and rough ground.
My biggest concern is time management.
When you're on a timed challenge like this,
every minute is precious.
Curve's going pretty well.
I'm done with my forging.
I head straight to the grinder
and start cleaning this thing up,
make it look right.
All right, that's it for day one.
♪ ♪
- back at my home forge,
I'm very excited to be in the third round.
My plan is to get the blade cut out,
get an arc bent into it,
and get it ready for heat treat.
Making a sword with a bend in it
in such a steep arc like this
is worrying me a little bit.
I've not done a heat treat
on something of this shape before.
Close.
So I'm a little worried about the heat treat.
And away we go.
♪ ♪
oh, yeah.
That's it.
♪ ♪
- day two, plan of attack:
Start working on the guard,
and before the end of the day,
we're gonna get this knife quenched.
This guard in particular
is probably the most time I've ever really invested
into a guard itself.
I just don't want to make something kinda plain jane.
It's getting there.
Time to quench.
♪ ♪
that's the sound of success right there.
♪ ♪
- it's day three. Yesterday went well.
I got the quillon on it. I like it.
And I get the pommel built
pretty much the shape that I want.
My plan for day three is to get the handle
at least roughed out.
This is a emerald dyed box elder burl.
I want it to look jeweled
without actually being jeweled.
So I got everything pretty well roughed in here.
I'm just kind of pecking away at it going slowly.
My blade is all together,
and I'm very pleased to be where I am today.
♪ ♪
nobody is gonna be able to complain
about that handle at all.
[cows mooing]
- day three. Feeling pretty good.
Man, that's gonna be nice. [whistles]
I'm using really, really pretty piece of amboyna burl.
It's incredibly dense.
One downside to it is because it's so dense,
the grain can be kind of unpredictable.
So I'm gonna take my time,
I'm gonna do things a little bit slow.
I wanna make sure
that everything is lined up properly.
Aw, man, that thing's really on there for some reason.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
really?
I'm gonna need--I'm seriously gonna need a minute,
'cause I'm about to freak out.
I ain't even lying right now.
I can't believe I just did this.
I got one freaking day left.
[bleep] damn it.
- Man, that thing's really on there for some reason.
Ah, boy.
I can't get that [bleep] handle off.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
it was going good till I had to ruin it.
My main concern right now:
Is my new handle construction gonna be able to hold up?
We're kind of down into the 11th hour,
and I really hope I have enough time to finish this blade.
I got a lot of work to do tomorrow.
[rock music]
- going into day four,
what we have left to do today
is fine details, little things
that are gonna make it pop maybe more than my competitor.
We'll get everything together.
I'm gonna carve saladin's name
into the spine of the blade back here in arabic
just as kind of a last little minute flourish.
I'm happy with the way it came out.
End of day four.
This has been a hell of a ride,
but I hope that can bring me home the bacon.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- well, gentlemen, welcome back to the forge.
You guys had four days to work on your saladin swords,
and we absolutely cannot wait to hear about them.
Bryan, tell us about your sword.
- You have a blade of 80crv2,
the quillon and the pommel
are both fabricated mild steel,
and the handle is emerald dyed
and stabilized box elder burl.
- Walter, how 'bout you?
- My blade is made from 5160.
The guard, long jays,
and pommel is made from mild steel.
My handle is a amboyna burl
with ziricote in the center.
- It seems like you guys both did a great job.
They look absolutely terrifyingly sharp,
but only one of you guys will be going home with the title
and the check for $10,000.
And really the only way for us to figure that out
is by putting them through some tests.
We've got a strength test, a sharpness test,
and up first, the keal test.
Doug.
♪ ♪
- bladesmiths, welcome to the keal test.
To find out what kind of lethal damage your weapons will do,
I will take your version of saladin's sword
and deliver some lethal blows
on this ram carcass.
Bryan, you're up first. You ready for this?
- No, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.
- Absolutely. Let's do it.
- To see that animal sitting there
with the horns hanging out,
uh, it's nerve-racking.
It's pretty hard on a blade,
so I'm not sure what's gonna happen.
♪ ♪
- all right, bryan, let's talk about your version
of saladin's sword here.
I noticed you have something inscribed in there.
What is that?
- That is "saladin" in arabic. - Very cool, very cool.
Now, your edge-- you have a sharp edge.
This is a very tough ram carcass.
On the neck chops, it cut deeply,
and of course on the body, it cut through in three slices.
Overall, sir,
your weapon will keal.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, walter. Your turn, sir, you ready?
- Let's make some ram chops.
- All right.
- Them bones in the ram, those are no joke.
Their hides are as tough as leather.
Their fur is abrasive like sandpaper.
This is a legit test.
I'm slightly freaking out on the inside right now.
♪ ♪
- that was nice.
♪ ♪
- all right, walter, first up, your edge.
This is a wicked sharp grind.
Actually, you know, it sings to me
when I just touch it and pull it out.
It is sharp.
Cutting through hair, a thick spine,
and into the meat.
Overall, sir,
your weapon will keal.
- Thank you, sir.
♪ ♪
- all right, gentlemen, you know what time it is.
It's time for the strength test.
Now, saladin's army in 12th century
would've faced off against men wearing chainmail,
carrying shields, and probably a helmet.
Now, to test your blade's construction,
overall durability,
I'll be hacking into our armored warriors here.
Bryan, you're up.
- Go ahead.
♪ ♪
chopping into chainmail,
metal helmets, and metal shields,
that never does any good for an edge.
I am rather nervous.
I'm not sure what's gonna happen.
♪ ♪
- I am rather nervous.
Chopping into chainmail,
metal helmets, and metal shields.
This would be a normal test in saladin's reign,
but I'm not in saladin's reign.
So I'm a little nervous.
[rock music]
♪ ♪
- wow. - [sighs]
- all right, bryan.
Blades this sharp and with this kind of edge geometry
often take a fairly substantial rolling
when they go up against armor.
Yours really didn't.
I mean, there's three spots I can feel
if I run my fingernail along it.
Just beautiful job. Well done.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, walter. You're up.
- Let's do it. - [laughs] okay.
♪ ♪
- wow.
- Nice.
- All right, walter,
there's a little bit of a glinting,
and a little bit of a rough spot
here, here, and maybe here.
Other than that, this blade still has a wicked edge on it.
Curvature's really, really nice.
You nailed it. Scale, right on.
Well done. - Thank you, sir.
- You bet.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- close race.
All right, bladesmiths,
welcome to the sharpness test.
To find out how sharp your weapons are,
I will take your weapon,
and I will cut through these egyptian rugs.
Now, I'm looking for clean cuts.
Bryan, you're up first. You ready?
- Yes, sir. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
[rock music]
♪ ♪
all right, bryan, let's talk about your blade here.
It is razor sharp.
As I punctured and cut through the carpet,
there were very clean cuts.
Overall, sir,
your edge, it will cut.
- Thank you.
- All right, walter, you ready?
- Absolutely. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
[sword rings]
listen to that ring.
♪ ♪
- all right, walter, let's talk about your weapon here.
Razor sharp.
It was easy to penetrate
and very easy to drag across.
These are very clean cuts.
Overall, sir, your weapon, it will cut.
- Thank you, sir.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- well, guys, you both brought us immaculate weapons
that performed almost identically,
but the judges do need to make a decision
and choose which of you will be crowned
"forged in fire" champion. While we deliberate,
I'm gonna have to ask you to step off the forge floor.
- It's nerve-racking
being up against somebody who's as good as walter.
His work is extremely good,
and I'm very nervous going into this final judgement.
- We're so neck and neck,
I mean, we're literally like
two bulls with our horns locked in the field right now.
I don't know what's gonna happen.
♪ ♪
- well, guys, what do you think?
What I saw, that's about as close as it gets.
- These are two weapons that are so closely matched.
They're both beautifully made.
I think they tested out
virtually identically.
- Yeah.
- One blade stood out just a little bit
when I was doing the sharpness test
'cause it sang to me.
- Hearing it rip through the carpet
and the quintessential "bing."
okay, so you guys all on the same page then?
- I think so. - All right.
- I knew bryan was gonna be stiff competition,
and he absolutely brought it,
and I feel like I brought it too.
- All right, gentlemen,
the judges have made their decision.
Today's champion is...
♪ ♪
walter.
- Wait, what? [laughter]
I'm just in shock. [laughs]
I can't believe this.
- Now, unfortunately, bryan,
that means you did not win today.
- This is the closest decision
I have ever had to make, ever.
Bryan, you brought us an absolutely beautiful weapon.
It tested fantastically.
It felt fantastic in my hand.
We made this decision based on the smallest of details,
and it came down to the curvature of the blade.
Yours just has a little wobble in it, the other doesn't.
It's that close.
You should be incredibly proud of that blade,
and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to wield it.
- Thank you very much.
- Bryan, unfortunately,
that means you didn't make the cut today.
I'm gonna have to ask you to head off the forge floor.
- Bro, it's been an honor.
- I'm a little disappointed to not be in the winner's circle,
but very proud of the fact
that dave said it was one of the hardest decisions
they've ever had to make.
Feel I did pretty good.
♪ ♪
- well, walter, congratulations, buddy.
You are the "forged in fire" champion.
You'll be going out of here with a check for $10,000.
How do you feel?
- I don't even know right now. [laughs]
[laughter] I won.
[laughs] I can't believe it!
Ten grand is nothing to sneeze at,
but I wanna take a portion of it
and donate it to some kind of cancer organization.
Cancer's taken a lot of people away from me
that I care about.
It took my dad,
and I wanna be able to give back a little bit.
What a wild ride. [chuckles]
[rock music]
♪ ♪