Forged in Fire

- Last year, a competition was created

to test the nation's best bladesmiths.

Thousands responded, and this year,

craftsmen from all over the country

and all walks of life have come forward

for their chance to claim the title.

- I'm gonna be the next "Forged in Fire" champion.

I want to win!

- It would be a life-changing moment.

Welcome to the Forge.

Now the Forge returns with challenges

unlike anything ever seen before.

You'll be using this.

Skill and ingenuity will be pushed to the limit.

Some will rise to the challenge.

Some will fall, but only the best

will be crowned "Forged in Fire" champions

and take home $10,000.

I'm Ed Kim.

I was a martial artist starting from a very young age.

And I couldn't really afford

the really high-end knives that I wanted,

so I just started banging away

on pieces of metal in the garage.

My name is Ted Thompson.

I split my time between knife making and tattooing.

Been a knife fanatic my whole life

and just started blacksmithing to see if I could.

I'm Deker.

I work as a computer security consultant.

Blacksmithing and knife making is sort of a sideline

that I do as a little bit of therapy.

My name's Robert Burns.

My love of knives started when I was two or three.

And I taught myself knife making.

- Bladesmiths, welcome to the Forge.

You are here to participate in three rounds

of blade-making competition designed to test every aspect

of your edged-weapons-making capabilities.

After each round, you will hand your work over

to our panel of expert judges:

internationally known ABS Mastersmith J. Neilson,

historic weapons re-creation specialist David Baker,

edged weapons specialist Doug Marcaida.

They will decide which of you is the "Forged in Fire" champion

and the recipient of a $10,000 check.

All right, gentlemen, we're coming out swinging.

In your first round of competition,

you'll be using these.

Lawnmowers.

Your first-round challenge is to salvage the steel you need

from these lawnmowers to forge a signature blade

of your own design.

I hate lawnmowers.

You never know what's in a lawnmower blade.

I've seen blades that wouldn't harden.

I've seen blades that would crack if you look at them funny.

They're just so inconsistent.

The blades themselves

must fall within the following parameters:

the length of the blade, not including the tang,

must be between 11 and 13 inches.

The overall length of your weapon

must not exceed 22 inches.

Just to keep things interesting,

you must also include a hidden tang into your design.

At the end of round two,

your finished weapons will be tested and judged

based on how they perform in an ice chop

and slicing through a hedge.

You will have ten minutes to work on your designs.

You will have three hours to forge your blades.

Good luck, bladesmiths.

Your ten-minute design window starts now.

- The weapon I'm making is more of a chopper-type knife

just meant for straight cutting.

I'm very competitive.

I've been a fighter since my teens.

I fought in college and professional MMA,

so it's all about competition.

- I'm going to make a camp knife

where it's a deep, sweeping recurve.

It's got a pronounced point

and deep, sculpted handle.

It's perfect for chopping.

- I try and bring some of my design ideas

from tattooing into blade making.

I'm looking to make, like, a recurve

with a modified tanto tip on it.

I'm going with the recurve because it's used

for chopping through brush.

- What I'm making is sort of a recurve chopper.

It's got a little bit more mass out front,

recurves a little bit back.

Ice is an awful thing to have to cut.

It's just mean to a blade.

It's got to be a strong enough blade that will hold up to that.

- Bladesmiths, your ten-minute design window is closed.

Grab a lawnmower.

Your three-hour forge time starts now.

"Grab a lawnmower."

"Your forge time starts now."

Lawnmower blades have holes in them.

So just taking a blade and making a knife out of it

is not gonna cut it.

You know, this challenge-- it looks easy,

but to get the type of knife that they're after--

something that looks good, functions properly--

you know, it's a lot more complicated

than just making it flat and grinding it out.

- My strategy is to take whatever piece

and to make it as flat as possible

as quickly as possible.

I could've forged the piece,

but I decided to go stock removal to save time

and to play it safe.

Ed's pre-forming a tip.

- I've got basic, real rough shape of what I want,

and I go straight to the belt grinder.

And I know I'm gonna spend 90% of my time at the belt grinder.

Deker just grabbed a can.

- An unprompted canister Damascus?

- Nice. - Nice!

I need more material, so I take a piece of the blade,

put it in a canister,

and fill it with powdered steel

so that I can weld the billet together

and have the mass that I need.

He's using a lawnmower blade.

- It'll either work or it won't.

- It looks like Ted's got steel in a forge.

I need to thicken the steel.

Make the blade a little more substantial

and hold up to a beating.

Instead of being as wide as it is,

I'm gonna take it and narrow it down,

and when I narrow it, it'll make it thicker.

- Well, Ted is by far our most fashionable smith this season,

having arrived in a utility kilt.

Don't get on the kilt.

- I just--I like kilts. I am Scottish.

- I'd forge in a kilt. - When you're forging,

you got an 1,800-degree forge, it makes life a lot cooler.

- It takes a mighty man to pull off a kilt.

Is it soup yet?

I've got this great big canister

that I know is gonna take time.

- I think it's driving Deker crazy

that he's got to wait for that can to heat up.

- Bladesmiths, 30 minutes has already elapsed!

No guts, no glory.

Deker's on the move.

- All right, this should be good.

- One more minute. One more minute.

I'm watching the clock.

You take your time, man.

I'm just trying to make sure

that I do this right the first time,

because there's no second chances.

- There it goes. - There we go.

- Look at the glow on that metal.

What is going on with Robert?

He's making a hot metal bowtie over there.

That might be his tang.

- I'm getting my tang drawn out. I'm getting my guard forged in.

And everything seems to be going well.

Did anybody realize

that Robert's got radio earphones on?

- I'm sure I look like a crazy person

to everyone else in the Forge.

To help me get in the zone,

I just turned on the Latin music station.

You know, sometimes you got to break into a little dance,

relieve the stress, and shake it off.

Oh, God, no.

Fun times.

- Ed pretty much has ground out

the whole shape of his blade,

and he's yet to go into the Forge.

- Well, he went into the Forge to flatten that blade out, but--

- Now it's just pure stock removal.

- Yeah, that-- that ain't flying with me.

This is a forged blade competition.

The show's not called "Ground in Fire."

- We've seen smiths make odd decisions to save time

when they're up against the clock.

About halfway into it,

I realized that I grabbed the piece with three holes in it.

So, essentially, for the blade, it means

that the structural integrity is greatly compromised.

The whole time, I'm feeling regret for playing it safe.

- Nice. The core of the billet

has welded, and it feels solid.

Now I've got to get the can off.

Damn it.

Round 15.

Tucker versus the billet.

- It's like a bad scene from "Groundhog Day."

This is taking an incredible amount of time.

- Bladesmiths, you have 90 minutes remaining!