[dramatic music]
- we've seen the best bladesmiths
head back to their home forges to recreate
some of the deadliest
and most iconic weapons in history,
and now it's our turn.
♪ ♪
each of us will battle it out in our own home shops
in an intricate, two-week build...
- [laughs] oh, no.
In two weeks, make a sutton hoo sword.
- Yeah, I know.
Before passing on the torch to the next.
- Mr. Baker, I got a challenge for you, bud.
- Oh.
Frustrating like I cannot tell you.
With no outside help, we must rely
on our own knowledge, equipment,
and even camera skills.
Whoa.
- Where's your microphone?
- Ah [bleep].
- This is the judges home forge battle.
♪ ♪
[country rock music]
♪ ♪
- hey, ben, j. How you guys doing?
- Hey, dave, what you doing, man?
- Hey, guys, what's up?
- I'm down here at my new place in virginia,
and I'm still kind of building the shop,
but, well, I was thinking, you know, we've got
this down time between shooting the show.
It might be fun to do a little challenge
among the three of us.
- Me challenge ben, ben challenge j.,
j. Challenge me-- something like that?
- So one person finishes
and then challenges the next one.
Sounds good to me.
- So what I thought was that we'll do a home build.
You know, we're always making the smiths do this,
so I figure let's do one. Let's show off what we can do.
- See if I can remember how.
- [laughs] get all the rust off my anvil.
- [laughs] so, no.
Well, what I was thinking,
we'd do it a little bit differently.
We'll give each other two weeks
to complete the challenge.
I know that's longer than we usually give the smiths,
but I figure let's do something
kind of outside our normal comfort zone,
do something, you know,
a little bit more above and beyond.
- All right. - Works for me.
- Okay, ben, you're always talking
about the sutton hoo sword.
You even told me that you saw it in a museum in England?
- Absolutely, yeah.
- Look, I know it's an incredibly intricate sword,
but you're always saying how you wanted to do one,
and now's the perfect chance.
- [laughs] oh, no.
In two weeks, make a sutton hoo sword.
- Yeah, I know. [chuckles]
- ben's gonna be switching over to night shift
for a couple weeks. - Yeah, thanks a lot, dave.
- Found in the burial ground of sutton hoo
in modern day suffolk, England,
the sword was presumably wielded by king raedwald
in the early 7th century.
The blade features intricate-made
pattern welding,
twisting steel and wrought iron
to create a unique damascus pattern,
while the handle itself was just as elaborate,
and was inlaid with gold and garnet.
Over 1,300 years later,
the sword was painstakingly recreated
by scott langton, and is now on display
alongside the original in the british museum.
Look, you're always saying how much you love that sword.
But hey, it's gonna be fun, and we gotta test 'em,
so, ben, figure out how you're gonna test that sword,
what you wanna test it on, okay?
- Sounds good. - One more thing, guys.
It's just us. Let's shoot ourselves.
Ben, sorry to dig you such a deep hole,
but have fun, man.
I'll see you in two weeks, okay?
Two weeks.
- I think I'm gonna mutter
about you a lot in the next two weeks,
but thanks, I better get to work.
[dramatic rock music]
♪ ♪
I'm not sure what's gonna be more difficult--
making a sutton hoo sword
or being a cameraman and an audio man.
This is all me, so please excuse it...
[chuckles] if the shots aren't great,
and I hope I make a cool sword at the other end of this.
All right, here we go.
Leave it up to dave, our historical weapons expert,
to give me an extremely historical weapon to create.
A sutton hoo sword replica--
I've wanted to make this sword since I was a little kid
and went to the british museum and saw the reproduction,
and I was really excited
by this very elaborate pattern-welded blade.
So now I'm in competition just with myself.
Can I make the sword
that I've always thought I could make?
In this build, my reputation is on the line--
not globally, but within the three of us,
so I wanna make sure I impress everybody.
I'm gonna start by making my eight bars,
which is gonna be high-layer damascus,
and then I'll draw those out into these rods.
Then I'm gonna twist and stop twisting
and twist it and stop twisting.
Then comes the forge welding-- four together this way,
the other four together this way,
except the top, where they're twisted,
the bottoms are straight.
Then weld those layers together for the twisted core.
Then make the edge steel by making extra stock,
throw it out, and wrap that all the way around the end
and then forge weld that whole thing together.
♪ ♪
the two times I had to compete on this show,
I made a khanda and a claymore,
but this build is way more complex.
54.
There is no way that we could have
the smiths on "forged in fire" make one of these swords.
It's just too many steps,
and there's too much time involved.
I'm gonna stack them all up
and try to get the initial forge weld.
If the initial weld isn't tight,
then, as I'm drawing out these billets,
they can just come apart.
If I mess up one billet,
I have to start that billet all over again,
and that would compromise the entire sword.
Now we just continue going. Got seven more to do.
[machine pops loudly]
today's the beginning of day two.
Here's the edge billet.
It's about to go into the forge,
do the first weld on it.
♪ ♪
the sword blade is about 28 inches long,
so that's about 5 1/2 feet
of bar I have to make in order to wrap it around.
Once I get the edge bar welded and drawn out,
I set it aside and put all my attention
to the twists on the core bars.
The steps of this process takes a little while,
and then you have to multiply each of those steps by eight.
I've done quite a bit of twisted damascus,
but the precision in this build
is its own trouble.
If I'm too aggressive with the twisting,
you can actually shear that bar into two bars.
It's getting really late.
It's about 2:00 in the morning,
and I'm tired. I'm ready to go to sleep.
♪ ♪
yesterday, I got the last four bars twisted.
Also the forge welding on the edge went really well.
So now I've got quite a number of layers.
Hopefully these days keep going as planned,
and also hopefully my plan is a good one.
Today is a pretty crucial day.
I now have eight twisted and flattened bars.
I have to weld the top four together,
weld the bottom four together,
weld those together making now the full core.
Well, this is by far gonna be the most difficult day
of forge welding of my career.
Each of these bars is almost 30 inches long,
so that's a lot of surface area to mess up.
Any small failure in these welds
could be catastrophic.
Far as I can tell,
everything looks good at the moment.
The welding on the second billet
is going great.
I have about the last 8 inches of bar
in the forge, so I can weld that last, little section.
[machinery whooshes]
my propane tank freezes up.
Hot oxygen is getting blown onto the billet
with no propane, so I'm really nervous
that's gonna oxidize my billet
and cause the forge weld not to stick.
I need to swap tanks immediately,
or else I could lose this entire weld.
♪ ♪
luckily, I was able to save the billet.
All right.
The welds look clean and tight,
and everything seems to have welded up just fine.
Problem averted.
Tomorrow is gonna be welding those two packets together
and welding the edge on.
♪ ♪
here we go.
Today is the day where I can get
this whole sword assembled.
The forge welding of the two twisted billets
went really well.
The next step is to draw 'em out to the length I need.
I don't really wanna go to the power hammer.
I'm afraid of it just getting away from me,
so I'm just gonna hand hammer it over the horn.
After a couple of heats of widening this billet
with a hand hammer,
I'm starting to get really tired,
so I think I'm gonna shift over
and use the power hammer.
♪ ♪
oh, no, this is way too long.
[bleep]
now I've got a sword that's 6 inches too long.
[bleep]
I don't know how this happened.
I was really methodical.
[bleep] damn it.
I guess it's just the stress of the time crunch.
♪ ♪
I'm gonna attempt to shorten the sword
by a process called upsetting.
I'm actually gonna do
what you would imagine in a cartoon would do.
I'm going to heat up a section, and I'm gonna hit the tang
down to the point and try to smush the steel.
The problem is, I run the risk of splitting these bars open
by squeezing the steel down on itself.
If what I do goes badly,
I have to start it all over again.
♪ ♪
pushing this blade
and putting your weight into it is like--
imagine playing jenga on the subway.
If I snap my blade in half right now, I'd be devastated.
♪ ♪
- if this blade warps, I'm gonna be seriously pissed,
and we might have to get
the censor bleeping guys on here again.
[bleep]
♪ ♪
- in trying to widen out twisted rods,
the power hammer ended up drawing the sword out
in length much more than I was hoping.
[bleep].
So the plan is to shorten the sword by upsetting.
If what I do goes badly, I can split open the pattern.
♪ ♪
it might.
I've got big hope it's not bad.
After a couple of passes of upsetting,
I lie the blade onto the floor and check its length.
So this is the line where we started,
and this is the line where I'm gonna be finished,
and you can see about an inch already.
I feel really satisfied that I was able to imagine
a solution to this problem without ever having done
something like this before.
That's how long it was when I started.
Let's see where we ended up.
Dang, son, that's looking pretty good.
[laughs]
what I need to do today is reduce its weight.
We're gonna see if I can reduce its weight
from five pounds down to something like two pounds.
So the weight is gonna be removed
from this sword by grinding.
Being a judge on "forged in fire,"
a lot of times we see finale weapons come in
that are grossly overweight.
The first thing I feel when I pick this knife up
is its weight. This thing is really heavy.
Johnathan, at the end of the day,
your halberd was heavy, more difficult to wield,
and for those reasons, we have to let you go.
Swords are not supposed to be heavy,
so I'm gonna use all my experience as a judge
to guide me in the weight distribution
and usability of this final weapon.
♪ ♪
I like to listen to music while I work.
It's the one thing that turns standing at a grinder
from a very, very boring slog into a slightly boring slog.
For anyone who's wondering,
"I wonder what he's listening to
while he's working,"
turns out--country music, and it's pretty awesome.
[chuckles]
I heart country.
♪ ♪
all right, well, it's the start of day eight,
and today I just need to refine the sword blade
just a little bit.
Okay, so it's the start of day eight,
and today I will start on the handle
so that I have something to hold onto
because it's a big, heavy sword,
and holding it by the tang hurts.
You can see the sketch I have here.
This is the block that's gonna be the handle.
This is the block that's gonna be
the top and bottom guard.
Boxwood tends to be a hard, durable wood.
That's why it's been used since ancient times
for sword handles.
I think it's gonna go well with the brass
that I'm gonna use for the fitting.
I got some thicker brass here for two of the guards.
I don't really have the money
to make the gold fittings like the original,
so I'm just gonna fake it in brass.
I managed to get all of the component parts fit up.
It's starting to come together
as an attractive-looking handle.
So it's the start of day 12--10--11?
Shoot, I don't know. They're all melting together.
I gotta get this blade quenched and tempered,
making sure it's straight.
Check out that even heat, baby.
There's a reason there's the expression "the 11th hour."
this is the 11th day,
and I don't wanna start again right now.
Here we go for the quench.
My main concern in this quench is warps.
The thing that makes the blade susceptible to warping
is all of the different layers of different kinds of steel.
There's wrought iron. There's 1095.
There's 15n20. There's 1084.
All of the different kinds of steels
do different things when they're quenched,
and I'm just nervous they're gonna do something
I don't want 'em to do.
♪ ♪
might have a little warp.
It's on both sides. It's very visible to me.
I'm gonna see if I can just flex it
and get that warp out of there.
If I snap it, I want it to be on camera,
but I don't wanna snap it.
If I snap my blade in half right now,
I'd be devastated.
Pushing this blade and putting your weight into it is like--
imagine playing jenga on the subway.
It's like that.
♪ ♪
kind of warp free.
Nothing snapped, straight blade.
I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel here.
Today is the final day of the build.
It's time to start engraving the pattern
into the pommel cap.
It's got a very intricate pattern.
The original sutton hoo sword has ribbon wire,
and then in-between all the wires,
they had cut garnets and set them all in place.
I don't have the time for that,
so what I'm gonna do is use an epoxy-based enamel
to make it look similar to the original.
Ready for etch.
This is my favorite part.
When I pull this sword out of the etch,
I'm looking to see the results of all that pattern
that I put into this sword.
[laughs softly]
I'm looking at this pattern as it's coming out of the acid,
and all the hard work I put in has really paid off.
It looks gorgeous.
I'm pretty exhausted right now.
I worked full tilt for two weeks,
but I'm excited to get this thing finished.
One thing that this experience has taught me
is how easy of a job camera people have.
I mean, come on. Just point and shoot.
This is so simple.
I'm really thankful.
Dave drove me to make something
I've always wanted to make,
and now I've got it. [clicks tongue]
♪ ♪
well, guys, it's been two weeks,
and here it is.
Sutton hoo sword.
- That is gorgeous. Look at that pattern.
- Wow, ben, that sword looks beautiful.
- The dimensions-- that thing looks huge.
- Not the most nimbly weighted sword in the world.
- It'll kick some butt, that's for sure.
- So the plan is to test for strength on some bamboo,
and then for sharpness, I have a whole lot
of shipping boxes lying around, so I set one up here.
I'm gonna see if I can't cut it in half.
Make it easier to get in the recycling bin.
- [laughs]
- I am actually nervous about the testing.
This is a long, very complex welded sword.
Things might let go.
I don't wanna break this thing. It took forever.
- All right, man, good luck. - Thanks, man.
Here we go.
♪ ♪
- oh, man, that's great.
-The edge held up all right.
Everything's still right and tight.
So now it's to see how sharp the thing is.
♪ ♪
[laughs]
well, there it is.
- Good job, man. That's incredible.
- That's a good job, ben. - Thank you, man.
So yeah, now it's your turn, eh, j.?
- All right, what do you got for me?
- How about you make me a chopper
out of material you've never used before.
- You know, it's funny you mention that
because there is a few different materials
that I haven't tried yet that I've been wanting to.
- And then I want you to go,
like, full neilson on this thing
and test it as hard as you can
on some of the most devastating test media that you have.
- I can do that because, if I don't
do a serious strength test, fans are gonna crucify me
for all the blades I've broken and damaged,
so yeah, I'm gonna go hog wild on this thing, no doubt there.
- Bud, I'm pretty sure we're all gonna love watching this.
- All right, I'll get to it. - Good luck to you, brother.
♪ ♪
- I'm here in my own shop in towanda, pennsylvania.
Ben did a great job on his weapon,
and I'm planning on doing something just as good.
I am fortunate enough, during this home build,
to have my very lovely wife
being my camera person and audio person.
- Your eyes are looking like they're up in the ceiling.
Look down more.
- I'm looking right at that little thing.
- I'm just telling you, look-- - I want a new camera person.
She'll actually get to see what I do.
Even though we've been together for 11 years...
[laughter]
I think she's spent an hour in my shop
the whole 11 years. [chuckles]
so ben challenged me to use steels I haven't used before.
So what I'm planning on doing is making a canister
out of drive chain and powdered steel,
and then I'll peel the can off, slice it in half,
and then san mai it to a piece of 80crv2,
which we've seen quite a few smiths use
on their finale weapons,
but I actually haven't had a chance to use it yet.
The biggest problem with the unknown steels
is knowing how to properly heat them, forge them.
I'm gonna fill it with the white out.
So I can peel it.
One of the biggest things with the canisters
that I see contestants do wrong
is not letting the white out dry.
They don't wait long enough for that white out to dry.
When they put their material in,
it's gonna prevent the material from welding,
and you still have parts of the can welded to a billet.
The key to canister is patience,
and that's been a difficult process
for me to learn over the years
'cause I'm not a patient person.
- He's not a patient person at all.
[laughs]
whoa. - Scare you, honey?
- Yeah, it startled me.
- Fingers crossed, everybody.
♪ ♪
once I get that temperature that I think is right,
I start squeezing that down.
So now we're gonna let this cool,
cut the ends off, and then pull the can off.
♪ ♪
when I'm peeling the can, for pride's sake,
I wanna pull it off in one piece.
♪ ♪
ta-da.
We got a nice, big chunk of steel here.
That's day one.
♪ ♪
[light classical music]
this is the kind of peaceful environment
I'm used to working in. Hey, chubby.
♪ ♪
your mommy--what's that? I don't like it.
Don't point it at me. - [laughs]
♪ ♪
- first thing I'm doing today is I'm going to take
that canister billet and slice it in half,
and I'm gonna use that for the sides
of the san mai with a core of 80crv2.
We have smiths doing canisters quite often,
san mai quite often.
I don't think we ever asked 'em to do both in the same build,
so this is gonna be interesting.
I wanna draw it out to match the core steel,
and then get everything ground flat
so it'll be easier to weld up.
I love my hydraulic press.
Preparation's one of the most important things
in san mai--make sure everything's flat, clean
because it will solve problems later on.
- Sticking at all? - No, it's not sticking at all.
I thought I had it pretty clean there.
- You might wanna open it up
and take a grinding wheel to it.
Just try and strip anything out
'cause once it's not sticking now,
it's not going to. - Yeah, I know.
- Taking a few extra minutes to clean up that steel
is just a smart move.
Now we're gonna forge weld it and actually make our san mai.
♪ ♪
what I'm really looking for is to see if everything
is cooling at the same rate.
If the outer layers start cooling
faster than the inner layers,
then, you know, it starts peel improperly.
So nothing came apart. - Great.
- Looks good.
Tomorrow morning, we'll start actually forging out the blade.
♪ ♪
- dogs wanna come and help.
- It's the beginning of day four.
I'm not going for a set design or set style.
I'm just going for a neilson chopper.
- Throughout "forged in fire," the competition chopper
has been a staple of the forge.
Featuring a broad blade which rarely comes to a tip,
they were designed for competition blade sports
and cutting contests.
However, crafting these weapons
to ensure a perfect heat treat has proved difficult
for previous competitors who have seen their blades
chip, roll, and even snap during testing.
♪ ♪
it's got the standard tip.
I'm gonna drop it down so you'll have
a nice, little sweeping arc on the cutting edge.
Choppers are not overly complicated,
but it's just like a chef making a perfect egg.
If you don't follow precisely,
you could screw it up real easy.
We are roughly 17 inches.
♪ ♪
beckie asked me about the marks on the side of the anvil.
- Yeah, I didn't notice that before.
- It's just a quick measurement reference
so I don't have to keep getting a ruler and stuff like that.
Contestants on the show can do this too.
We never told them they can't write on the anvils.
They're more than welcome to write on 'em.
I like seeing berman marking his measurements down
while his steel's heating up.
- A lot of people go home because the perimeters.
- Next step is to grind this blade down
I had planned on leaving the forge flats
which I do on a lot of my knives,
but my wife wouldn't let me,
so I had to leave the blade a little bit thicker,
so it's gonna take me a little longer to grind it.
- She didn't-- my wife didn't think
the forge flats were pretty. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
progress is good. Everything seems fine.
I don't see any creases in the steel or anything.
It looks like a solid piece.
- [quietly] beginning of day six.
Today--
- what-- where's your microphone?
- Ah [bleep].
♪ ♪
the most crucial thing today
is to get the heat treat correct.
So I'm bringing this up to temperature--
about 600 plus degrees to warm up the blade,
and I'm gonna use anti-scaling powder,
which is something you don't normally see on the show.
That'll actually coat the blade,
but you definitely don't wanna breathe this stuff in.
This anti-scaling powder tends to normally help with warping,
but this is also gonna save me a lot of grinding time too
because half of its gonna crack off
in the quench oil, and the other half
I can rinse off with hot water.
So I'll have, basically, a shiny blade again.
All right, this is it--
the quench, heart and soul of the blade.
This is where it can come out beautiful
or it can come out crooked, warped, crack in half,
or really nice.
Biggest problem with the unknown steels
is all the steels move differently
during heat, during forging.
- I've never used 52100 steel before,
so if you don't know how it acts,
then anything could happen.
♪ ♪
- we definitely had an issue in round one
with the heat treating.
Just gotta cross your fingers and hope for the best.
♪ ♪
if this blade warps, I'm gonna be seriously pissed,
and we might have to get the censor bleeping guys
on here again.
♪ ♪
[bleep]
♪ ♪
I don't believe this.
It warped huge.
It's over a quarter of an inch
from the tip away from the surface.
There's no way I can grind this out.
This is really putting me behind now.
Very disappointing.
♪ ♪
[bleep].
We're about ready to chop into some bison jawbones,
and, god, I hope this thing doesn't break in half.
I'm gonna look like an idiot.
♪ ♪
- whoa! Warp.
Frustrating like I cannot tell you.
[imitates explosion]
♪ ♪
- this warped blade is really putting me behind now.
I'm going to figure out how I wanna go ahead
straightening this without breaking it in half, hopefully.
♪ ♪
because there's such a big warp,
I think the steel's gonna do it again,
so I'm going to overcompensate the blade
in the other direction.
So hopefully when I quench the blade this time,
it'll warp itself straight.
♪ ♪
so if this doesn't go right, I'm gonna have to start over,
but first I'll probably bash this blade into little pieces
and make it my next canister.
♪ ♪
stick blade. We tricked the steel.
Blade worked itself straight.
There is just a tiny, little bend at the tip
but easily within grinder range.
Easy to fix.
I'm very happy about this.
♪ ♪
you gotta tell me to start. [both laugh]
beginning of day eight.
I've got the blade straightened out,
got it re-hardened. It's looking good.
All I gotta do is blue the spine
so we've got a little shock absorption,
blue the tang, and finish grinding.
Whenever somebody says "you can't hit steel"...
♪ ♪
you can. Now the tang's straight.
Getting a final grind on.
I'm liking where I'm at. Steel looks good.
I mean, I don't see seams or creases
or anything like that, so I'm really happy.
♪ ♪
it's day 19.
- It's not day-- [laughs]
- today I'm going to etch the blade
and see what it actually looks like.
It's like christmas for knifemakers.
♪ ♪
you can see the pattern. - Oh, yeah.
- It's got a nice, dark core steel.
The drive chain and the powdered steel
came out nice and shiny.
You can actually see the links in there in certain parts,
so I'm happy with this. This looks cool.
Now it's time to work on my handle.
Again, with the unknown materials,
I've got ultrex, which is g10
layered with thin pieces of rubber.
I'm not normally big on the synthetic materials,
but this one really caught my interest
because having a big chopper,
you get that grip with the rubber
and a bit of shock absorption also,
so you get less of that sting traveling up your wrist.
I've roughed out the ultrex.
I'm gonna shape it a little more evenly,
and then I always use handle bolts
because there's a mechanical connection that way.
♪ ♪
the challenge was fun. I enjoyed it.
I had a couple minor hiccups,
but overall it went pretty well.
I like the way the piece came out.
It seems like it's gonna hold up well.
The handle came out great,
and the pattern is something I hadn't done, so yeah,
I'm looking forward to showing it to ben and dave
and having some fun with it.
♪ ♪
hey, guys, it's been two weeks, and I'm back.
- Hey. - Hey, j.
Did you have fun? - I had a blast.
So here's my san mai chopper.
It's just under a 13-inch cutting edge.
The core is 80crv2--
new steel for me to play around with,
and I took some drive chain and made a canister damascus
and that's what I clad on both sides of the core.
- How'd you like that ultrex? - The ultrex is nice.
It gives you really good grip. - Cool.
- And I did a little work for a meat packing plant
a while back, and they were nice enough
to give me these lovely bison jawbones.
- [laughs]
- I've got two of 'em strapped to a table over there.
- Well, that looks like some pretty brutal material, j.
Good luck with it.
- Let's have some fun.
- Remember, j.,
it's not what your blade does to those bison bones,
but what those bison bones do to your blade.
[laughter]
- so we're about ready to chop into some bison jawbones,
and, god, I hope this thing doesn't break in half.
I'm gonna look like an idiot.
♪ ♪
- we're about ready to chop into some bison jawbones,
and my plan is to try and not break my new knife.
♪ ♪
- [laughs]
- well, that didn't work the way I wanted it to.
- It worked pretty good.
♪ ♪
- whoa.
♪ ♪
- wow. - That was wicked.
♪ ♪
- well, she's still tight, straight.
No damage to the edge...
And still sharp.
♪ ♪
- well, j., you really knocked that out of the park, man.
Nice job. - Good job, man.
- Appreciate it.
All right, mr. Baker, I got a challenge for you, bud.
- Oh, boy, now, I'm on the chopping block.
Okay, all right, what's the challenge gonna be?
- If you remember, we had somebody come on the show
and do a scottish basket hilt that really tore my wrist up
and sent me to the er.
Scale and all that stuff is one of your things,
so make me a scottish basket hilt
that won't tear somebody's arm up.
- [laughs]
okay, all right, I'm down for that.
The basket hilt originated in scotland
in the 17th century and include
an intricate enclosed guard
intended to protect the user's hand.
Although primarily used for defense,
the basket hilt also had the ability to punch.
The importance of properly designing the basket hilt
is crucial in crafting a safe and effective weapon--
as seen in previous "forged in fire" competition
when a design flaw injured j.'s wrist.
- That sounds like a good challenge, dave.
- It's gonna be really important
that I get the scale, the weight,
and the balance right
because I'm gonna be doing the testing,
and I really don't want a hand-breaker.
- Looking forward to it.
- Okay, I guess it's my turn to head into the shop.
I will see you guys in two weeks.
♪ ♪
I'm here at my new place
on the northern neck of virginia.
My barn there is my workspace.
I'm about, you know, 1/3 the way through building
my new shop space here,
so if the self-shooting from home isn't enough,
I've actually got large pieces of equipment being delivered
while I'm trying to do this.
J. Has challenged me to make a scottish basket hilt.
My goal is to get this
as historically accurate as I can.
The blade is a very straightforward
broadsword blade, so it'll have double edges
and a deep fuller down the center.
It's the guard itself that becomes difficult--
getting that dimension and scale perfect.
And as the historical recreations specialist
on the show, it's important for me to nail it.
I start with creating my blade....
Voilà, five pieces.
Because the hilt has to fit and grow around that blade.
So I start by stacking up my metals.
I've got 15n20 and 1095.
So I wanna do this sword with a damascus blade
because, well, in truth I'm doing a damascus blade
on this sword because if I don't,
ben and j. Will never let me live it down.
Instead of the basket hilt sword,
it will be the basket guilt sword.
[laughs]
when you forge weld, you want those clean pieces
to bind to one another, so it's really important
to get that material as clean as you can
before you weld so you don't get
the buildup of forge scale.
Well, I'm worried that mike didn't do enough clean-up work
on those pieces of steel.
- Damn it, I opened up.
- Mike hasn't cleaned any of that material.
It just won't stick.
So that kind of problem-solving skills
that make champions on "forged in fire."
all the welds held beautifully.
Now I can just draw that billet out
to the length I need.
♪ ♪
my camerawork might be either very static
or there might be a lot of that--whoa--
camera falling over kind of thing.
Hopefully not. This is the studio's camera.
♪ ♪
it's day three of my build.
♪ ♪
I'm drawing my blade out, and it looks really good,
so it's time to start shaping.
Finished, this blade should be between 31 to 31 1/2 inches
with a 2-inch base, a wide fuller, rounded tip,
and it should weigh in
at maybe a pound and a couple of ounces.
Let's change that camera angle, shall we?
Call the camera department. What?
You are the camera department. Ah, crap.
♪ ♪
the next stage is to press the fuller
down the center of this blade.
It's gonna widen the blade up, which I need to do
because right now it's a little thinner
than I want it to... [bird squeaking]
want it to be.
Sorry, that was me looking at a vulture
that was just flying over my head.
[vulture squawks]
there she is. She's still hot.
Rough forged, a fairly well shaped blade
that will be ready for heat treat.
♪ ♪
this is called being proactive while thermocycling
make use of the time, a little study.
♪ ♪
[snores]
♪ ♪
blade's up to temperature. It looks great, and I quench.
♪ ♪
the longer the blade you do, the larger the chances
that you're going to have some kind of warping
so this has gotta go right.
♪ ♪
whoa!
It's warped near the tang.
Warp.
Frustrating like I cannot tell you.
Do that again.
It's back in the oven, re-quench.
Well, that sucked, but quench it again.
You know, every time you quench,
you have a risk of creating more problems...
♪ ♪
whether it's stressing the blade
or creating another warp
that you're gonna have to take out
or re-warping the same thing.
♪ ♪
whoa! [imitates explosion]
- whoa!
Well, that sucked, but quench it again.
It's that moment of truth.
I mean, every time you quench
you run the risk of doing more damage to the blade.
[imitates explosion]
as I'm pulling it out, all I'm doing is I'm hoping
that it's spot on, and boom, it's dead straight.
It looks good.
All right. [imitates explosion]
blade quenched.
That's it for today.
Yeehaw.
I've got weights, measurements, balance point,
all dialed in.
With the blade being ready, it's time to move on
to that guard, which is very intricate
and is going to take a lot of work.
One of the most interesting things that you find
when you pick up one of these
is that the top of the basket is not flat.
It actually angles back towards your wrist,
which is the natural position your hand is in.
It's as much a weapon as the blade is.
You can punch with it. You can guard with it.
It's a shield.
I'm actually gonna try making this specific guard right here.
It's very elaborate.
It's got a lot of cut up file work on it.
Instead of just doing a scottish basket hilt,
I've decided to do
an allan-inspired scottish basket hilt.
The allans made very unique shaped basket hilts
that were extremely ornate--
just absolutely beautiful craftsmanship.
So here we go.
I used a plasma cutter to open up the lines
that are the openings in the guard.
Now it's file time.
We'll see how I can open this up.
Used my template here to draw the lines out,
and now it's basically using the rotary tool
to carve out all these openings,
get them as clean as I possibly can
before I go to a hand file.
Hopefully, tomorrow, finish the guard completely.
Just gonna keep things moving.
♪ ♪
ugh, yeah.
Pardon me while I adjust this. [chuckles]
I'm looking at the hilt. The dimensions aren't right.
The guard part here is too cylindrical,
so I need to hammer some dimension into it.
I need it to be a little bit wider.
So basically, I'm gonna heat it up
and stretch it out just a little bit
using the bottom of an old cylinder
that I cut off.
I drive that down in, and I get a bit of a belly
into the guard, which is what I'm looking for.
See that curvature now?
That is so much sexier than it was.
So onto the next adventure
as I try not to kill myself in here.
Now, my handle is going to be
a leather-wrapped spiral handle.
The core material for the handle,
I can use whatever I want,
so I'm going to go ahead and use
this aluminum micarta.
It's pretty much bond-proof material.
That way I don't have to worry
about the handle cracking ever.
♪ ♪
all right, so as a handle, it's still really chunky,
but you can see in a couple of minutes,
you got the core.
This gives me a starting place to build from
while I'm putting the guard together.
Tomorrow's a big day.
Tomorrow I do the fit up, so I'm going to enjoy
the rest of my bourbon and play guitar.
♪ ♪
I need bourbon.
♪ ta-da ♪
I have the handle made.
Everything feels pretty good in my hand, but it's too heavy.
The micarta's a little heavy.
I'm trying to save every ounce I can get,
so I've got this piece of manzanita.
It's a lot lighter than the other material.
I'm just fighting for every ounce.
I wanna get this thing just right.
It's about right.
[clicks tongue]
I've got the new handle placed on there,
which puts the pommel at the right height,
and then it's really just finish work from that point on.
Still wanna drop a couple of ounces out of this,
but you can see how my hand sits in there.
There's plenty of room for my wrist.
You can see the-- [laughs]
I just don't have a tall enough ceiling in here.
Do that. There we go.
[laughs]
but anyway, you can see it's all coming together.
Almost there. Close.
Now I start grinding into the hilt itself,
putting decorative lines on the hilt.
And my creaky chair.
Grinding out any welds that are a little bit thick--
anything I can do to pick up a couple of ounces.
So the next...
♪ ♪
few hours..
♪ ♪
will be all about this.
All right, I need three more pieces
to finish this guard.
I'm taking quite a bit of time to make this hilt,
but there are so many things that make a difference
between what you might pick up as a production model
and a historically accurate recreation,
which is what I'm shooting for.
There's three pieces that tie
the base of this guard together,
and basically they're just little loops of steel,
so what I'm gonna do is take this piece
of 1/4-inch rod and just gently pull it around.
A lot of swords, the guard is one piece.
This has 12 pieces.
All 12 of those pieces have to fit together
and not only be aesthetically pleasing
but be ergonomic.
♪ ta-da ♪
yeah, it's a piece of work. I kind of set myself up.
[laughs]
now it's polish time.
♪ ♪
[knocking]
hello.
[knocking]
oh, hey.
Hold on a second.
I'm actually shooting something for a tv show,
so let me kill this.
♪ ♪
my new big blu 65 power hammer arrived.
I think the biggest thing I learned from this experience
is don't challenge two of your really talented friends
to a two-week competition challenge
unless your shop is already built.
[clears throat]
all right, there's things to do.
Let's get 'em done.
I hate that camera--hate, hate.
The little microphone right here,
I've lost that little puffball on it so many times
that I put a zip tie on it to keep it there.
I have tripped on the cords.
Oh, lord, just take this camera away, I mean--
yeah-yeah-yeah.
♪ ♪
okay, so--
♪ da, da, da, da ♪
let's get some light in here.
All right, so there she is. She's fitted up.
There are a number of ways to build a hilt like this,
and I think I probably chose the hardest.
But yeah, it's coming together.
It's almost there, I mean.
Next I'm going to make what is the covering--
guard that sits on the inside of this.
You ever get a song stuck in your head?
[laughs]
I got the theme from "the avengers."
[laughs]
[epic adventure music]
that looks cool.
See that?
There she is. Blade's ready.
Blade's sharp, so I'm going to get j. And ben on the phone.
Time to hit something.
♪ ♪
- all right, guys, been two weeks.
Ta-da, there she is. - Nice.
- Wow. - Very nice.
- J., it's got a lot of protection of the hand
and the wrist, but at the same time,
it's not gonna get bound up,
so I'm pretty sure you'll appreciate that,
and the blade itself is 1095 and 15n20, 300 layers.
- It looks great.
♪ ♪
- for my test, I've got a shield.
Now, this shield's been with me for, like, 15 years.
This is a veteran of 1/2 dozen shows,
and then to follow that up, I'll do a sharpness test
on this fig branch that I just trimmed off.
- There you go. - Good luck, brother.
- All right, so let's see how she does.
Am I a little nervous? Yeah.
Every time I swing a blade at something
that you shouldn't swing a blade at
I get nervous, but at the same time,
I'm excited. This is what I live for.
This is what I love.
♪ ♪
well, my hand's okay.
- That's awesome. I like that.
- I was not expecting him to punch with that basket hilt.
♪ ♪
[laughter]
- nice. - She's still straight.
It's got an edge.
Like you always say, dave, "it's a cutter."
- [laughs] she did good.
She held up.
- Good job, man. - Nice job.
- Thanks.
- We'll all have to do it again sometime.
- There's one thing I like
about knifemaking, bladesmithing--
there's always new things to try,
so hell yeah.
- I'm gonna actually finish building my shop,
and then we'll do that.
- I'm going back to work.
[laughter]
- is that your better half, j.?
- Next time they're gonna send a camera crew.
[laughter]
- hey, beckie, anything else on your list?
- We want camera crews and a better [bleep] camera.
[laughter]
- so, hey, guys, it was really fun
seeing your work and seeing you guys
test that stuff at home.
I'm looking forward to doing it again
if you guys are up for it,
but that was a great, great challenge
y'all did beautiful work. I'm really impressed.
You guys take care.
- Later. - Bye.
♪ ♪