Forged in Fire

My name is Cameron Alarcio.

I'm 31 years old, and I'm a full-time teacher.

I tell my students

that they can really achieve anything they want.

So I want to do "Forged in Fire"

to prove to myself that I am able to compete

with some of the best bladesmiths out there.

- My name is Justin Kowspiachi.

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I'm about to make a knife for three expert judges.

Ben Abbott, he has, like, eyes like a hawk,

so he'll be able to find any flaws I make.

David Baker has a moustache that's just glorious,

so you know that he knows what he's talking about.

And, like, Doug Marcaida, he's just dangerous, man.

That makes me feel pretty nervous.

- My name is Nic Overton. I'm 22 years old.

There was a scouting program through my church,

and we camp out one summer,

and they had a blacksmith shop.

Made my first knife there,

and it's been a snowball effect ever since.

And now the same shop that they taught me in

is now partly my shop,

and I get to teach the Scouts there as well.

My name is Matt Presti.

I'm from Union Bridge, Maryland.

I am a tattoo artist by trade.

Tattoos and bladesmithing kind of go hand-in-hand

because of the design aspect and being able

to create something out of it that makes people happy.

- Bladesmiths, welcome to The Forge.

You're here to engage in three rounds

of timed edged weapon making competition

specifically designed to test every aspect of your skills

in front of our panel of expert judges

who will tell us which of you is our next

"Forged in Fire" Champion,

walking out of this forge with a check for $10,000.

Let's go ahead and meet your judges now.

Up first, two-time "Forged in Fire" champion

Ben Abbott.

Historic Weapons re-creation specialist, David Baker.

And last, edged and impact weapons specialist,

Doug Marcaida.

Gentlemen, my favorite activities are camping,

pool parties, and picnics.

But, you can't have any of those things

without a barbecue.

In this first round of competition,

you'll have to harvest steel from this barbecue

and forge camp knives.

Dating back to the 1800s,

the camp knife was a staple for the mountain men

and fur traders who first used them

to skin and butcher the animals they caught.

These all-purpose knives typically featured

a robust spine that tapers to a fine edge,

making them suitable for a variety of tasks.

You'll have to make a camp knife

between ten and 12 inches in length,

as measured from the tip to the plunge grind.

And one other thing:

Your blades must also include an operational bottle opener.

Some of this is mild. Some of this is high carbon.

It's up to your skill set

to determine what's what and forge your blade.

- A normal barbecue for me is some surf-and-turf,

definitely some beers.

Disassembling a barbecue and making blades out of it,

definitely not what I think of when I think of a barbecue.

- If you make it to the second round of this competition,

you'll have an opportunity to attach handles to those blades,

turning them into fully functional weapons

that will be tested for strength and durability

in a firewood chop,

and for edge retention in a pork shoulder slice.

Good luck, bladesmiths.

Your time starts...

now.

Well, cheers, gentlemen.

Yee-haw.

- Here in this first round of competition,

each one of these guys has to make

a ten to 12-inch camp knife.

We're looking for parallel flat sides going to a drop point.

- Yeah. There's one other thing that's really important,

and I hope these smiths take it into account,

is the placement of that bottle opener.

Ideally, right at the back of the tang

as if it's never in your way.

Okay.

- Immediately, I look at the spit

and that looks to me like it's gonna be high carbon steel.

Put it down--put it down a little lower past this.

- Now it's up to their own skill set to determine

what's mild steel, what's high carbon steel,

and how to assemble those things into a billet.

- Well, let's test some of these pieces of steel here.

You could do a smart test.

But the sure-fire way is take a piece of steel, get it hot,

quench it, and check it.

- I chop off a little piece of that spit.

I throw it in the forge immediately to see

if I can get it up to temp,

quench it, and check to see if it's hard.

- There are some things that anybody

who kind of hangs around metal knows

is not high carbon steel, like the oil drums,

the hollow tube, the square tube underneath.

- Mind if I borrow that? - By all means, sir.

- I'm gonna start with the tines

and I'm gonna spark test it.

The sparks don't look bad.

- Tines seem to be throwing off sparks.

It tells me it's carbon steel.

- As soon as that piece gets up to heat, I quench it.

No.

The file does not skate at all,

which means that that's not hardenable steel.

I need to think of a Plan B. Ding.

Light bulb goes off.

Throw it in a canister.

I'm just gonna cut up pieces of steel,

and I'm going to throw all of it into a canister

with some 1095, and that will hopefully

give me a solid billet.

- If you're not sure what's in there,

I'd go with amateur Damascus.

- You've got a 1095 powder steel

that you know you can mix in-between.

- I can't figure out what's high carbon or not

and it don't matter if it's not high carbon

as long as your edge is good with the 1095 powder.

Normally when I go to a barbecue,

we're cooking steak.

So I think this is going to be the most intense barbecue

that I've ever been to.

- Of course, the spikes are not enough to make

and meet the parameters of the knives we're gonna build,

so I'm going to do a canister.

I want to do this competition for my mom.

She was diagnosed with cancer and passed away.

We used to watch "Forged in Fire" together

and she would tell me, "Hey, can you do that?

Can you do that?" So I'm doing this for her.

- The first thing I do is cut off

a piece of the big, round spit.

I think it has the mass to produce

the size of knife that they're looking for.

- Matt, he's drawing out a piece of steel.

I don't know if that's high carbon or mild.

- I do not know what kind of steel the spit is.

I just assume

that the bigger round bar's a higher carbon steel.

- Bladesmiths, one hour has elapsed.

- So I take my canister over to the press.

Rather than getting a straightsquare, which is, you know,

what you want when you're doing a canister...

I'm getting this diamond shape

that's folding over on one side.

- There just wasn't enough to press.

The presses that we have, have sort of

a secondary pressure

that kicks in and really compresses.

So unless you hit that, you're not gonna get

the compression you need to get that forge weld.

- But I have to just get it hot again.

Squeeze it so that I can

hopefully get a completely homogenous piece in there.

- Once my billet is up to the right temperature,

I'm gonna very gently squeeze it.

Just think of it as like a snowball.

You push too hard, it's gonna go everywhere.

You slowly pack it both ways,

and then when you finally get to where you need to be,

you can really get some force on it.

But the first, you need to really take some baby steps

to getting that weld set.

- I'm over at big blue. I'm drawing it out.

Once I get it to kind of the size and the parameters

that I want it to,

I can start doing some hand hammering.

- Matt's got a wood block. - So I brought with me

what I like to call a schwocker.

It's basically a wooden club, and I schwock away.

People have used a wood block

to straighten without deforming,

without leaving dents. - Okay.

- Normally, I don't have time constraints like this,

so the sooner I can get this fit into a knife shape,

the better.

- It's now or never. I got to get this welded.

Ah, come on, man.

What happens to the canister?

Big, old gap in there.

Oh, this is bad.

As I peel off the canister,

I am just hoping that I have a solid weld.

Oh, no! Oh!