[dramatic musical sting]
[fire roaring]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[rock music]
♪ ♪
- My name's dustin bavony. I'm 36 years old.
I'm from glasgow, montana.
Growing up, I've always loved knives, swords.
Then I watched "forged in fire."
You see it, and you're like, "I think I can maybe do that,"
So you just start buying up pieces of equipment
And giving it a shot.
- My name's ben graber. I'm 28 years old,
And I'm from white pidgeon, michigan.
I have two little boys, three and ten months.
And my three-year-old, anytime I go out in the shop,
He wants to go out there with me.
I have two anvils set up, so he'll actually get,
Like, a little play hammer and some piece of steel
And pretend he's forging it, so I'm pretty sure it'll e
Graber and sons forge here in a couple years.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
- My name's calvin hargis. I am 29 years old,
And I am from flora vista, new mexico.
I've always kind of been into collecting knives
And stuff like that, and I always thought,
"well, heck, I can probably make some,"
And I never had the gumption to do it,
But the wife and mom was like,
"hey, get out there and start doing it."
They support me a lot.
So that's definitely one of the reasons
I'm excited to be here.
- My name is joshua kim. I'm 22 years old.
I live in the golden state, california, san pedro.
I started off bladesmithing in middle school.
It was something, in its rawest form
So simple, yet so abstract,
And all you have to limit yourself
As a bladesmith is your own imagination,
And that's what I love about it.
♪ ♪
- Well, bladesmiths, welcome to the forge.
Now, guys, you're here because we know you're talented smiths.
But what we want to find out is how you hold up
Against your peers and against our clock.
Now, here's how it's gonna go.
We've got three rounds in this competition.
At the end of each one, you're gonna present your work
To our panel of expert judges.
Today they are abs master smith j. Neilson,
Historic weapons recreation specialist dave baker,
And edged weapons specialist doug marcaida.
Now, bladesmiths, these guys are the ones
Who hold your fate in their hands.
They're gonna decide who's gonna be leaving here
With the title of "forged in fire"
Champion and a check for $10,000.
Bladesmiths, in this forge, we've had smiths build blades
Out of all sorts of construction materials.
We've used excavator buckets, we've used ladders,
Hammers, and saws,
But today we're gonna go much, much smaller.
We want you to build your blades out of these.
♪ ♪
Bladesmiths, what we have here
Are hundreds of high-carbon steel nails.
With those nails, we want you to make signature blades
In your signature style between 13 and 15 inches.
- You can use nails to nail boards up
And hang a picture on the wall.
You don't use nails to make a knife out of it.
That's just counterintuitive.
So this ought to be--ought to be a good time.
- Now, bladesmiths,
In the second round of this competition,
You guys are gonna add handles to your blades,
Turning them into fully functioning weapons
At which point the judges are gonna check for strength
And durability by batoning them into a giant nail.
And then we're gonna check your edge retention
In a foam tube slice.
All right, gentlemen, we have three hours on the clock
For the first round of competition.
Good luck. Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
So how exactly are these guys gonna take these nails
And turn them into viable knives?
- Well, what I want to see is a cannister,
Because those nails are way too small to forge weld together.
♪ ♪
- First thing I know I have to do
Is get the nails all cleaned up
And get them stuffed inside a can with some 1095 powder.
I'm not planning to remove the cannister.
- In the competition,
Unless you're asked to peel the can, don't do it.
- Yeah. Having that can on there guarantees
That those welds will consolidate inside.
- When I'm at my home forge and I make cannister damascu,
I never remove it; it just seems like an extra step
That can be done with a grinder.
♪ ♪
- I want to take the can completely off.
So the first thing I'll do is prep the can with white out
So that the material doesn't forge weld to the can.
- Oh, no. He's doing the white out.
- They're gonna have to take a lot of time
Working into trying to peel that can off.
- I would say the most important part
Of making cannister damascus
Is making sure that you have all of that space
In that can tight, well-fitting, with powder.
If I leave any air bubbles or missed space,
I know that I could have delams.
♪ ♪
- I've never made a knife out of nails,
And I have to say, who in their right mind
Would make a knife out of a nail?
My game plan was getting
The metal cannister--the canoe style,
Because I feel like it'd be a lot easier to peel that off.
Tried the vertical can damascus before.
Unfortunately, I've had difficulties
Trying to peel those off.
So I put as much white out as I could.
The more the merrier.
I want to take the cannister off, because it's mild steel,
And I don't want to incorporate
Lower-quality steels into my blade.
- You know, joshua just put the nails in.
I don't know if he gave the white out
Enough time to dry out. - I don't think he did.
- No. So that's gonna make the nails not weld,
Because they're gonna have white out on them.
♪ ♪
- I realize a lot of white out was sticking.
Well, that's a big no-no.
So in order to prevent myself from, you know, screwing up,
Getting delaminations in my steel,
I put the cannister back on the forge,
Dry it a little faster.
- It's essential, when you're doing a cannister
To be patient, have some setup going on.
♪ ♪
- I'm not gonna do any white out.
I'm not gonna mess with trying to peel the can off.
That just seems like a waste of time to me
When I'm just gonna grind it off anyway.
And I'm all about saving time. Every time I've done cannister,
I always leave the can on, and it's worked out fine,
So I don't have any problem with it.
Get hot. Let's go. Come on. Let's go!
Today I brought a little plastic hammer
That my son pretends he's forging with
Just as a reminder of, like, what I'm doing this for.
I'll do my best, little buddy. I'll do my best.
- Biggest thing I'm concerned about would be everything
Sticking together inside the can.
While I'm making cannister damascus,
I let it sit in there and get hot enough.
I want to get it up to that nice welding temperature.
- That's a sweet-looking can. - There we go. Real bright can.
- I like that. - First pass on the press.
- I want to run through the process again
At least three times,
To make dang sure that everything in there
Is just solid and fused together.
- Dustin's all about going smoothly, not rushing anything.
- I've got my cannister squished out,
And everything is looking good,
So I take it over to the chop saw.
And to my relief, I look in there,
And it's just a beautiful, solid piece of steel.
That's what we like to see.
- All right, guys, you have two hours remaining.
♪ ♪
- Whew, that's hot. That's a good color.
- Yeah.
- First set of presses went pretty good.
Now I have to get it back into the forge and reheat
And press again.
While my cannister heats up in the forge,
I'm gonna sketch up my knife.
I think what I'm gonna do is a competition chopper.
I think it'll do good in the nail baton and the foam slice.
There's no stab test, there's no puncture test,
So all I really need to do is chop and slice.
I feel good about it. Now comes the hard part
Of peeling that can off there and exposing the billet inside.
♪ ♪
[bleep]. And it's just not wanting to go.
I keep beating it and beating it,
And it's just not wanting to give.
- Uh-oh.
- I think that the press squeeze in
The corners of the can.
- He needs to cut both ends off that can, open up two seams,
And the whole thing will fall off.
- I'm having a heck of a time trying to get this can of.
Augh! It finally just freakin' gave way.
I mean, it finally wanted out of there.
Whoo!
- There we go. - I think it's solid.
- Nice.
- My steel's moving pretty darn good, so right now,
My go about this is basically cut one corner off
And basically just tap that in like little dance stick
And kind of getting it some space.
- Now we're watching the moment of truth for joshua.
- Well, he does have a really good-looking
Even color through his billet inside that can.
- I'd rather work on it when it's hot.
I've seen people try to take out metal
When it's cold and everything else,
And it is no bueno. It is really hard.
- Look at that. Solid billet came out of the can .
- And that came out flawlessly.
It's an amount of joy that I can never describe.
- He's having a good time. - I love it.
- Hot steel. I did several passes on the press.
The end of the cannister is bulged out, so it's like,
Okay, looks like the forge weld is set.
I might as well chop the end of it off.
That's where the proof is in the pudding to see
If it actually will forge weld it or no.
Bam, that's solid all the way through.
That's right. - Go, buddy.
- Solid, baby! - Looking good, brother!
- Whoo!
- Looking good! - Let's go!
- I'm gonna start drawing this billet out into a blade.
The blade I'm gonna make, I call it a bull nose chopper.
It's a thick-spine blade that can take a beating,
But it should be able to cut
And survive anything tests that they throw at it.
♪ ♪
- Winning this competition would be amazing.
It would put me on a different level,
Just for the bragging rights to say that I came here,
I conquered, and going home a champio.
The weapon I'm making is a drop point chopper.
I make drop point knives at my house,
Mostly just hunting knives.
- Dustin cut a tip in.
It looks like a little bit of a trailing point.
He's got to remove the can off the front end.
He might as well take that time to cut in that tip.
- I'm used to doing this in my home forge.
I use an angle grinder quite a bit.
It also kind of lets me know what's going on down the knife,
Whether or not it is totally welded like I think it is.
Hell, yeah.
- Bladesmiths, one hour and 30 minutes remaining.
- I'm coming out of the forge hot metal, ready.
- Joshua's just going for it. He's not being easy at all.
He's squeezing it down to thickness.
- Yeah, if you're gonna be that aggressive,
You could sheer the welds that are going on inside there.
- I'm moving the material pretty darn fast
And pretty darn easily,
And then I realize I'm starting to see cracks.
♪ ♪
- Uh-oh.
- I'm starting to put too much stress on the metal.
- I'm worried about the condition of joshua's steel.
It looks like it's kind of cracking on the sides.
♪ ♪
- Calvin's getting pretty aggressive there too.
- As I'm starting to draw the billet out,
I'm starting to see these delams.
♪ ♪
It's opening up.
- That's not good.
- [bleep].
The cutting edge and the spine,
They are definitely cracked and spraying apart a little bit.
- Both calvin and joshua are struggling with delaminations.
- Oh, man, I do not have time for this right now.
- I don't know if I should start over
Or just stick with this current piece and tough it out.
- Ooh. That is looking rough.
All I can do right now is press forward
And see if I can flatten it out to make those cracks,
Instead of going towards the center--kind
Of blow them out, so at the end of it,
All I've got to do is grind that sucker off.
- I have no clue where these delams came from,
But I don't feel comfortable starting over.
- The billet when he started
Wasn't fully forge-welded together.
So those problems can travel into the billet.
- I've got this thing drawn out to where I want it to,
And now I've got to start hammering the knife to shape,
And then I'm gonna head over to the grinder
And I'm gonna see if I can work out these delams.
♪ ♪
- Ben's in good shape right now.
Quench that blade and get to the grinder.
He has by far the largest blade out there by volume.
♪ ♪
- All right, ben's got a quench.
- There's no warps, no nothing. This thing's cooling down.
I still gotta get something done.
So I just start grinding my bevels in.
You could start seeing that high-carbon steel
Get exposed through the mild, which is what I want,
'cause if there's mild steel on my edge, it won't cut jack.
But this blade is, like, heavy.
I decided to go ahead and fuller the handle
Just to lighten that back end up
And kind of add a little bit more balance to the blade.
- Bladesmiths, you have 30 minutes remaining
Before the critique and elimination.
♪ ♪
- It just feels like time's ticking away and ticking away.
I know there's tons of stuff that still needs to be doe
To make this a functional piece.
But I want to get pinholes drilled before I quench.
- All right, dustin's putting his pinholes in.
- Good for him.
- I know that if I don't get them drilled before I quench,
It could be a pain in the butt later on.
At this point, I'm ready to go now for my heat-treating.
♪ ♪
To my relief, everything is looking great.
All right.
♪ ♪
- I think I got a homogenous piece of steel.
And I got the rough blade kind of profile done.
I'm making a basic machete.
You see a lot of machetes with the very wide belly.
At the same time, it has a sweeping back
With a clipped front.
It's a very versatile tool for a very versatile job.
♪ ♪
- Joshua quenched.
- It is hard. Hoo-wee! 1095 ain't do no one wrong.
♪ ♪
- [laughs]
♪ ♪
- So most of the delams are grinding away,
So now I'm getting ready for the quench.
♪ ♪
- A little head-shaking coming from calvin.
I wonder if he's got some kind of warp.
- I think he does.
- I can notice a little bit of warp on the blade,
Something that I probably can grind out.
But I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do it in time.
- Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Bladesmiths, turn off your machines, put down your tools.
This round of the competition is officially over.
- Whoo!
- Yeah! - Nice job, brother.
- I've never done a blade in three hours out of nails,
But I feel pretty confident about this blade.
I'm still worried about those delams, though.
♪ ♪
- All right, gentlemen, this first round of competition,
We asked you to make blades out of masonry nails.
The time has come for your critique.
Dustin, you're up first. You ready?
- Yes, sir. - Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- All right, dustin. I like the look of this.
You got enough etch in there, I can actually see
Some of the patterning, which I appreciate that.
The only thing I see is right here,
You got a thin spot,
Right in the middle of the blade.
But everything looks straight. Nice job.
- Thank you. - Ben, how you feeling?
- Pretty good, I think.
- Let's see what you got.
♪ ♪
- All right, ben.
There's a lot of weight to this knife.
You've got almost 3/8 of an inch thickness back here,
So you have some room to grind that, which is good.
But all in all it looks solid, looks good. Well done.
- Thank you. - Calvin, you're up next.
Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- All right, calvin. You got a bit of a warping issue.
This section of your blade is moving this way
While the rest of it's going the other.
But the big concern I have is, you got
Some delaminations here. There's two right here,
And then there's a seam right here,
So I'd be very concerned if I was gonna use this
That this part might come flying off.
So if you move forward to the second round,
Those are things I'd definitely
Want to see you, you know, address.
♪ ♪
- Joshua, you were having fun out there, weren't you?
- Wee bit, yes, sir.
- All right, man, time for your critique, though.
Please present your work.
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua. Not bad.
I like the profile of your blade.
But you have some seams on your blade right here
That I think you were trying to grind out.
Despite some of the seams that you have,
Your steel seems solid, so good job.
- Thank you, sir.
- Well, gentlemen, you all worked hard,
And you all presented blades that fit the parameters,
But only three of you are moving forward
In this competition.
The bladesmith leaving the forge is...
♪ ♪
Calvin.
- Calvin, we appreciate the time and effort
You put into presenting us a blade,
But your blade with the warp and multiple delaminations
Makes it the blade that has more issues to fix
Going to the second round.
For that reason, we're sending you home.
- I understand. Thanks, guys, for having me.
It was a good time.
- Well, calvin, watching you out there,
You definitely have what it takes to be in this forge.
But unfortunately, your time in this competition has ended.
I'm gonna have to ask you to please surrender your work
And step off the forge floor.
Thanks for the hard work, man.
- I'm a little upset that I am going home,
But those dang delams.
Maybe I should have chased them a little bit more.
But sometimes you don't have the time.
But I learned a lot. It was a lot of fun.
Those smiths are awesome. I applaud them.
They did really good.
♪ ♪
- Well, gentlemen, congratulations.
The three of you are you moving forward into the second
Round of our competition. In this next round,
You'll also be adding handles to your blades
Turning them into fully functioning weapons.
For handle material, the pantry is open,
But we want a mechanical connection,
So for that, you're gonna need what's under the cloths
On your workstations. Take that off for me.
♪ ♪
Instead of pins, you guys need to use those nails.
- Some of the nails that we're provided with
Have ridges on them,
So you may drill the hole for the size diameter of the nai,
But then with them ridges sticking out,
You got to bore that hole just a tiny bit bigger.
And so that's gonna kind of present a challene
Of how I'm gonna work that in the time allotted.
- Now, once this round is complete,
The judges are gonna check for strength and durability
By batoning your blades into a giant nail.
And then they're gonna checkmate your edge retention,
See if it holds up after that strength test
By going through a foam tube slice.
Gentlemen, we've got two hours on the clock for you.
So good luck, work hard. Your time starts now.
♪ ♪
- The first thing I'm gonna do is go over
To the oxyacetylene torch,
And I'm gonna blue back the spine of my knife.
That'll give it some softness, take some of the hardness
Out of there, so when j. Goes full
Hulk smash on this thing in the test it's not gonna break.
It gives it a little bit more softness and shock absorptio.
- He's got the can on the back of that blade,
So what--blue backing is not gonna do much for him.
- The biggest thing is keeping this edge cool
While I'm doing this and not losing my temper,
Losing my hardness.
I don't want to risk making my edge soft.
We're gonna call that okay.
- I definitely got to clean up my knife and address
What the judges have talked about,
With the thin spot in my blade and just refining my profile.
All right.
Everything's starting to come together.
I like what I'm seeing.
Now I need to move on to the pantry
To pick out the correct handle material.
♪ ♪
- First and foremost, my blade had the most problems.
- Joshua's got delaminations or unwelded spots
Inside his blade.
- I really want to see him do something with that.
- What would you do?
- I'd probably throw some weld into it; it's not on the edge.
Just try to open it up a little bit
With a rotary tool or something like that.
- I'm gonna go weld it up, make it brand-new.
But first I need to grind off all the scale,
And the reason why I do that,
It's mostly, when you're welding
You tend to want to have raw steel on raw steel
To give it that good bind.
Whoo!
Clean the sucker up, go to the welding station,
And basically try to fuse those cracks on my blade
So at the end of it
The end result will be a fully functional,
Completely safe blade to use.
All right.
- Bladesmiths, one half hour has elapsed.
You got an hour and 30 minutes remaining.
♪ ♪
- One of the judges' critiques
Was to make my tang a little bit thinner
And take a little bit of the weight out of the blade,
So I gotta start trimming this thing down,
And I'm gonna try to put a fuller in it.
- It's good to see ben finally on the grinder,
'cause he has a lot of metal on his blade. Very heavy.
- And this is gonna probably be the longest thing
I'm gonna have to work on here and the biggest challenge.
♪ ♪
- I've never made a handle like this.
I'm optimistic, but you never know.
It's a competition. Anything can happen.
I just grab the thing that was closest to my pinhole size
And I go with that.
Go to put my handle scales on. That's not right. Ooh.
- That's not good.
- My pinholes that I drilled in round one are bigger
Than the nails that we're allotted to use in round two.
Okay.
My mind's going a million miles an hour.
I don't know what to do.
- So dustin had holes after round one,
But the nails we gave them for pin stock in this round
Are quite a bit smaller than the typical pin stock holes
The guys are drilling.
- If the pinholes don't hold up,
My handle could blow apart, crack--be a bad deal.
I don't have very many options.
Option one, I just throw some extra epoxy in there
And hope the epoxy squeezes into my tang.
Option two, I could drill different holes into the tang,
But I don't know how hard the tang is.
Okay. And I don't really want to mess around
With trying to drill through the tang,
So I slap some more epoxy in there
In hopes that that seals that hole up a little bit
And then just hope and pray that holds everything together.
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, you have 45 minutes remaining.
♪ ♪
- Right now, I'm working on my handle.
Got some natural wood grips, and I've noticed
That if you're using wood with your handle,
It tends to absorb the shock a little better.
So all I gotta do is sandwich them together,
And it'll be a-okay.
- Joshua's got a lot of grinding to do
On those handle scales.
- Yes! So I'm griding out my handl.
For me, in my experiences, I think going with,
Like, an angle grinder is the best way to go.
I want to form it to the hand as best as I can,
'cause regardless of whatever handle you got, if it's smooth
And slick and all that, pops out of your hand,
There's no purpose to that handle.
- See, this is exactly
How joshua makes his blades at home.
- Sitting down on the floor.
- I'm in my own world, so to speak.
I don't need to really go by anyone else's expectations.
So, you know, take it easy.
♪ ♪
- About the best we're gonna do, bennie.
I gotta do something while this epoxy sets,
And so I go ahead and just start slack-grinding
This blade to get this edge profiled.
I'm going with a convex edge in this.
It offers some strength and durability with it,
Especially with the nail cho,
But it's still sharp enough to cut.
- You guys always talk about the appleseed edge
Being--to me, it sounds like the be-all, end-all.
It's gotta lot of support, but also it can be very sharp.
- It's a great edge for this endurance kind of testing.
♪ ♪
- All right.
I start sanding down my handle a little bit.
It's got to be comfortable.
I'm just rounding everything off,
Making sure everything's nice and smooth.
- There should be no reason at all
That there are any sharp corners on their handles.
- The handle's starting to come together.
It's starting to feel smooth.
I'm feeling good about it.
♪ ♪
- Now, I need to work on my edge,
'cause more than anything else,
This competition is gonna be chopping and slicing.
Let's make this thing cut! My blade's skinny enough,
So I can get away with a little bit of an obtuse grin.
It'll do its purpose.
- Well, she's sharp.
- My blade, it's not gonna win no beauty contests,
But overall, thing's a lean, mean, fighting machine.
I expect the judges to say, "dang, son, you did good!"
- Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Gentlemen, put down your tools. Drop those blades.
This round is officially over. Get ready for testing.
- There's a little bit of fear in my blood right now.
I'm not gonna lie.
I'm a little scared of how they're gonna treat my blade.
But, you know, it's the name of the game.
- Bladesmiths, welcome to our strength test,
The giant nail chop.
Now, if you nailed your heat treat, you'll survive.
Had to do it. Dustin, you ready to go?
- Yes, sir. - Well, let's do it.
- Being the first one to be tested,
My heart's racing a million miles an hour.
My biggest fear is that it's just gonna blow apart.
Just hoping and praying that it turns out okay.
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
All right, dustin, you survived, man. Good job.
You did take some chipping and rolling, but overall,
The rest of it's still sharp.
Everything's still tight.
And even though I wasn't swinging away with the blade,
The handle's comfortable, so good job.
- Thank you.
- It's always so much fun for the second guy, right, ben?
You ready to go? - Oh, hey, hammer down.
- I can do that.
♪ ♪
- At the end of round two,
I was feeling pretty confident,
But now that j.'s ready to beat the snot
Out of this thing,
It always makes you second-guess stuff.
It makes me feel a little "ehh" inside.
♪ ♪
- [grunting]
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
- [exhales]
- All right, ben, we're halfway to a serrated blade now.
- Oh jeez.
- So you basically have the edge collapsing,
Not chipping away.
I don't know if it was from the heat treat
Or maybe when you blue-backed it.
I'm not sure. But everything's still tigh.
Good job.
- [exhales]
Joshua, you ready to go?
- Yes, sir! - Let's do it.
♪ ♪
- My blade by far coming to the second round
Had the most issues. It was cracked.
So hitting against that giant nail,
I'm not gonna lie, I'm scared right now.
I mean, I can only imagine all the worst things happening
To my blade, it breaking apart,
Exploding somehow, hurting someone.
Steel on steel is a recipe for disaster.
♪ ♪
- [grunts]
[grunts]
♪ ♪
[grunts]
♪ ♪
- Hey, joshua, you survived. Good job, man.
- Thank you, sir.
- The only thing I notice is, right here,
In this section, the edge has moved over a bit,
Not a ton, but just enough to be noticeable.
But overall, everything's tight.
Still got an edge. Good job.
Wish I could bottle that enthusiasm and sell it.
♪ ♪
- All right, bladesmiths, congratulations for surviving
That brutal strength test.
This is the sharpness test, the foam tube slice.
Now, I'm gonna take your weapons,
And I'm gonna try to cut through these foam tubes.
A sharp edge should cut a clean, straight line.
A dull edge could push it, or worse, do nothing at all.
Dustin, you're up first. You ready for this?
- Yes, sir. - Okay. Let's do this.
♪ ♪
All right, dustin, let's talk about your edge.
On the cut over here, it did cut two of the tubes.
On the third one, not all the way through.
But, overall, sir, it will cut.
- Awesome.
- All right, ben, your turn, sir. You ready?
- Ready. Slice and dice.
- All right. Let's do that.
♪ ♪
- Man, this sucks.
- All right, ben, you took some damage.
There's definitely some big rolls right here.
And on the cut here, I can actually feel it hang up
On the foam tubes as I'm cutting through that.
But you have one and a half that cut
And a little shredding on the third.
Overall, sir, this blade, it will cut.
- That's all I wanted to hear, doug.
- All right, joshua.
And then there's you. Are you ready?
- Yes, sir.
♪ ♪
- [exhales]
♪ ♪
- All right, joshua, your edge took minimal damage
On the strength test, but it cut cleanly on the first tue
And pretty much just shredded the second one,
Which sent a shockwave through the rest of the tubes.
Overall, sir, your weapon, it will cut.
- Hell, yeah!
- [laughs]
- Well, guys, in the first two rounds of the competition,
You all took piles of nails
And turned them into functional blades,
So you all have something to be proud of.
But in this competition, only two of you
Are moving forward into the third round.
The bladesmith that's gonna be leaving the forge is...
♪ ♪
Ben.
Unfortunately, you're not gonna be moving forward
In this competition, and dave's gonna tell you why.
- Ben, I think you crafted a beautiful blade,
But you took far more damage in the strength test
Than any of our other smiths,
And it really showed in the sharpness test.
That's why we're letting you go.
- Yes, sir.
- Well, ben, like dave said, it's a beautiful piece,
But at this time, I'm gonna have to ask you
To please step off the forge floor.
- Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.
It was a blast. Good luck, fellas.
It is crushing. It's disheartening.
But I had a great time here. This was surreal.
Definitely when I get home I'm gonna be training
My little three-year-old boy.
Probably in about 15 years, he'll apply
For the competition. It'll be great.
Who knows, maybe we'll have a father-son thing.
♪ ♪
- Well, dustin, joshua, congratulations.
Gentlemen, the two of you have made it
Through the first two rounds of this competition,
And boy, was it a nail-biter. In this third and final round,
We're gonna send you back to your home forges
For four days to build an iconic weapon from history.
We want you to build this...
♪ ♪
The tuareg takoba.
♪ ♪
- The takoba is a type of broadsword
That has been used by the nomadic tuareg
People of north africa since the 14th century.
This double-edged lightweight blade
Was carried for self-defense on long journeys
Designed to deliver lethal slashes and stabs
Against a rival warrior.
Due to the tuaregs' aversion to iron,
There's no exposed steel
Or iron on the hilt of this sword,
So it cannot touch the user's hand.
Measuring more than a meter long,
This deadly weapon was seen as a symbol of wealth.
Some members of the takoba clan
Still carry this weapon today.
- Now, gentlemen, when you're building your blades,
You need to make sure they fall within these parameters.
You need to have a double-edged fuller blade
That measures between 31 and 33 inches.
You need to have a guard that measures at least
5 inches wide. And last but not least,
You need to have a pommel in the takoba style.
- There's definitely a lot that's gonna be involved
In building something like this.
The size of the blade definitely stands out.
I've never made anything this long.
I think it's gonna challenge me.
But I enjoy a challenge, and I'm ready for it.
- Good luck, gentlemen. We'll see you in four days.
♪ ♪
- Here we are, round three. I have to make a kuareg katoba.
I don't even--I'm not even sure how to pronounce it.
Hopefully, I would like to get the whole thing
Forged out today
And possibly ready for heat treat in the morning.
Looking good. It's coming along.
I got the blade where I want it.
I'm 1/2 inch over. I'm happy with that.
It'll be good. Day one went good.
My arm's a little more tired than I thought it'd be.
But I feel good about it.
♪ ♪
- We are in san pedro, california.
Let's have some fun.
So I got this leaf spring. I'm gonna cut an angle off it,
Draw it to length...
Let's flatten you out, little guy.
And go along the parameters.
Now we're getting somewhere. It's getting to length.
That's good for day one.
♪ ♪
- Day three. Yesterday, I got my blade heat-treated.
Today planning on getting the handle all fitted up
And then filing up the tang, so I can get my guard fitted.
Here we go. Move on to the pommel now.
I'm going to try to key out the bottom of this,
So that fits straight. And then I'll just have, like,
A pommel nut that goes on top and holds everything together.
Whether or not it works, we'll see.
I've never put a pommel on anything before.
[bleep]. Damn.
But I've never threaded a tang.
Oh, man.
So that's got me a little bit concerned.
But I just gotta take my time and get it knocked out.
♪ ♪
So I got my handle all together.
Just finishing touches and making everything look good.
♪ ♪
- Start of day three. I got a lot to do today.
But regardless, I'm up for the challenge.
Pretty darn big, so right no, my main concern
Is to make that skinny. Never done a fuller before.
It was a little like a first love almost.
Shoot, I'm proud of this fuller too.
This fuller ain't too bad. Time for the fun part.
It's time to quench my blade.
I am scared by the hardening process.
That fails, I just have a giant, oversized butter knife.
♪ ♪
Quench it, but I see a bend in it.
Not happy with that. I go for a second time.
I know a lot of people that go into the quench
Multiple times; they have a lot of
Stress fractures and everything else.
If I mess up again, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
♪ ♪
Golly. It's a little warped on the side.
I might have to quench again tomorrow.
Ain't that fun.
♪ ♪
- Here we are. Day four. I'm feeling real good.
I have the handle all epoxied.
Everything's good. The nut's tight.
Here we go.
Guards on these takobas,
They have stars and all other types of geometric shapes.
And I had hat pins that I'd put in some of my knives.
Definitely not a cowboy,
But my brother passed away ten years ago, and he was,
So I think I'll throw this in there for him.
Start to dremel them out to kind of re-fit them
Into the handle. Not bad.
Fairly happy with it. I am worried about the tang.
I do wish I would have made the tang a little bit thicker.
But, I mean, it's out of my hands now.
- It's day four. I got a hardened blade,
But I'm not liking the bend in my blade,
So I'm gonna be hardening it again.
♪ ♪
Oh, my god.
Yo, that is a good-looking blade, my man.
Shoot.
I got six hours left.
All I gotta do is make a handle.
But what I'm gonna use is some good brass
As the top and bottom, then put some walnut,
Space of copper,
Then a space of purple heartwood,
Then another piece of brass.
That is a guard.
For the handle construction, I'll just use leather.
It's coming along quite nicely.
End of day four, I finished this blade.
Well, golly gee willikers. Son gonna give me $10,000.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, please, please.
♪ ♪
- Well, dustin, joshua, guys, welcome back to the forge.
So for the past four days
You've been back in your home forges
Working on your versions of the tuareg
Takoba, and, guys, they look great.
But I want to hear a little bit about them.
Dustin, how'd the build go for yo?
- It went good.
Blade's made out of 80 crv2,
The handle's made out of african blackwood,
And the pommel's made out of bronze.
- Joshua, tell us about your blade.
♪ ♪
- Made the blade out of 5160 spring steel.
The guard itself was made out of purple heartwood, copper,
And walnut, the handle itself made out of layers of leather,
And the pommel, walnut and brass.
- All right, guys. Well, one of you
Is gonna be leaving this forge $10,000 richer
And holding the title of "forged in fire" champion.
And to help the judges figure out which one of you that is,
We've got a strength test, we've got a sharpness test,
And up first, the keal. Doug?
♪ ♪
- Bladesmiths, welcome to the keal test.
Your tuareg takobas look beautiful,
But the kind of beauty I'm looking for
Is the lethal kind. I'm gonna take your weapon,
Deliver some lethal blows to this ballistics dummy.
Dustin, you're up first. You ready?
- Yes, sir. - Let's do this.
- So I'm nervous.
Inside the ballistics dummy, there's simulated bone.
I mean, it's hard stuff.
So it could end up rolling my edge or hurting my sword.
I don't know what's gonna happen.
♪ ♪
- [laughs]
- All right, dustin, let's talk about your weapon here.
First up, your handle construction.
I like the ovoid feel of this, the flare you have there,
And your pommel actually gives great retention for this.
Your tip is sharp enough to penetrate.
Your edges are sharp when you're cutting out.
And you can wield this
To do that kind of damage on this ballistics dummy.
Overall, sir, a weapon like this, it will keal.
- Awesome.
- All right, joshua, your turn. You ready?
- Keep everyone alive.
- All right. Let's do this.
- After seeing dustin's ballistic dummy's
Head fall off, I'm like, "ah, crud.
This is gonna be a very tight competition."
I only have one thing in mind: Tear it up!
♪ ♪
Dang.
- All right. Joshua, let's talk about your weapon here.
Your pommel right here could have used some weight to it.
But because it's forward-weighted and the fact
That you have a very sharp edge, every slice,
As you can see, is very deep into the ballistics dummy.
And more importantly, sir, your weapon, it will keal.
- Yeah!
♪ ♪
- All right, gentlemen, it's time
For the strength test, our desert well chop.
Now, to test the strength
And overall construction of your blades,
I will be chopping into our well house
As well as the well.
Dustin, your on deck. You ready?
- I guess so.
- Okay.
♪ ♪
- Oh!
♪ ♪
- All right. We were doing so well for a moment there.
What actually happened was, with insetting your blade
Down into this piece of wood,
Any of that leverage was just too much for the wood itself,
And it popped it loose.
Your tang is a little bit small.
But what I do like to see
Is that your blade actually held up beautiful.
I mean, your grain structure looks fine.
This is an absolutely brutal test.
Very well done.
- Thank you.
♪ ♪
- Now, dustin, you survived every one of the strikes
Except for the last one.
Your guard gave way, and your blade followed.
So we consider this a catastrophe failure.
Cannot continue testing your blade.
But you're not out of the fight yet.
How are you feeling, joshua?
- Pressure's on. - All right.
So you need to survive five strikes in order to be named
"forged in fire" champion. You ready?
- Yes, sir. - All right. Let's do it.
- My tang is just as thin if not thinner than dustin's.
And I'm already wishy-washy on my temper.
This is terrifying.
♪ ♪
- [grunts]
- Well, joshua, your blade is strong.
It made it past all the strikes.
Congratulations. Now, dustin, unfortunately for you,
That means your time here in this competition has ended,
Because you did have a catastrophe failure.
It was an honor watching you in our forge,
But unfortunately, man, at this time,
I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off
Our forge floor.
- Thank you, guys. - Thank you so much.
- I'm definitely crushed.
I actually thought that recessing the sword
Into the tang a little bit would make it stronger,
And that's kind of what bit me in the end,
So definitely, definitely won't be doing that agai.
I'm definitely proud of this blade.
I came here to challenge myself as much as I coul,
And I definitely achieved that.
- Well, joshua, congratulations, man.
That means you are the newest "forged in fire" champion.
You just got yourself a check for $10,000. Congratulations.
- Hoo-wee! Yeah!
Oh, my gosh, I made a sword; it didn't break.
Oh, my gosh!
It was a hard competition, so this is unreal.
[laughter]
Ahh!
♪ ♪