[intense music]
- Here in the Forge, we have seen hundreds of smiths
create some of the most feared edged weapons in history.
Now, in honor of History's mini-series event "Colosseum,"
we have decided to transform our Forge
into a Roman gladiators arena.
♪ ♪
We are doing a competition series
unlike anything you've ever seen.
This is Gladiators of the Forge.
♪ ♪
Currently, we've seen six battles
and our current gladiator take down
four formidable opponents.
Jesse, that makes you
a four-time Gladiator of the Forge,
and you have $20,000 in your pocket.
- I've won four battles in a row now.
I've come to prove something, and I want to keep winning.
- Tonight Jesse will face his toughest competition yet.
Will he have what it takes to earn number five
and that $10,000 bonus?
The Gladiators of the Forge competition continues now.
[epic music]
♪ ♪
- My name is Jesse Hu, I'm 19 years old,
and I come from the University of Michigan.
I'm the four-time reigning Gladiator of the Forge
and I'm here to hopefully get my fifth title.
If I win my fifth title, it comes with an extra $10,000
on top of the $5,000, which means it'll be
worth three of my previous battles.
I've done it before.
There's nothing stopping me from doing it again.
- I'm John Lachie,
I'm 47 years old,
and I'm from Laurel, Montana.
I've been forging for 20 plus years.
I don't know if I'm more nervous
going against somebody that has won four in a row,
but it is a bit of a shock for sure.
To someone who has done this, he's a proven winner.
And now, to be the best, you have to beat the best.
My gladiator name would be Caledonian.
My family's Scottish, and so that was
the one part of the world that the Romans didn't conquer.
They built a wall to stay away.
[epic music]
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, welcome to the Forge.
This is the seventh battle
in our Gladiators of the Forge competition.
Now, it will consist of eight straight hours of
head-to-head competition that is sudden death.
Now, gentlemen, in those eight hours,
you will be asked to build a weapon from our wall
of gladiator weapons here, all of which have been
featured in History's mini-series event,
"Colosseum."
Now, guys, at the end of that eight hours
I will ask that you stop your work
and present your blades to our panel of expert judges
who will put your blade through a series of tests.
Today, it will ultimately end with one of you
earning the title of Gladiator of the Forge
and getting a check for $5,000.
Now, Jesse, right now you have four wins under your belt.
You've got $20,000 in your pocket.
you're fighting for the 5 grand,
but being that this is your fifth competition,
if you win, you will also receive that bonus of $10,000.
John, you are the challenger.
If you win today, you will get your first
Gladiator of the Forge title, $5,000,
and an opportunity to move forward
into the future rounds of this competition.
Are you guys ready to get into it?
- Let's go. - Yep.
- All right, gentlemen, in order to find out
what blade you will be building and the technique
you'll both use to build that blade,
we're gonna flip this authentic Roman coin here.
♪ ♪
John, as the challenger, I'll give you the option,
heads or tails? - Tails never fails.
[suspenseful music]
Today it did, landed on heads.
Jesse, you get first pick. Do you want to pick the weapon
or do you wanna pick the forge welding technique?
- I want the weapon.
- All right, what are you thinking?
- For all of my previous competitions,
one of the winning factors was me picking
a rather complicated-looking blade
and having my opponent get scared by it a little.
So I want to pick a blade that looks scary to the both of us.
I'm thinking the pair of pugio daggers.
- Holy cow...
- Yes! - What a bold choice.
The pugio was a popular sidearm
in second and third century Rome.
Gladiators were known to battle with two pugio,
one in each hand.
These close-quarter combat weapons featured
a wide leaf-shaped blade to inflict deep,
lethal wounds upon an enemy, both on the battlefield
and inside the walls of the Colosseum.
However, the pugio is most well known
as the weapon used to murder Julius Caesar.
All right, gentlemen, you need to build
a pair of matching pugio daggers.
Now, gentlemen, when you turn your blades in,
make sure they meet these following parameters.
Each of your daggers needs to have a blade length
that measures between 7 1/2 and 9 1/2 inches.
You need to have two discs in each of your handles.
And as you can see here, gentlemen,
these are leaf-shaped blades with double edge.
John, you've got a choice to make--
what forge welding technique do you want to use
to build your daggers?
- It is a competition,
so I went back to what I know.
If Jesse's not prepared for using scrap techniques,
it could be a detriment to him.
I'm not trying to set him up for failure,
but in a competition, you try to do the best you can
and come out ahead.
Let's go with canister,
and we're gonna have to use some bicycle chain in it.
- Bicycle chain in canister Damascus.
All right, very, very tall order on the plate today.
Now, gentlemen, keep in mind
that 5 1/2 hours into this competition,
your forges will be turned off.
So make sure that you have them quenched
and hardened before that time.
Guys, this is going to be one for the books.
You have eight hours to complete your pugio daggers,
so good luck, stay sharp.
Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
Guys, this has got to be the most difficult
blade selection
and a very difficult forge welding technique.
- You got bolster style guards,
you got two discs--
It's a lot going on there.
- And there's two of them.
These guys have a long day ahead of them.
- Because this is my fifth battle,
I'm definitely a little bit tired.
I've hit that bottom plateau in terms of energy
and the only way I can go is up.
- At 19 years old, he's got a little bit
of extra stamina, a little bit more in the tank.
- There's nothing different about this battle
compared to my earlier ones.
It's the same order of operations.
I don't plan on changing it.
It worked for me in the past so it has to work for me now.
I want to win this one a lot.
I used to forge out chef knives at home
in batches of two or three,
so this is a pretty comfortable zone for me.
- It would be hard enough to build one of these
in eight hours, so now we have to build two,
and that is going to be a challenge.
So what I'm doing is taking the canoe,
laying down some of the powdered steel,
then filling in with roller chain.
- If you have a canoe canister, you can see
that you're filling those voids.
When you're in the tallboy
and you're filling it from the top,
you can't necessarily see
what's going on down in bottom of that.
- I didn't know before I got here
that I'm facing the Ken Jennings
of "Forged in Fire."
It's like, wow, this kid's pretty sharp,
this is gonna be a dandy.
- I think my canister is up to temperature now.
I think it's the perfect time to bring them over
to the squaring dies and start setting those welds.
- Jesse is bringing out screaming hot cans.
- That's good, that's what you want.
- I'm not going too aggressively on the press.
I know that if I press too hard,
I can rip the canister and just destroy my entire billet.
- Jesse's doing good.
he's taking small bites, he flipped it.
- I thought I would have to deal with at least some issues.
However, it looks pretty much perfect to me.
- I'm looking for the right color,
and once I have the billet up to temperature,
I go over to the press, run through the squaring dies.
Of course the biggest concern is always going to be
the weld quality, make sure the welds are good.
I think the welds are all set and they should be fine.
So the idea that I've got
is that I'm going to forge the two knives
out of one billet and I'm gonna
stretch out the tang in the middle.
And I'll cut those in two.
- John's actually impressing me quite a bit already.
- He's working like somebody who's been here before.
- I'm feeling pretty good right now where we're at.
It is kind of an adventure,
and it's amazing how fast the clock ticks.
- Bladesmiths, you guys are a quarter of the way
through this battle.
You have six hours left!
- Two--you had to pick two.
You couldn't just pick one.
No, no, pick two.
- The more the merrier.
[John laughs]
- The pugio daggers are very, very leaf-shaped.
I made the Xiphos,
and the Xiphos is just a really long pugio dagger.
So I definitely have experience making a leaf-shaped blade.
- So how important is the symmetry of these blades
as you go into the testing?
- It's quite important because it affects your accuracy
and affects how he will be moving
and cutting with the blade.
- Right now I have them all forged to shape,
fit to dimension,
just wanna get them ready for heat treat now.
- Guys, would you say that one of the smiths
is ahead of the other?
- Not really. - No.
- I think they're pretty much neck and neck.
- Yeah, I'd say they're right on top of one another.
- My thought process is to make these pugio daggers
as exact to each other as I possibly can.
So I'm clamping the tangs together
and then I grind them at the same time.
- John's making a point of stacking his blades up
to make sure he's got the same dimensions on both of them.
- Smart move.
- There we go.
Got 'em ground to shape that I think I like,
and I'm just gonna thermal cycle them a couple times
before I heat treat.
- Bladesmiths, we are officially halfway through.
You have four hours remaining!
- It's time for le quench.
Canister Damascus is a much more non-uniform material.
I definitely think
it's more liable to cracking during the quench,
so I decided to do one at a time.
- Oh, we got a quench.
- The temperature of my first blade looked perfect.
Now it's time to put blade two in the fire.
- All right, Jesse's got two blades quenched.
- It went perfectly.
There was no warps in either blade.
It's time to grind these blades to final dimension.
I slap on a fresh 36 grit and just start going ham.
♪ ♪
- So after I've got 'em ground, now it's time to heat treat.
♪ ♪
- All right, guys, we've got four quenched blades now.
John just got in the oil.
- Out of the oil, it looks good.
I think I've got what I want.
That's gonna work.
And then I go to the grinder.
[bleep].
The second blade, I noticed a delam on the edge.
I am concerned that another could show up while I grind,
but I think I've still got enough width.
And so now I'm just going to work that out.
I'm hoping I don't snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory right now.
So I just want to make sure I'm doing
the best I possibly can.
- Bladesmiths, you have two hours left
to finish your blades.
So these guys managed to forge their blades out,
get 'em quenched, but it's still
a very long road ahead of them.
These are some of the more difficult handles
I've seen built in the Forge,
and there's two of them.
- I'm deciding to put the discs in first
because wood is a lot easier to shape.
This is a fairly tedious process.
I don't want to create garbage.
I want to make sure what I create
is as good as it can be.
I know that during battle three,
when Kurt had a gap in his guard,
the judges were complaining
that it was scratching their hands,
and that's pretty much how he got eliminated.
- Well, Kurt, your handle
with sharp corners on the inside
was less refined than your opponent,
and that's what we based our decision on.
- I want to learn from my past experiences.
However, I'm facing a clock.
I don't have time to make sure that these fits
are perfect, but I'm going to do my best
to make them look pretty much identical.
- I now have to assemble these two handles.
It is going to be a big challenge all the way around.
I want to use my Micarta for the bulk of the handle.
It's tougher material.
♪ ♪
Agh, it split it.
- Ooh, looks like John just broke some handle material.
- Just cracked wide open.
- I don't feel that I wasted too much time,
so time to adjust again.
I find an epoxied block with some wood in it...
- Oh man!
- And it breaks.
I go back into the pantry and find a block of maple.
[bleep]. - Ohhh!
- Ugh. - Oh, boy.
The third block cracks.
- Come on, man.
- And I start second-guessing
about everything that I have done.
- This is where some of our smiths
tend to get frustrated.
- It really is a race against the clock and myself.
If I let it spiral me out of control,
I could lose the competition easily.
- We're down to the final hour
of our seventh Gladiator of the Forge battle,
and John has now broken
three different pieces of handle material.
He's in trouble--he needs to get this handle on
really fast.
- I know I have to find a handle,
because the clock marches on.
I've got to find a chunkier piece.
So I'm going with another maple.
- There we go. - Whoo!
- This is gonna give me a heart attack.
- Yep.
- Everything seems to be just right,
but I glance, and I'm seeing
I've used up better than an hour,
so I know I've got to keep moving on.
[rock music]
- Everything is glued pretty much together as best as I can,
but there's still a few things
that I need to do in this round
including finish shaping the handle
and then sharpening it.
- God, this is the fifth competition where we've
gotten to watch Jesse work in the Forge.
Each one had their own difficulties
assigned with them.
- And Jesse's risen to the occasion
every single time.
- If Jesse doesn't win these tests,
that's $15,000 out of his pocket.
- Ouch.
- I have to sharpen two double-edged daggers.
I leave myself a lot of time to sharpen these blades
because I don't want to run out of time
and have one edge unsharpened.
After forging for 40 hours,
I'm definitely feeling it a little bit.
I'll be energized for the next competition,
but it'll just be adrenaline.
I'm feeling good about the blades.
I wanna prove that even with only three years of experience,
I can defeat someone with 20 years of experience.
Nice.
- Bladesmiths, you are down to the last
30 minutes of this contest!
- It's a very complex handle.
I know they have a lot of moving parts in this.
I know I'm going to have to
to make sure everything fits properly with it.
- John's got something completely different going on,
trying to inlay the disc
into a through tang handle construction.
- What John's doing is a great idea,
but it's very, very time-consuming.
- It's not an easy process, but I do get 'em inset some.
After I get the pommel wood on,
then it's to the grinder.
It looks like a potato on a stick.
It doesn't look great, and I need to get this
shaped into something that is functional.
- What John's got going on on his handle,
it kinda almost looks like a dog chew bone.
- I still need to sharpen the blade.
I have to get it etched.
I'm racing the clock right now,
and I don't have time to make mistakes today.
- Five, four,
three, two, one!
Bladesmiths, turn off your machines, put down your tools.
This battle is over!
- I am happy with what I've done.
It's a finished set.
The handle meets the criteria.
I do look over at Jesse's anvil and see a very nice set,
but I think the blades will hold up and test pretty well.
[dramatic music]
- Bladesmiths, welcome our strength test,
the armor stab and slash.
♪ ♪
Jesse, you're up first. You ready to go?
- I'm ready to go. - I know you love going first.
- Yep. - Let's do it, bud.
♪ ♪
- This strength test is probably the hardest one
that I've experienced so far,
and there's some extra money on the line.
It's steel on steel.
You'd have to be a magician to make a blade
that can go through this and keep the same edge.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[clanking]
- [grunting]
- All right, Jesse, you survived, good job.
Your blades look great. I like the symmetry on these.
They look like a matched pair.
Everything's tight, everything's smooth.
Your edges are still good.
You do have a few flat spots,
but there's not enough there where I can catch a nail on it.
The biggest issue I have is the handles.
They have no grip to them whatsoever,
enough so, that with one of the chops,
I actually caught a knuckle, the knuckle slipped up.
Some contouring would have made it
a lot easier to hold on to 'em.
But otherwise, great job.
- Thank you.
- It's always fun being the second guy, right John?
- Sure, why not?
- You ready to go? - Absolutely.
- All right, let's do it.
♪ ♪
- If there's ever anybody that's going to
break a new toy, it's J. Nielson.
There's always a possibility of something failing.
I think it's all glued together properly,
but we're about to find out.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- If there's ever anybody that's going to
break a new toy, it's J. Nielsen.
I think it's all glued together properly,
but we're about to find out.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[clanking]
- [grunting]
All right, John, you survived.
Gotta be happy about that.
You got some glinting on the edges,
nothing I'm really catching on.
The biggest problem I have--
the contouring you have on there
is basically the exact opposite
of what I said about Jesse's.
They're not sliding anywhere,
but they're not comfortable at all.
But, overall, they held together
and nothing came loose, edges survived--good job.
- Thank you.
♪ ♪
- Gladiators of the Forge,
this is the sharpness test, the banner slice.
♪ ♪
Jesse, you're up first. You ready for this?
- I'm ready. - All right.
[epic music]
♪ ♪
All right, Jesse, let's talk about
your matching pugio daggers here.
That's a beautiful matched set, they're quite identical,
very close to that.
Now, your edge--your edges cut nicely,
and overall your weapon... will cut.
John, your turn, sir. You ready?
- Yes, sir, let's do this.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- All right, John, let's talk about your pugio daggers here.
Your edges are sharp, it's just that it's got
a grind here that's not razor sharp.
So when cutting with this, there are some areas to this
where it just got snagged with the blade,
and it does rip a little bit.
But overall, sir, your pugio daggers...will cut.
- Thank you.
♪ ♪
- All right, gentlemen, after eight hours of furious battle
where you guys built your pugio daggers
out of bicycle chain canister Damascus,
it is coming down to a final decision.
Only one of you can come out of here on top
for the title of Gladiator of the Forge.
Jesse, if you win, that will be your fifth win,
and you will have $35,000 in your pocket.
Now, John, if you win, you'll stop his winning streak,
get your first Gladiator of the Forge title,
a check for $5,000,
and the opportunity to go forward into the next battle.
The Judges have discussed your blades,
and they made a final decision.
Today's Gladiator of the Forge is...
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
Jesse, you have done it again.
That is five total wins.
John, you brought us a good pair of blades,
but unfortunately they didn't come out on top,
and Jay is gonna tell you why.
- John, you did a great job out there.
You should definitely be proud of yourself.
We sure as heck enjoyed watching you work.
But at the end of the day,
the inner grinds on your pugio daggers
weren't as sharp as your competitor's,
as we saw during the sharpness test.
And you had a great idea for the handle,
but it kind of went south,
so that's why we're sending you home.
- John, there's no question, you're talented.
I know you had your competitor here worried for a little bit.
Unfortunately, you didn't come out on top today.
At this point, I'm gonna have to ask you
to please step off the Forge floor.
- I understand. It's been a great challenge.
Thank you, guys. - Thank you, John.
- Congratulations. - Thank you.
- There's no sour grapes at all.
Jesse's a great smith, and he's a sharp young man.
This is just one more learning experience.
Take your education and move to the next thing.
There are so many things that were used
in the gladiator ring.
You're going to be a jack of all trades,
really, to get any of them done.
It's going to be a tough challenge
for anybody coming up.
- Jesse, you are a five-time champion.
You got another check for 5 grand
and a bonus of $10,000.
Congratulations. - Thank you.
- So right now, I gotta ask again,
do you have enough energy to go back in the Forge
and fight out another battle?
- Put me in, Coach. - I love it.
All right, man, congratulations again
on your fifth win and the $15,000.
We will see you on the Forge floor for the next battle.
Well done. - Thank you.
I've faced people pretty much every round
who've had more experience than me.
Having won five in a row,
I've proven to myself that I can overcome
pretty much any level of adversity in the Forge.
I have five titles.
I'm not ready to give up this seat anytime soon.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- My name is Matt Brando,
I'm from Jacksonville, North Carolina.
I'm 36 years old.
I've been blade smithing for three years.
What got me into smithing was my eight-year-old son.
He had watched an episode of "Forged in Fire"
and got excited.
And everything that we do in the shop,
we do together.
I would compare this as a battle to the death because
if I stop Jesse, there it is, I killed his winning streak.
Jesse's already got a high sum of money
from winning. I'm ready to take the rest.
- We are about to kick off
our eighth Gladiator of the Forge competition
with our five-time winner Jesse
and our competitor Matt,
trying to stop that reign of terror.
Now, Jesse, you're already at 35 grand.
If you win through the next three battles,
you will have a total of $50,000
earned in this competition.
Matt, if you win, you'll get your first $5,000,
and we'll ask you if you want to move forward
into the next battle.
Gentlemen, without further ado, let's get into it.
In order to find out what blade
from our wall of gladiator weapons here
you're going to be building
as well as the forge welding technique,
we're gonna flip a coin.
Matt, as the challenger, you get
the option as to heads or tails.
What do you want to pick? - Heads.
- Heads it is.
♪ ♪
Unfortunately, it landed on tails.
That means, Jesse, you get the first choice
whether you want the weapon or the forge welding technique.
What are you picking today?
- I want to pick the forge welding technique.
- Interesting. All right, what are you thinking?
- My plan is basically ultimate chicken.
I'm gonna make it super, super hard for my opponent.
Having gone through five battles
with five different forging techniques,
I'm not really scared of any of them anymore.
I'm thinking...
[suspenseful music]
- I'm gonna make it super, super hard for my opponent.
Having gone through five battles with five
different forging techniques,
I'm not really scared of any of them anymore.
I'm thinking...
♪ ♪
Ball bearing canister with a peeled canister.
- Oh!
- Very risky move, all right.
Now, Matt, you lost the coin toss, you get second choice.
You have a choice of a few weapons here
on the wall of gladiator blades.
What are you thinking?
- I've done fish hook canister Damascus,
I've done chain canister Damascus.
I've never had anything to do with ball bearings.
Honestly, I don't even know what type
of metal that it is without doing research.
So I look at the wall, and I think we'll keep it
within my wheelhouse.
gladius.
- The Roman gladius is one of the most
well-known weapons of the Roman Empire.
Tracing its origin back to the second century BC,
this weapon features a lightweight,
double-edged blade
designed for easier, more deadly strikes
than other heavier blades of the era,
which made it the sword of choice
for both Roman soldiers and gladiators.
This iconic weapon was featured
on the very first season of "Forged in Fire"
where both smiths went above and beyond
with their Damascus blades but struggled to perfect
the intricate handle construction.
Now, gentlemen, when you turn your blades in,
make sure they fall within these following parameters.
Your blade length, measured from tip
to where the cutting edge ends in a straight line,
needs to be between 17 and 19 inches.
You need to include two edges and a medial ridge
on that blade, and you need to feature
a wooden guard with a metal plate and a globe pommel.
This is going to be a hell of a competition, guys.
You have eight hours to build a gladius
with ball bearing canister Damascus
with a requirement of a peeled can.
But keep in mind that at 5 1/2 hours
into this competition, we will shut off your forges.
So make sure you have those blades quenched
and hardened by that time.
Good luck, stay sharp. Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
- Yee haw!
- This is gonna be an interesting one.
- It's a ballsy call from Jesse right here,
asking for a peeled Damascus.
- That's the great thing,
Jesse's always trying something new.
But does he know that the ball bearings need to be
at a higher temperature and soak longer?
Otherwise, they're not going to fuse up in that can.
- I mean, I've done canister Damascus.
Every time I'd done it, I peeled the can off.
Didn't seem to have trouble with it.
I go for the White Out and I know I've got to get
that White Out to dry prior to doing anything
from that point on.
- Matt put the White Out in.
Now he put it aside and is drawing out his plan.
That's a good idea.
- The last thing that I want is my steel not welding together.
So I get all that powdered steel settled in between
all the ball bearings,
almost like making a ball bearing lasagna.
Pack it down the best that I can and weld the top.
I'm ready to stop Jesse's winning streak, and I'm ready
to go onto the next, and then the next.
Plenty of time, plenty of time.
♪ ♪
- After forging for 48 hours,
I'm definitely feeling it a little bit.
I know from watching J. Nielson's videos that
I'm supposed to let this White Out dry somewhat,
but I don't have time for that.
I try to go over to the forge and heat it up
and have it cool a little bit faster but...
- Oh, boy, here we go.
- It just lights on fire.
- Jesse just went and did a little burnout on his can.
Once you burn that White Out,
it kind of changes the chemicals in there
and it doesn't really work as a resist anymore.
- I decided to risk it and just go back and pack it
while the White Out's still pretty liquid.
- Ooh!
- It looks like my forge just got possessed.
- This could just be him having some gapping in the weld.
Jesse should pull that out
and reweld around that gap again quickly.
- That's all material burning out of the inside of the can.
That creates a void.
- Sparking goes on for a while, but then it just stops 100%.
So now that my billet's cooking up, I take this time
to go to the pantry and begin
picking out materials for my handle.
Let's go!
- Canister comes out, I think it's ready to go
and we start squaring it off.
- Matt's taking his time, he's being careful with this.
He's not distorting the canister much at all.
- I get to the point where it looks as if I've got
one solid piece of steel.
I'm ready to take the canister off.
As I am peeling off the can, I look down at the steel
and there's little ball bearings on my inside.
It kind of freaks me out. It doesn't look right.
- Uh-oh, guys, Matt just put his billet
down on the ground back by his vice.
- I just make the quick decision.
I'm starting over. - Oh, we got a restart!
- My question is why did he restart?
- He only opened a tiny little seam.
- That's what I saying, he didn't open it enough
to see what's going on in there.
- I don't even want to try to salvage it
and bury myself three, four hours into this blade.
If my second billet comes out looking the same as my first,
then I guess I was right the first time,
but I can't stop.
♪ ♪
- The first two welding heats go very, very well,
but I don't have x-ray vision.
The only way that I can tell what's inside this can
is to start peeling it open.
It feels solid enough
so I attempt to chisel away this can.
I expected there to be a little bit of a barrier
between the can and what's inside the can,
but it just looked like one homogenous piece of steel.
- What Jesse's doing is extremely exhausting.
- And that's on top of 40 hours of forging
he's done in the past five competitions.
[Jesse grunts]
- I did have a lot of energy going into
this competition, but it's all being sapped away
by the most draining process I've experienced yet.
[bleep]! I wish I chose a different
foraging technique.
This sucks.
- Bladesmiths, you have six hours left.
- All right.
Second can gets up to heat and it's heat, beat,
and repeat, same thing I did with the first can.
- So there's something about the re-starting.
What are you going to change to not get the same result?
- It's kind of taking a gamble 'cause with so many steps
in the process, how do you identify which one went wrong?
- Oh, baby!
- It comes off, easy.
It looks to be one solid piece of steel.
- Matt's got that can off his billet,
now he's on the press, gonna start drawing it out to length.
- He's drawing it quite aggressively.
This is where you start putting the cracks in the sides.
- And as I'm hammering...
[hammer clanking]
A ball bearing actually falls off.
- Oh, no.
- I know I've got to calm myself down.
I'm doing something wrong.
- Oh, boy, he's thinking about re-starting.
- This is where Matt needs to straighten that billet out,
cut it, and restack it.
- It's worth a shot.
- I cannot believe I'm thinking I've got to do it a third time.
- Oh, wow.
- Are you kidding me, guys?
- So that's two hours gone out of the challenge.
- Push, push, push, don't stop moving.
That's all I'm thinking.
- We're over two hours into the eighth Gladiator
of the Forge battle, and Matt is struggling
with Jesse's pick of canister Damascus.
He's already restarted once and he might have
to start over again.
- I've got my second billet drawn out,
and as I'm hammering...
a ball bearing actually falls off.
- Oh, no.
- I cannot believe I've got to do it a third time.
- Oh, wow.
- Are you kidding me, guys.
- Too aggressive on that first pass.
- I think you're right.
- Giving up is not going through my mind,
it's "how do I succeed?"
I've gotta hurry.
♪ ♪
- Finally, holy [bleep].
After 45 minutes of chiseling away,
the last side of the can comes off.
I am ridiculously happy, but I just barely got started,
and I need to make a full-blown sword.
- Usually, at this point, Jesse's
already got a billet drawn out. - Right?
- There's not a single inch on this billet
where there's no cracks.
I could end my win streak here.
I could turn in a cracked blade,
and the judges won't even test it.
I can try to fix these cracks in my billet,
or I can restart.
But there's no way I'm peeling off that can again.
So I employ all of my fluxing powers
and try to fix these forge welds.
- This was the issue we were worried about
because that White Out wasn't dry,
so it could have gotten mixed in there,
and that's in the middle of all that consolidation.
- I get most of these cracks ground out of the billet.
Super lucky.
Now it's time to take it to old Big Blue and completely
draw it out and get ready for beveling.
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, three hours down, five hours to go!
- Come on!
I've completely lost track of the clock.
My only and main focus is on this third cannister.
I've gotta get this to work for me.
This is my last chance. - There we go.
He had the heat up nicely,
did one pass, slipped to 90 degrees,
did another pass, put it back in the fire.
- I get to the point where I feel I can take
the can off...
and this thing fights me tooth and nail.
- Did he spend more time consolidating the welds
because he's worried about having
those cracks and delaminations in it?
- I think so, and I don't think that was a bad idea,
but what it did was probably weld that can
onto that billet in several places.
So now he's got to deal with that.
- It's just me in that third can, and I am going to win.
- There you go.
- When the last piece pops off,
oh, my God, it's time to work.
We gotta work, and we gotta work fast.
- Jesse seems to be going right along on his profile,
so I guess whatever issues he had on the edge are gone.
- After I'm done forging out my blade, I need to get
some good normalizing cycles in.
- It's gotta be very disheartening for Matt
when he's just trying to forge out a shape
and Jesse's already thermal cycling.
- I want there to be as small a chance as possible
of the blade cracking in the quench.
- Jesse quenched.
- Nice color all throughout.
- The quench goes perfectly, and I don't see any
cracks on the blade.
It's time to hog off the most material I ever had
and get this blade to its final shape.
Ugh, it's hard.
- Big Blue, that's my time saver.
I shape it just to give myself a blade profile
that I can work with.
- Matt has really got to get over to that forge
and get that blade quenched.
- 15 minutes till the forge is turned off.
- Matt went right back to the grinder.
I thought he was gonna go to the forge.
- And then this idea that you can't grind
after you quench, I don't know what...
- This is where you'd wanna shout out, are you sure?
- So I know the forge is going to cut off
at the 2 1/2 hour mark,
but quenching it without a thermal cycle,
I've got the chance of some catastrophic failures.
So I'm going to use the oxy-acetylene
to do my heat treat.
- This is literally risking everything.
- Five, four...
- No way...
- What the hell?
- Bladesmiths, you have two hours and 30 minutes left!
- You gotta be [bleep] me.
- Matt made a very questionable decision.
- It is not a way to go.
- There's no way that quenching with the torch
could be faster than quenching with the...
- No. - It can be done,
but it's not faster. - It's also not as accurate.
- Right.
♪ ♪
- This handle construction is infinitely easier
than the last one I did.
[rock music]
- Jesse has an advantage right now because
he's built a handle like this.
- But the handles have always been the thing
that could possibly send Jesse home,
so is he gonna spend enough time on this?
- Glad I'm not paying for this.
After all my experiences, I just want to make sure
that the judges have no reason to yell at me
for a bumpy handle.
I'm gonna make sure there's nothing that
they can complain about in how the handle is built.
I want it to be the most comfortable thing
they've ever felt.
- You have 90 minutes remaining.
Now, this is a huge deal because a quenched blade is
a parameter in order to get your blade tested.
- So I know the forge is cut off, so last minute decision,
I said let's do an edge quench.
With the oxy-acetylene torch,
the only thing I have to work with
is a very small flame that's only going to
get concentrated areas on that steel
hot enough for a heat treat.
- How long will it take him to get this
up to temperature for a proper quench?
- Way too long.
- I've lost 15 minutes, and my steel
is not up to temperature.
- Matt's torch is just not as hot as it can be.
It will take way too long to heat this blade.
He has not got the gas mixture on that right.
That should be a screaming hot blue flame
about a quarter inch off the end that rose bud.
- Maybe underneath all the soot,
everything that's there, maybe the blade is a little
bit redder than what I think, so I quench.
There's not even any smoke coming out of there.
I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna push.
I've got to move on.
The blade is just gonna have to do.
I've got to get a handle on it.
- Bladesmiths, you have 20 minutes remaining.
- Jesse's handle looks great.
A really nice globe on the back of it.
- In the past, the judges have said that
they wish that I etched my blade a little bit more.
- I wish you'd had time to etch a little bit more
so I could see the pattern.
- When I pull it out, it literally looks like
enlarged dragon scale Damascus.
I'm really happy, and now it's time to put
an edge on this thing.
I need to make sure that it cuts and slices
through anything that the judge can throw at it.
- I'm mentally exhausted, physically exhausted,
but I get my handle on.
- He doesn't even have a way to affix the handle.
We're looking at incomplete blade.
- I'm not stopping until somebody tells me to stop.
- Five, four, three,
two, one!
Gentlemen, turn off your machines,
put down your tools, this battle is over!
- I'm just mad at myself.
They were simple mistakes that I made that cost me.
All I know is I came and I gave it my all.
♪ ♪
- Gladiators of the Forge, welcome to the kill test.
Let's see if you're glad to have a gladius.
Jesse, you're up first, you ready for this?
- I'm ready. - All right, let's do this.
♪ ♪
- With this being my sixth time going into testing,
I wanna win this one the most.
I want the title just as much for this round
as I did for any other round.
If I wanted it less and less,
what kind of a gladiator would I be.
- With this being my sixth time going into testing,
I wanna win this one the most.
I want the title just as much for this round
as I did for any other round.
[rock music]
♪ ♪
- All right, Jesse, let's talk about your gladius.
Looks like sixth time's the charm,
because this is the best handle you've presented us.
Everything is nice and tight, it is smooth,
and it's a void to where I can get a really good grip
on this, fits nicely in my hand.
Your tip is pointy enough to puncture nicely
and your edge is sharp enough to cut the big carcass down.
Overall, sir, your gladius, it will KEAL.
- Thank you.
- Matt, your turn, sir. Are you ready?
- Ready. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
- My blade has so many issues.
My biggest concern is because of the heat treat on my blade,
it's going to hit a bone that's just gonna shatter.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- I have my questions about this handle.
I don't really see a mechanical connection.
I think it's just held by glue.
What do you guys think?
- My biggest question is, is that thing hard?
It was quenched at such a low temperature.
- It can't be. Let's find out. - The only way to check is...
[file grating]
- The file's grabbing pretty good.
- It's not skating at all.
- I mean, you can see where it's just moving metal.
This blade's just not hardened.
- All right, Matt, unfortunately, after doing
a file check, we've determined that your blade is not hard.
Now, we consider that a parameter failure
and cannot continue testing your blade fairly
against your competitor's.
I want to say thank you so much for coming out,
fighting so hard, and never giving up
in this competition, but unfortunately,
I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off
the Forge floor.
- I understand. - Thank you, Matt.
- Thanks, Matt.
- I'm just happy that I was able to finish a blade.
It's a life lesson.
Overall, I'm proud, I fought to the bitter end.
I never stopped the whole time.
Jesse, I wish you the best of luck.
- Well, Jesse, man, I know this is probably
not the way that you wanted to win a competition,
but you have taken down six competitors.
You have $40,000 in your pocket
and six Gladiator of the Forge titles, man, congratulations.
- Thank you.
I didn't expect to win even half of this much.
Everything is still a blur,
everything is still a surprise.
- Again, congratulations.
We gotta ask you, do you want to go back
into the Forge for another eight-hour round
and battle it out for another title?
- Uh...
Of course. [laughter]
- Right on, man.
All right, well, congratulations, man.
We will see you for another one on the Forge floor.
Well done. - Thank you.
I'm Jesse Hu, I'm the six-time Gladiator of the Forge,
and I'm not scared about the next competition.
[epic music]