[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Here in the forge, we are always raising the ba,
But now we are putting it at an all-time high.
♪ ♪
Everything in this competition,
From the steel, the blades, even the test
Will be some of the biggest
We have ever seen on the forge floor.
- That's a big piece of steel. - [laughs]
- Who will rise to this massive challenge
And take home $10,000?
- Big knife, big challenge.
- This is "forged in fire: Supersized."
[glass shatters]
♪ ♪
- My name is eland green. I am 26 years old.
I am a part-time bladesmith out of callisburg, texas.
I got into bladesmithing with a whole lot
Of internet surfing.
I ended up getting my grandpa involved.
We watch "forged in fire" every day.
And being able to say,
"hey, grandpa, I got on 'forged in fire'"
And I know he'll be proud of that.
♪ ♪
- My name's clay unruh, and I'm from coldwater, kansas.
I'm 30 years old, and I've been bladesmithing about five years.
I like making really weird stuff.
I've always been into fantasy movies and video games.
I've made a zombie apocalypse axe
With, like, a bat for the handle.
I'm here to prove that I'm not just another guy
Making knives in his garage. I can hang with the big dogs.
♪ ♪
- My name is josh meyer
And I'm 47 years old from flagstaff, arizona.
And I've been smithing for about five years.
My biggest strength in smithing
Is probably the variety of things I do
'cause I'm not just a bladesmith,
I'm a full-time artist.
I work primarily in the mediums of stone, steel, and wood.
♪ ♪
- My name is rob harvey.
I'm from charlotte, north carolina.
I work for the department of veterans affairs,
And I'm a part-time bladesmith.
I was in the marine corps, and I actually spent
Most of my time in okinawa, japan.
I definitely take influence
From the japanese style of bladesmithing.
I had a great respect for visiting the shops in japan.
♪ ♪
- Well, gentlemen, welcome to the forge.
The four of you are here to put your skills to the test
In a massive bladesmithing competition.
This consists of three rounds. At the end of each one,
I will ask you to present your work
To our panel of expert judges.
And they're the ones who will decide
Who leaves here empty-handed,
Who's taking home the title and that check for 10 grand.
Now, bladesmiths, this is a competition
In the series we are calling "forged in fire: Supersized."
Now, bladesmiths, under this tarp
I've got not one, but two massive pieces of steel
With which we want you
To salvage materials to make blades.
Now, I'm sure you guys are ready
To light the forges and get going.
- Yes, sir.
- So you guys are gonna need these.
♪ ♪
- I see these massive coil springs
That look like dinosaur bones,
And I don't know how you can draw that out in three hours.
- Bladesmiths, what you're looking at here
Is 500 combined pounds of 5160 spring.
In addition to the spring steel,
You then take the steel, clad it over your spring
To make a san mai billet.
With which we want you to make a massive signature blade
In your signature style between 16 and 18 inches.
- Big knife, big challenge.
It's definitely, definitely supersized.
♪ ♪
- Now, for the three of you who are lucky enough
To join us in the second round of competition,
You will add handles to those signature blades
Turning them into fully functioning weapons
At which point our judges will put them
Through a series of tests.
You're gonna start off by checking your strength
And durability in an ice block chop
And then check your edger tension
In a double punching bag slice.
All right, guys, we've got three hours on the clock
For the first round of this supersized competition,
So good luck, stay sharp. Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, they're really springing to it.
- Yeah, really. - [laughs]
- It's a big piece of steel. [laughs]
- It literally takes two guys to move them.
They're gonna have a heck of a time breaking this down
And getting the steel they need for their core materia.
- As soon as the clock starts,
Me and eland are teaming up for the greater good
And getting our pieces of steel harvest.
- Both of our springs are getting attacked
With the oxy acetylene torches. You guys think
That's the fastest method to get this broken down?
- If you know how to use
An oxy acetylene cutting torch it is.
- Don't cut my foot. [laughs]
I'm nervous. I've made san mai in the past
But never with something so large.
- So bare minimum,
What can they get away with on this spring?
- I wouldn't go much less than three inches.
- Okay. - You can always lose steal,
But not having enough in the san mai situation,
30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour from now
You're starting over.
♪ ♪
- Think that's enough? - Yeah.
- There you go. - See? That's quick, man.
- It would really be a dick move
Just to cut my piece off.
So I stay and help cut him a piece as well.
♪ ♪
Which one you want? - I don't care.
- They've both chosen to use
About five inches of the spring.
So they got a ton of steel there for their core material.
- While this is heating up,
I go over to the pantry and find my cladding.
- Typically in the san mai competitions,
We see smiths having awful time just getting that done
With clean, pristine, bar stock.
We're asking these guys to process and work down
A two-inch diameter piece of round spring
Before even cleaning it up, getting the cladding going,
And getting to the starting point of a san mai billet.
There's a lot of work
In the first three hours of this competition.
- Waiting on that steel to heat up drives me nuts,
But if I don't let this piece of spring heat up
As thoroughly as it needs to,
Then I'm gonna end up getting cracks all the way through
That piece, and I do not want that.
♪ ♪
- Josh and I decide to work together.
- It's a big, old piece of steel, man.
- I know.
Cutting into the spring is very slow,
But being in the marine corps definitely helped give me
Determination to do a task until it's done.
Come on, come on.
- So what does rob here need to do to speed up the process?
- He needs to heat up his torch.
Put more acetylene in and then more oxygen in.
- Hammer. - Here you go.
- All right.
♪ ♪
- Rob really needs to start speeding up.
- And now it's time to cut my piece.
- Almost through. - There we go. Boom.
- There's no time to waste.
It's got to get in that fire right away.
It's a big piece of steel. It's got a bend on it.
I can't forge something straight onto something round.
And I need it to be flat and so it can have a good bond.
- What's the ideal thickness of the core material
Before you go ahead and clad?
- You want to have the same dimension
As the cladding steel you've got.
It's really what you want
With nice, clean, square sides, you know?
That would make a perfect weld.
♪ ♪
- I've got the coil spring up to heat.
Now, I get it over to the press trying to
Flatten it out and straighten it out.
- Clay's already got a hot piece of metal.
- He's been in there for 20 minutes.
Now he can just run away with it.
- Yep, just work it down on the press really quickly.
You can be extremely aggressive with this stuff.
- Now, I'm welding these suckers together
As quickly as I can,
Because I know that clock is running down.
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, one hour has elapsed.
You've got two hours remaining.
- I had my piece of spring steel nice and flat.
- Rob's finished doing his cleanup.
Oh, I guess he's--
He's mid-welding together all his layers.
- I get my san mai pieces welded.
So at this point, I'm feeling awesome.
♪ ♪
- Now that it's up to temperature,
I'm gonna go gently set my san mai forge weld.
If this forge weld goes wrong,
I have to start completely over with cutting
A whole new piece of coil spring.
I do not have time for that.
- Looks like he's running out of a little bit of heat.
- Yeah, one of the reasons I'm not crazy about
Setting long forge welds on a press
Is that bottom piece is just sitting on that billet,
Sucking the heat out of that bottom piece of steel.
- So at this point, I'm pretty confident my welds are good,
But now I have to keep stretching it,
Keep stretching it some more
Getting to where I have a blade.
♪ ♪
- Joshua's, I think, ready to clad his steel.
- Once I'm up to temperature,
Now it's time to get over to the press,
And I want to very gently set these welds.
- Looking at joshua's steel from here,
He's looking pretty consolidated.
- By my second pass on each side,
I'm pretty confident that it's that it's forge-welded good,
And it's time to heat this thing up and stretching it out.
Making some bread.
- The pressure is on for just to shape.
When I heard the tests that the judges were
Gonna be performing today, I immediately thought,
"don't waste time forging a big, complicated tip.
"just do simple, easy, competition chopper
With a straight edge and a little bit of a belly."
- My least favorite thing on the planet,
The straight-bladed,
Clip-point, competition chopper.
- That's your least favorite thing on the planet?
- Least favorite knife on the planet
That's been on this show. - You haven't been out much.
- Yeah. - At this point, I am beat.
- 16 to 18 is a massive piece of metal.
- It's a big blade.
- But one way or another, I'm turning in a blade.
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, you are halfway through this round.
You've got 90 minutes remaining.
♪ ♪
- Now that I've got the forge weld set,
I've got to make a knife.
And I've got to make a supersized knife,
Not just any knife.
So I'm going for
In my house what we call a choppy chop.
It's just a big chopper.
It's got a little bit of recurve to it
And it'll be great for chopping anything,
Wood, ice, and it'll be sharp.
- You know, for starting 20 minutes behind everybody else,
Rob's making good time now.
- I'm feeling awesome, and now it's time to start normalizing.
♪ ♪
- I still have to shape my blade.
I think I'm gonna lean more toward my signature drop point.
I want to add a little bit
Of a recurve to it for the ice chop.
Just to give a more forward heft for when they swing,
It'll bite in a little bette.
- Eland's got a big hunk of metal.
- Yeah. - Oh, yeah.
- So after lugging around this giant, honking piece of stee,
My arms are tired. I'm exhausted.
- Eland starting the work, his metal cold
Losing all the color. - He keeps doing that.
- Well, working the materials colder is never a good idea.
I mean, you're gonna wind up
Creating cracks and stress fractures.
- I feel like I can't get it past that 16-inch mark
And I am getting stressed.
♪ ♪
- Joshua has a beautiful rectangular shape to his blade.
Now to start putting some form into that.
- I want to make a machete.
I think that's about the right size for a machete.
I think it'll handle itself very well.
Machetes are nostalgic to me, because I grew up
In papua new guinea, and it was, like, an everyday tol
That we had whenever we went around anywhere.
You can't go through the jungle without a machete.
- Bladesmiths, you have 45 minutes remaining.
- Now it's time to quench this thing.
I gotta do this right the first time,
Because that clock is ticking.
♪ ♪
- Here we go.
- That's a... - [groans]
In the oil, like, all the way in the oil.
- The minute I drop my blade in the oil,
I thought, "oh, [bleep]. I'm going home."
- Get it out of there.
- Hopefully it didn't hit the bottom and bend.
- This could be it for me.
♪ ♪
- I pull it out and to my surprise,
It's pretty straight.
For a second there, I thought this was over for me.
I'm getting it over to the grinder,
Cleaning it up as fast as I can.
- Oh, no. - And I notice there's a crack
All the way down the spine of this blade.
Hoping that this crack doesn't run very deep
And I can grind it out in a few minutes.
♪ ♪
- [screams]
- That just seems like it went awesome.
Right? [laughter]
- The japanese believe that when you scream
You're transferring your spirit into the blade
And I transfer everything I have into that blade.
♪ ♪
What the [bleep]?
- Holy smokes.
- I have a supersized crack
Going down the spine of the blade.
- We've seen time and time again,
In these san mai competitions especially
With a high temperature quench that core material
Just shearing and splitting straight down the middle.
- I really am not sure if I'm gonna have time to fix it.
♪ ♪
- Eland just quenched, and it was hot.
- Pulled out and checked. Everything looks great.
Now I have to get to the grinder.
I'm just hogging as much steel off as I can.
Oh, come on.
I have several spots show up,
And it looks like it could be a crack.
- It's once again the curse of the san mai.
- Seriously. - A screaming hot quench, man.
- I gotta get rid of that crack.
If the cracks go all the way through I'm going home.
Come on now.
♪ ♪
- In the oil. All right, guys,
Four smiths, four quenched blades.
- We got a nice, hard edge.
Man, I am so relieved. I am so happy.
I've gotta get to the grinder.
I want to try to clean it up a little bit
And just work to the last second.
♪ ♪
- Five, four, three,
Two, one.
Bladesmiths, turn off your machines.
Put down your tools.
The first round of this competition's over.
- Good job, brother.
- I wasn't able to fix that crack.
At this point, I have to hope
One of the other contestants has a worse blade than me.
And I'm not very confident that I'll be advancing
With that crack on the spine.
♪ ♪
- All right, bladesmiths,
The time's come for the first critique.
Eland, you're up first. Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- So, eland, great work in shaping this blade,
But I've got some issues with it,
Mainly that it's got a crack that runs from the spine
All the way to basically the tang.
And the worst part is, it runs on both sides.
You get into the second round,
You've got to take mass off of this thing
And figure out some way to close that blade up.
♪ ♪
- Clay, sir, how you feeling? - I'm ready.
- All right, please present your work.
♪ ♪
- All right, clay, let's talk about your blade here.
So first off, you have a very basic design of a chopper,
But what gives me pause is that there is a crack on the spine.
The saving grace of that is, there's none on your edge.
So should you move forward,
I hope you have a plan to fix this and bring out its beauty.
- Thank you.
- Joshua, it's your turn. Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua, now, your blade's a solid quarter inch.
There's a slight warp to it,
But it's well within grinder range.
Biggest thing is, if you're getting into the second round,
Is to maintain that san mai.
Don't lose all of that cladding material.
Your steel looks good. Nicely done.
- Thank you, sir.
- Last but not least, rob. Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- Well, rob, this is a cool-shaped knife.
I love the profile of it. Bevels are looking good,
But the big thing here is that there's a huge crack
That runs down the spine of your blade
Really, really wide.
I wouldn't at this point call it a catastrophic failure.
In a competition like this, you can come back from this
With the right kind of repair.
Great job on the set up for this knife.
Looks really good,
But this crack really needs to be dealt with.
- Absolutely.
- Well, gentlemen, there's never anything easy
About coming into a "forged in fire" competition
And this one was massive, but only three of you
Can join us in the second round of this competition.
Now, after discussion, the judges all agreed
That the smith who will not be joining us is...
♪ ♪
Eland.
Unfortunately your blade didn't make the cut
And ben's gonna tell you why.
- Eland, a lot of people had cracks in their blades today,
But yours is the only one
That went all the way from the spine to the edge.
And that really is
A catastrophic failure of a blade,
And it's for that reason we're gonna let you go.
- Well, eland, you fought hard.
You gave us a blade that met parameters,
But unfortunately, it's not enough
To get you to the second round of this competition.
At this point in time, I'm gonna have to ask you
To please surrender your work and step off the forge floo.
- My blade wasn't the only one to crack,
But unfortunately, my crack went all the way through,
And it was just the worst out of the three that showed up.
But I still produced a blade within the three hours
In the supersize challenge on top of that.
I'm proud that I fought till the end.
♪ ♪
- Well, gentlemen, congratulations.
The three of you are joining us in the second round
Of the supersize competition where you're gonna
Fix all those issues the judges brought up about your blades,
As well as add handles to them
Turning them into fully functioning weapons.
Now, if you take a look over at the pantry,
You notice that all of our handle material has been
Wiped from its shelves aside from four very large logs.
Those logs are all you can use for the handles.
After this round is done,
You guys are gonna hand your blades over to our judges,
And they're gonna test for strength and durability
In an ice block chop and then
Check your edger tension in a dual punching bag slice.
You have a lot of work to do in these two hours.
So good luck. That time starts now.
♪ ♪
Here we go.
We got a lot of work to do on these blades.
- A lot. - They're heavy.
There's two massive cracks. How do we fix those?
- The best thing to do is get a big, open crack in the back
And just fill that whole thing with mig weld,
Making sure that that heat
Doesn't travel all the way down to the edge.
- So I have a two-hour round.
I have to take this supersized log
And turn this material into handle material,
But the first thing I have to fix is the crack on the spine.
So I start welding it in little increments
So I don't overheat the steel completely.
Once you take your temperature
Above the tempering temperature,
Your heat treat is ruined.
- You know what's going to be interesting
About supersized blades, it's really gonna be testd
During an ice block chop. - Absolutely.
- More mass, more vibrations,
More impact to travel through the whole thing.
So if you do not address the cracks early,
It's gonna open up.
- I successfully closed the gap.
I welded it up as best I could, and we'll see what happens.
♪ ♪
- Going into round two
I'm very fortunate that I don't have any cracks,
So that saves me a lot of time.
I can jump on the grinder right away
And start working on my warp.
- You know, I'm watching joshua grind, and it's just
A really inefficient way to remove material.
And joshua's got a lot of material he has to remove.
- Now that I got the warp out,
I'm gonna start grinding down the rest of the blade
And putting in the distal taper into it
To thin it out and lighten it up on the end.
And then I'm gonna start bringing in the bevels.
- The risk I run welding the crack
Is the heat traveling to the cutting edge
And softening the edge.
I'm gonna avoid that the best I can
By submerging the edge in a pail of water
To try and block that heat from traveling to the cutting edge.
♪ ♪
- Adding the extreme heat, it's kind of dangerous, right?
You make it brittle now.
- Yeah, but if you just kept the edge in the water,
The heat would only travel down so far.
There'd be a gradient of heat.
- So he's just using it as a heat sink.
- Yeah.
- The back of this blade looks like a stegosaurus,
But I'm out of time, and I have to move on.
I'm heading over to the grinder
To try to remove some of the meat from this blade.
♪ ♪
- I've taken a lot of weight out of the knife,
And I'm ready now to try and move on to my handle material.
- I'm excited to see how these guys tackle these logs.
- They've got the option to use the wedges
And smash them into these logs, but the bandsaw seems to be
The most efficient tool to get the job done.
- Oh, yeah.
- I start hammering on it as hard as I possibly can
And I'm not having any luck splitting this log.
♪ ♪
[sighs]
♪ ♪
So I go over to the bandsaw,
And I check how high the gate is
So that I can actually see if I can get it in there.
And sure enough I can.
I cut out a huge sliver,
And now I'm back in the game
To where I can make knife scales now.
♪ ♪
- After I get the majority of the grinding done
And it's time for me to start working on the handle,
So probably, the easiest way to get some wood
Off of that log is to grab a splitter.
And it's just bouncing.
I've got to figure something else out.
There's such a short amount of time,
So I think maybe I'm just gonna have to
Sharpen the splitter up, make it more like an axe,
And try again.
♪ ♪
- Joshua over here, managed to split that log,
But now he's got a rough piece of wood that's still a wedg.
- Yeah. If nobody's on the bandsaw, use the bandsaw.
- Bladesmiths, you guys are now
Halfway through the handle round.
You only have one hour remaining before tests.
♪ ♪
- I head over to the drill press
And try to drill my pinholes.
- All right, see if clay's able to
Get through that thick, old tang.
[drill rattling]
- Yeah, by that sound I'd say, "nope."
- No, it's not going well for him.
- In round one when I quenched,
I dropped the whole blade in the quench tank.
- That's a... - [groans]
- So this entire knife is hardened,
And hardened steel does not drill.
[drill rattling]
- Clay's having trouble getting through it right now
With only an hour left on the clock.
♪ ♪
- [bleep].
If I can't get the holes drilled in my tang,
I won't be able to put pins
And establish a mechanical connection.
And I'd be going home.
I look at the clock, and I know
I can't waste time trying to drill through this.
So I'm getting a little wild.
- Holy smokes.
It's not often you see somebody cut their holes in the tang.
- It beats the heck out of burning up drill bits thoug.
- Yeah, that's true. - You know.
- If I can't drill through it,
I'm gonna burn these holes through with a torch.
This is something I've never done before,
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
♪ ♪
It went swimmingly. I want this one.
Now, I have to get this log split
And get some wood for this handle.
♪ ♪
- The handle construction
I'm gonna be doing on this is a full tang.
So I'll be putting scales of this wood on each side
Of the tang and pinning it in and gluing it.
So I got all six holes in,
And now I need to glue this thing on.
I'm using some fast, five-minute setting epoxy,
But I don't have five minutes to waste.
So I quickly put some clamps on it,
And I go over to my grinder,
And I start working on sharpening it.
♪ ♪
- I put the epoxy on,
And now it's time to wait for the epoxy to cure.
It is five-minute epoxy, but when you're rushing,
Those five minutes seem like eternity.
♪ ♪
- [laughs] what's that?
- I don't know if that's how this works.
- Yeah, blowing on it doesn't help.
- Makes me feel better. - All right.
- My epoxy is now hardened,
And I realize that I barely have any time left.
I want to make sure that everything is nice and smooth,
'cause if the blade injures the user,
It's not a good tool.
♪ ♪
- Rob's sharpening his blade right now.
- That's good. - Yeah.
- He needs the time.
- I've still got to shape this handle
And do an acid etch, and there are minutes left.
The pressure is on.
♪ ♪
- Five, four, three
Two, one.
Bladesmiths, turn off your machines.
Put down your tools. This second round is over.
- I'm nervous going into testing,
Because my handle's not as comfortable as I would like,
The finish isn't as nice as I would like,
And I'm still worried about those cracks.
But just that I was able to complete the challenge
Is an accomplishment in and of itself.
♪ ♪
- All right, bladesmiths, welcome to the strength test:
The hanging ice block chop.
Clay, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Eh. - All right.
♪ ♪
- I'm not sure how
The crack in my spine is gonna handle this chop.
Worst-case scenario, the spine blows apart.
♪ ♪
- All right, clay, well, first thing I realized
When I pick up this blade, though, is its weight.
It's very heavy, and it's just a little difficult to control.
Your edge here picked up a roll,
And looking at your spine,
There's a little bit of issue I can see with the mig weld,
Some gas bubbles in the mig weld,
But it held up great. Nice job.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, joshua, you're up next.
You ready for this? - Yes, sir.
♪ ♪
I'm pretty confident in my blade,
'cause I got a good forge weld on that.
But I am concerned about
The edge taking damage on that ice.
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua, your pattern is really cool.
I can see it on both sides.
Your blade took a slight ding, but that being said,
Blade is still straight. Nice job.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, rob, you're up, man.
You ready? - Absolutely.
♪ ♪
Doing an ice block chop destroys blades.
They explode, and we already know
That I have a crack in my spine.
And I am not feeling okay for this.
It is gut-wrenching,
And I don't know what's gonna happen.
♪ ♪
- All right, rob, you nailed
The supersized aspect of this thing.
It's big in every dimension.
The handle is big, but it's not overly big.
The edge looks perfect.
In all, I think you did a good job.
- Thank you, sir.
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, this is the sharpness test,
The double punching bag slice.
Clay, you're up first. You ready for this?
- If you must. - We must.
♪ ♪
All right, clay, let's talk about your chop here.
First up, it is a heavy blade,
But because of the weight coupled with a sharp edge,
It really adds to cutting into these bags.
Overall, your weapon, it will cut.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, joshua, your turn. You ready?
- I'm ready, man. Let's do this.
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua, let's talk about your blade over here.
Now, your edge, first cut hit the stitching over there,
But the rest of the bag, it just obliterated it.
It's a very sharp edge. It's got a nice balance to it,
A good feel swinging it, and overall, it will cut.
- Thank you, sir.
- All right, rob, your turn, sir, you ready?
- Yes, sir. - Let's do this.
♪ ♪
All right, rob, let's talk about
Your behemoth of a blade here.
Now, the edge is sharp.
Packed with the weight of this blade,
It cuts deep into the bags, and overall, it will cut.
- Thank you, sir.
♪ ♪
- Now, gentlemen, in this competition
You guys all stood up to the massive task
Of turning giant springs into san mai blades.
But as you know, only two of you can join us
In the final round of this competition.
And after a discussion, our judges all agreed
That the bladesmith leaving the forge is...
♪ ♪
Clay.
Unfortunately, your blade didn't make the cut
And doug's gonna tell you why.
- Clay, first up, I want to commend you
For the work you did. You can show us
That even if you have a crack, if you make it through
There are ways of fixing it,
And it performed very well in our test.
But the end of the day, your blade took some damae
And is the least refined.
And that's the reason you're not moving forward.
- I understand.
- Now, clay, we want to say thank you for comig
And fighting so hard, but unfortunately,
At this time I'm gonna have to ask you
To please step off the forge floor.
- Thank you. Good luck, guys. - Thank you.
- I agree with the judges' decision.
All three blades held up to the test pretty well,
But the other two smiths
Were just much more refined than mine.
Even though I'm not leaving the "forged in fire" champion,
I think I've still proved
That I'm not just some guy making knives in his garage.
♪ ♪
- Joshua, rob, gentlemen, congratulations.
Your hard work has paid off, and you're both moving forward
Into the final round of the supersized competition.
You probably noticed that throughout this competition
We had a little bit of a theme.
There were two giant springs, we had two ice blocks,
And there were two punching bags.
Well, we're gonna keep that theme of twos going.
You guys will have four days to build these..
♪ ♪
A pair of elephant fighting swords.
- Awesome. - [laughs]
- The double elephant fighting swords,
Or dhaab ngao, trace their origins
Back to 18th-century lan na kingdom
In modern-day thailand.
Used by mounted elephant warriors,
These massive, heavy blades
Featured a long handle to assist in counterbalance.
Both blades measure around 30 inches
And feature a flame-backed spine
And an upswept tip.
These swords were designed not only to attack
Other mounted soldiers with lethal stabs and slashe,
But the ridges and peaks along the spine
Had the ability to trap an adversary's blade.
Today these swords are still used
In traditional thai martial arts.
This is the largest pair of weapons
We have ever asked smiths to go home and make.
But, gentlemen, they need to fall within
These followed parameters.
Your blade length needs to be within 27 and 29 inches.
You need to have an upswept tip,
Three flames on the spine of each of your blades.
Now, going down to the handle.
It need to be ovoid in shape and between 17 and 19 inches.
Now, guys, these are large blades,
But that does not mean they should be heavy.
Each one of these blades cannot exceed four pounds.
- I have to make two elephant swords.
Not one. I have to make two.
Unbelievable.
- Now, guys, you've got a ton of work ahead of you,
But next time you enter this forge,
One of you will be leaving with
The title of "forged in fire" champion
And getting a check for $10,000,
So good luck.
We will see you both in four days.
- Let's do this.
♪ ♪
- Back here in my home forge in flagstaff, arizona.
I've decided I wanted to make damascus for these blades,
Something that stands out a little bit
Against my competitor.
All right, I'm gonna be using the 5160
And some 15n20.
I'm pretty comfortable making the sword.
It's the time constraints that I have
For making two of them in four days
That's gonna be the tricky part.
All right. I've only got one forge,
So I want to get both of those billets in there if I can
So I can rotate the billets back and forth
And keep this process going along.
So far, looking good.
End of day one, I got a lot done,
Was able to get about 90%
Of the blades forged out this first day.
So feeling good.
I'm exhausted, but I'm ready to rock and roll tomorrow.
Coming along. Whoo-hoo.
♪ ♪
- Day one, we're back in my home forge in north carolina.
My goal is to make a 150-layer damascus billet.
It's a lot of steel. It's enough for two sword.
I'm using one big billet so that I can accomplish
Both swords from one billet
Rather than starting with two billets.
So hopefully, it will go faster.
Cool.
I just finished day one.
I was able to make my 150-layer billet of damascus.
I'm a little bit nervous. I definitely feel behind,
But I definitely feel it's gonna pay off.
♪ ♪
- Day two.
So what's next is, I'm gonna start grinding in the profile
So I can start making the shapes.
So grinding these three flames into the top of these blades
Is pretty tricky, and I can't mess this up,
Because this is attached to this entire sword.
I want to make sure that these flames look really nice,
Because every little detail counts.
And if rob does better than me or if I grind one too short,
I could really mess myself up. I like it.
So I've got the profile shaped out.
I've to the flames all nice, so now it's time for me
To get this thing heat-treated,
'cause my time is ticking.
♪ ♪
Oh, yeah. Straight as an arrow.
Wow.
♪ ♪
- It's the morning of day two.
My plan for today is, I'm gonna forge out both blades
And hopefully get them heat-treated.
Getting there.
I've never done anything this big,
But I'm moving pretty quickly, very efficiently.
So I can start building up my heat-treating oven.
Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to modify this a little bit
To get the swords in here, but it's gonna have to do.
Because of the size of these blades
Being able to heat these blades up evenly
Is very challenging.
There's one.
♪ ♪
There's two.
There were no cracks, warps, nothing crazy like that,
But my biggest concern throughout the entire
Home forge challenge was my heat-treating.
You know, my heat-treating oven was not up to par
For handling that type of heat treatment.
I really just hope that they're strong enough.
♪ ♪
- Day four.
Yesterday I got started on the handle.
So now it's time to do the glue up.
I've got so many holes.
I'm really concerned about making sure that
All the pins fit in there
And everything hooks up together nicely.
That's not good.
I'm gluing the first piece on,
And the pins just aren't going in.
Time is ticking, and I've got a lot to do.
We just had ourselves a little catastrophe, folks.
♪ ♪
And I realize that I put it on the wrong side.
So I've got to try again.
I'm glad I caught that. Yeah.
Okay, saved it. [laughs]
Now I've got to hurry up.
I named my swords chaos and tranquility
Just because I used two different types of walnut.
And it was sort of a yin and a yang feel for me.
All glued up.
Rob, I hope you did well, buddy, because it's game time.
Whoo.
♪ ♪
- Day four.
My overall plan for today
Is to finish the handles,
Get them glued up, basically sharpened up,
Ready to test.
Nice and smooth.
At first I was a little worried about what I had to do
At this supersized challenge, but ultimately,
I feel really good about it.
They feel good in the hand.
I met all the parameters.
Both my swords are light and fast, and they're sharp.
♪ ♪
- Joshua, rob, gentlemen, welcome back to the forge.
We gave you four days at your home forges
To work on the largest pair of weapons
We've ever asked smiths to make in this final round.
Guys, I've got to say, they look amazing.
But before we put them to the test
To find out which one of you is coming out on top
Of this competition, I want to hear about them.
So, rob, how'd you build yours?
♪ ♪
- I made a 150-layer damascu, and then I used purple heart
And osage orange for the handle material
- Awesome, man. Joshua, how about you?
- So I'd like you to meet chaos and tranquility over here
Made of 5160 and 15n20 steel
With a low-layered, bold-patterned damascus,
Walnut handles, and some copper damascus
For the bolsters.
- Outstanding. Gentlemen, after today
One of you is gonna earn the title
Of "forged in fire" champion, get a check for $10,000.
Because this is the supersized competition,
We're gonna put your blades through a series
Of supersized tests.
And up first, the keal test with doug.
- Bladesmiths, welcome to the keal test.
Rob, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Absolutely. Let's do it.
At first sight these tests are definitely terrifying,
Because I know that my blades
Had some struggles in the heat-treating area.
One dummy's bad enough, but to see two
Is not an exciting thing.
I'm so nervous.
♪ ♪
- All right, rob, let's talk about
Your elephant fighting swords here.
First up, the damascus path
That you have here are stunning,
But we have a problem.
During the test both blades took a very significant bend.
As you can see here,
They're kind of off-center, not centered.
And judging by how extreme these are
It looks like a major heat-treat issue
With both your blades.
With every strike
They will continue to bend more and more,
So unfortunately, I would not feel safe testing them further.
♪ ♪
- Now, rob, both your blades
Did make it through our keal test,
But in the midst of that test they both took
Very serious bends down near the handle.
Our judges did decide to issue a vote of no confidence,
And we cannot continue testing your blades.
But you're not out of the fight yet.
Joshua, in order to take home the title of
"forged in the fire" champion and get a check for 10 grand,
Your blades will have to make it through our keal test
With no disqualifying issues. Are you ready?
- I am so ready. Let's do this.
♪ ♪
I have some chaos and some tranquility
Going on in my body.
I mean, rob, obviously has a bend,
But mine might break.
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua, let's talk about
Your elephant swords here.
These blades are nicely done.
I don't see any damage to your blades.
They're nice and tight and straight.
Over all, your weapons will keal.
- Thank you.
- Well, joshua, congratulations.
Your blades made it through the keal test
Completely unscathed.
Now, rob, we want to say thank you for coming out
And trying so hard in this competition,
But your time in the forge has ended.
I'm gonna have to ask you
To please step off the forge floor.
- Thank you. Appreciate it. - Thank you so much.
- I absolutely know what was wrong with the blades.
I didn't have a heat-treating oven big enough.
I had a feeling that that was gonna be a weak spo,
And it was dead-on.
I absolutely enjoyed the build.
This definitely pushed my-- my boundaries, and that's good,
'cause what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
♪ ♪
- Well, joshua, you are the new "forged in fire" champion,
And you're gonna be receiving a check for $10,000.
Congratulations. - Thank you so much, guys.
It feels amazing.
It's very surreal. I can't believe it.
- You got plans for the money? - [laughs]
It's gonna go back to my shop. - Right on.
- This was a huge personal journey for me,
But as a full-time bladesmith and artist
It pushed my creativity, ingenuity,
And it was incredible.
I'm joshua meyer,
And I'm the "forged in fire" champion.
♪ ♪