Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪

[upbeat rock music]

♪

- I'm Cody Santos. I'm 30 years old.

I am a full-time physical therapist,

and I have been a hobbyist bladesmith

for about two years now.

I definitely enjoy the artistic aspect of it

and seeing that change with each knife I make.

♪

- My name's Matthew Sweeney. I'm 44.

I love smithing because I like to make things.

My favorite knife to make is actually tattooed on my arm.

This knife was made

for a retired British Navy submariner,

so he passed it on to his grandson.

- My name is Kayan Cajudo. I am 41 years old.

I am a part-time Filipino martial arts instructor

and a part-time traditional Filipino sword maker.

I got into traditional Filipino martial arts

and blade making through my own heritage.

I've lived in the Philippines for a short time.

I have a lot of family there.

My dad still lives there as well.

I think I'll do pretty well.

- My name is Willow Zietman. I am 32 years old.

I got into blacksmithing 'cause my dad gave me a copy

of "The Lord of the Rings"

and swords and metal just seemed pretty rad.

♪

- Well, bladesmiths, welcome to The Forge.

We've got a hell of a tasty competition for you.

Now, that competition will consist of three rounds,

and there will be an elimination

at the end of each one made by these judges

sitting behind me today.

I hope you're hungry 'cause I've been spending

the past few hours preparing a delicious meal

of soup for all you guys.

It probably would have gone a whole lot faster

had I had an amazing chef's knife.

Now, what makes a good chef's knife

is one that is lightweight.

It's flexible, it's comfortable in the hand,

and it is strong and sharp.

As I'm sure you're already

kind of putting things together and guessing,

that's exactly what we want you to make today.

Now, we ask that these blades

fall within the following parameters.

The blade length will have to be between 10 and 12 inches

from the tip to where the cutting edge ends,

and by the end of the first round,

they're gonna have to be set up

for a full tang handle construction.

And we want your blades to feature a hamon.

- A chef knife seems simple,

but the geometry has to be perfect.

The shape has to be perfect. I'm a little freaked out.

- And in order to make your chef's knife,

you're gonna need what's on the anvils in front of you.

Go ahead and take that cloth off for me.

♪

What you're all looking at there

are bars of W1 good high carbon steel

in the form of round stock.

Now, we've decided to have you make monosteel blades today

because we want to give you the opportunity to focus

on all those minute details that make a chef knife great.

For the three of you

who join us in the second round,

we have a professional chef coming in here

to check your blades for functionality,

and then because this is "Forged in Fire,"

we're gonna check for strength and sharpness,

first starting with a rolling pin chop

and ending with a chef's apron slice.

Now, bladesmiths, we only have three hours on the clock.

Your time starts now.

[energetic rock music]

- This is actually a very specialized challenge.

A chef's knife is kind of its own beast.

- Yeah, if you're doing an all-around chef's knife,

you've gotta use that in a number of different ways.

You want to be able to slice a tomato with it.

You want to be able to split a chicken in half with it.

So that blade and handle have to be comfortable

in a lot of different ways.

♪

- If I put the entire piece in the forge,

I'm afraid that it'll take too long to heat up.

- Kayan probably cut that W1 in quarter.

- You can pull that blade out of that,

but that's not giving you any wiggle room whatsoever.

- You know, you're just running huge risks

when you're working with minimum.

- I've made plenty of chef knives before,

but it's my least favorite thing to make.

A chef knife has to be perfect.

There's no other way around it.

Three hours is definitely not enough time

to make a chef knife, but we gotta do

what we gotta do. It's "Forged in Fire."

♪

- My game plan is just to go slow and steady

but not too slow, rushing around

like a chicken with its head cut off

with a chef's knife.

♪

I am a full-time mom,

and as the cook in the family,

I want to make sure that this knife

does what I would want it to do

when making whatever I'm making for the family.

♪

- I'm really trying to think about, like,

how can I set myself up

to have really good edge geometry on the knife

because that's what makes culinary knives

perform the way they do.

I just want to make sure I remind myself

not to take huge bites on the steel

with the press because that just adds

a ton of extra stress.

♪

- I like what Cody's doing right now.

So he's got a nice, long, rectangular, wide billet

compared to what it was earlier.

- Honestly, what Cody has now,

he could legitimately go to the grinder.

- Exactly.

♪

- My steel is up to temperature,

and then to Big Blu.

[with Russian accent] He's strong like bitch

who fights bears in the forest.

♪

- I like what Willow's doing.

Watching her, yeah, she's got a good tip worked in.

That's actually really good work.

♪

- Feeling that I'm moving at a brisk pace,

but I'm not rushing around frantically

or anything like that.

So at this point, I have a long bar drawn out to length.

From here, I want to refine the handle shape a little bit.

- We talked about the chef's knives

being also something that's light.

When talking about the handle,

something that you can even use just your fingers

to be slicing off.

You don't need to hammer fist

or really grab on to a blade like that.

- I have so much extra steel

still on the back of the handle,

that I might have to just cut some off.

♪

- See, Cody's doing what I would do.

Take the whole bar of steel, stretch it out,

and just when I get what I need stretched out,

then cut it off from there.

♪

Well, Matt's got enough material right there.

He seems to be working Big Blu nicely,

get that tip formed in there.

And he's got a decent amount of height already.

♪

- [bleep] bent.

♪

- Oh, that's not good.

- I'm working my tip in, and like a bonehead,

my foot gets stuck, and I just overpress this.

Folded all over on itself. It's horrible.

It's mangled. This tip is ruined.

Fortunately, I have enough steel

'cause there's no way of fixing this.

It has to get cut off the end.

Now that that's cut off, we're going right back.

This time, we're gonna hammer it in by hand.

♪

- [bleep].

As I start to draw it out,

I realize that I cut off way too little bit of material.

Made a huge mistake.

I was measuring for overall length,

not blade. - The whole length, oh.

- Just a dumb [bleep] move under pressure.

- Kayan's got, like, two inches of steel.

- I'm not going to meet the parameters.

[tense music]

- Kayan's gotta do something here.

- I'm looking at the clock, and I realize

that it's been less than an hour,

so I feel pretty confident I can restart this project.

♪

- Hey, Kayan's starting over, guys,

so hopefully he goes back and grabs more steel this time.

- I got less than three hours. I need to produce a knife.

Oh, [bleep].

- Bladesmiths, you've got two hours left!

♪

Willow, she's moving incredibly fast.

♪

Everybody else is doing a great job,

but she's just way ahead.

- Thinking about all the chef's knives

that I've used, one of the most annoying things

a knife can do is get food suction cupped to it,

to the flat bevel,

so I put a hollow in there

so that there isn't as much contact.

- You rarely see a hollow grind on a chef's knife.

In a chef's knife, you don't want

material to push out.

You want to just slide through it.

- I realize when I'm grinding

that I could forget to put a hamon.

- Willow's taking notes on her arm.

- [laughs] All over her arm.

- Whatever works.

[energetic rock music]

- I don't know about you guys, but my kitchen

always has the later knife in it.

It's the one you never clean

because you're gonna use it later.

- [laughs] - My wife hates it.

- It's very thick at this point.

I want to get it thinner

so then I can then prep it

to mark it to put the bevels on.

- Well, that's one of the things when you get into

balancing a chef's knife--

you balance it from where you pinch it up here,

but if you need to manipulate a knife,

you want to be up here pinching it.

- So I want to set something up

that can be comfortable for either way it's used,

especially knowing there's gonna be a professional chef

using this knife in the test.

♪

- Kayan restarted, still kind of running through

the same process, drawing out.

- I managed to form my second blade.

So at this point, I am reheating it

and drawing it out.

I feel like I'm totally under pressure,

but I still have pretty good time,

and I'm changing my profile

to a Binakuko.

It's a traditional Filipino chef's knife,

which is actually for butchering.

- He's drawing it out and making it smaller,

not making it wider. - Wider's the key.

- Three hours is very difficult to make a functioning knife.

Less than three hours is really pushing those limits,

but I'm gonna give it my best.

- If he got on Big Blu in one pass,

he could get the width he needs--

in one heat.

♪

- Bladesmiths, you got one hour left!

♪

- Typically, a hamon is put on something

that's gonna be for chopping.

It acts like a shock absorber on the back of the knife.

It takes off some stress.

♪

- Oh, all right. Matt is in the oil.

How do you feel about temperature?

- The issue with overheating with W1

is you might see the stress fractures show up

in the tempering cycle.

- [grunts]

I see two big cracks all along the spine of the blade

because I quenched too hot.

- You quenched this blade so hot

that you've actually split the W1 core.

♪

- I'm looking at my knife. It's beautiful.

♪

[groans]

- Matt does not look happy.

- I see a crack.

- He's got a crack. - Oh, boy.

- I'm devastated.

I'm looking at this thing,

and it looks like the Grand Canyon.

- I mean, he's gotta know if there's one crack,

- I mean, he's gotta know if there's one crack,

there's likely more.

- I'm heartbroken. I look at the clock.

Oh, [bleep].

At this point, there is no time to start over.

[dramatic music]

My brain is already moving. I know what I need to do.

I run straight to the welder.

Now we gotta get this reprofiled and reground,

then back into the clay and back into the forge.

♪

[energetic rock music]

- So we asked these smiths to give us a hamon

on their chef's knives, and that's not something

I've ever seen in one of these competitions.

So how do they go about achieving an attractive hamon?

- You cover up everything you don't want hardened,

and that clay acts as an insulator,

so that steel never gets to the hardening temperature

when you quench it.

♪

- Wow.

- I feel great about the knife 'cause, as I'm looking down

grinding it, I can actually see the hamon line,

and I am able to breathe a big sigh of relief.

♪

- Once I'm reasonably happy with the grind,

I go over to the forge, and I look down at my arm,

and I remember, "Oh, crud,

I almost forgot the hamon."

Thank goodness for the writing.

Ugh, can you imagine if I hadn't written

all over myself in Sharpie? That would've sucked.

I'm praying that a hamon happens,

and that I've done everything right.

Whoa.

Ugh, it's so beautiful.

Wow.

It worked.

- Bladesmiths, you got 30 minutes left!

Kayan had a pretty interesting

and kind of off-the-wall design.

- That's not the shape of a chef knife

that we're looking for. - No.

♪

- That's screaming.

There is a hairline fracture.

- This is rough.

You do not want to be in this predicament right now.

- At this point, I can't get the crack out.

I have to finish the blade and have something

to present to the judges.

♪

- Five, four, three,

two, one!

Kitchen is closed, bladesmiths! This round's over!

- If they were to test this blade right now,

I'm not sure if it would survive,

but hopefully, I'll be able to fix it

in the next round.

[tense music]

- All right, bladesmiths, over the past three hours,

you took your W1, turned them into

your custom chef's knives, but the time has come

for the first critique and elimination.

Cody, you're up first. Please present your work.

♪

- All right, Cody, you've got a good shape.

It's very identifiable as a kitchen knife,

which is great, but if I were using this

in a kitchen situation, you know,

and I was going to cut my vegetables,

problem is is there's about 1/4-inch gap

between the blade and my cutting board.

You can't get that all the way down,

and that's because of this tail you've got here.

If you move forward, correcting this

would be the main thing to do.

♪

- Matt, you're up. You ready?

- Sure.

♪

- All right, Matthew, good shape on this piece.

The big issues, though, you've got a good warp

on the back third here, and you've got a good crack

right here.

If you don't figure out a way to fix this,

I know there's a couple guys on this panel

that like breaking things in half.

- Yes, sir.

- All right, Kayan, you're up. You ready?

- Ready.

- All right, Kayan, let's talk about your blade here.

First up, good on you for restarting,

and that way, you were able to present us

with a blade, but the one thing

that you're missing is the height of a chef's knife.

Your handle construction, if you don't have that height,

now my knuckles dig in when I make that impact

to try to cut this way.

But the big issue here is that you have a crack

that goes across the edge onto the other side.

If you move forward to the second round,

there is a way to address that.

- Last but not least, Willow. You ready?

Please present your work.

♪

- All right, Willow, right off,

classic lines for a chef's knife.

Really well done.

I would have loved to have seen maybe

about 1/2 inch more in height, but you've got just enough

of a rocker in that blade so I can do

some vegetable chopping, which is great.

For me, it's a little bit small

in the handle. Your edge is spot-on.

I think you did a great job. Well done.

- Thank you.

♪

- Well, bladesmiths, in this competition,

only three of you can join us

in the second round of this competition,

and after discussion, the judges did make

that final decision,

and the bladesmith leaving the forge is...

♪

Kayan, unfortunately, your blade did not make the cut,

and J.'s gonna tell you why.

- Kayan, you're not the only one that has a crack

in your blade, but yours is the only one

that's not recognizable as a kitchen knife

that we asked for.

It doesn't have the right profile, height,

and that's not something you're gonna be able to fix

in the next round.

That's why we're sending you home.

- Kayan, at this point in time,

I'm gonna have to ask you to please surrender your work

and step off The Forge floor.

♪

- Thank you for the experience. - Goodbye.

- The judges were looking for something different.

I don't think I should have tried

to do a traditional Filipino butcher knife.

Nobody knows what that is here.

I enjoyed meeting the other bladesmiths,

and it was a good experience.

- Well, bladesmiths, congratulations.

The three of you are joining us

in the second round of this chef's knife competition.

Now, in this round, we ask that you finish your blades

by adding handles to them.

Now, I'm sorry to say, the pantry is closed.

You will only have access to these cutting boards

right here to finish your blades.

Like I said before, we are bringing a professional chef

into this forge to test your blades for functionality,

and then they're gonna go into the hands of our judges

who will check for strength and sharpness

in a rolling pin chop

and a chef's apron slice.

Bladesmiths, you've got two hours on the clock

to finish your blades, and that time starts now.

[energetic rock music]

- So we gave them plastic cutting boards.

How good of a material is this to finish a blade?

- I haven't seen it in any supply catalogs

or on any show tables, so probably not that great.

- Well, right off the bat, Matt's got a really big issue.

He's got what I would say is the largest crack

that's made it into the second round,

so he's gotta find a way to fix it.

- I'm going straight for the welder.

I'm welding both sides and really get a good

heat penetration into that crack.

- The best thing he can do is get another piece

of W1 that they're using and use the gas torch

and melt that in.

Now, that gives a strong weld with lots of penetration.

Now, if you just do a surface weld,

then you go and grind it, you probably have

a paper thin bond... - Yeah.

- Over the crack.

- I feel like I'm rushing like crazy right now.

I have so much I need to do and only two hours.

I gotta move.

♪

- Willow's gone over to the welder

and is putting weld on top of the tang.

What's the deal there?

- We talked about how skinny her handle was.

- Mm-hmm.

- She's just making that tang a little wider

so when she puts some scales on it,

it'll be a easier situation. - Wow.

- That's not a bad idea.

- If I build out the back side of my handle

with the welder, I should be able

to get the handle to that more comfortable thickness.

♪

[imitating welder crackling]

♪

- In the critique, Dave gave me feedback

that the tail of the handle was a little bit too tall,

preventing the knife from making full contact

with the cutting board, so this is priority number one

coming into the round.

To fix it, I'm going over the grinder.

I'm gonna remove a fraction of an inch

from the bottom of the handle to give better clearance.

- In my opinion, if you're making a chef's knife,

do all those movements that you would do

if you were cutting up a vegetable.

As a matter of fact, we've got vegetables

right there on the table.

Grab some of those... - Go for it.

- And see how it feels in your hand

and adjust accordingly.

- That's what we're looking for.

♪

- I decided to use blue for my handle

so that it would be color coordinated.

This is the goofiest stuff ever.

It's a weird material.

I'm going to make the handle comfortable.

Then I look down, and I think I'm bleeding.

♪

[screams]

I just let them bandage up my hand,

and I just-- I don't stop working.

- And look at Willow holding on to the cutting board

with her teeth.

- Don't think I'd be putting anything in this shop

in my mouth.

- Thank you so much. - Yeah, no worries.

- [imitates chomping]

Start having an early lunch. Thank you.

♪

- Cody's moving along well.

I mean, he's already got the holes drilled.

- So now my handle is reprofiled.

When I first go to the grinder, this material is awful.

It's melting. It's sticky.

- So smiths have to use this cutting board

and nothing else aside form pin stocks

to finish these blades out.

So what makes it so challenging

using this material in particular?

- It is a softer plastic.

You just gotta be careful about melting, scorching,

and stuff like that. - It's going terrible so far.

This stuff is disgusting. - It's horrible.

It just turns into putty.

- I would definitely not suggest this

as handle material.

- The weld filled the crack, but the heat

ruined my heat treat, so now I gotta quench again.

- My issue with doing an edge quench

when you've only really heated 1/2 inch

of that material is that material

is never gonna get hard.

- You just deal with that one little dead space

and hope for the best. - Yeah, exactly.

And hope that space isn't what hits the rolling pin.

♪

- Son of a...

- I find another crack.

I'm freaking out.

I don't know what to do with myself.

[bleep].

But then I see how small it is.

I'm going right for the grinder.

I'm grinding this one out.

I'm doing my best that I can.

I don't even want to know how much time I got left.

All I need to worry about is what tasks need to be done now.

[energetic rock music]

- I have a little bit of a problem with my blade.

It's called J. Neilson.

He has a penchant for bashing things

really hard.

♪

So I actually go with quite a lot thicker

of a cutting edge.

I just want to make sure that this knife functions well

and survives testing.

♪

- So now I'm trying to put a final grind on my blade.

And while I'm doing this, I'm noting a small divot

on the cutting edge of the blade

from where the blade got a little bit too thin.

- Now, I wonder if that's gonna impede the blade

from making full contact.

- If there's a gap of any kind,

well, this is good for opening bottles now.

- Oh, yeah.

- It's definitely concerning for me

because it's so thin there in the blade,

it's definitely more prone to damage during testing,

but at this point, I'm thinking this divot

is something I'm gonna have to live with.

- Bladesmiths, you got 15 minutes!

♪

- I've fixed all my problems,

so now I need to get a handle on this knife

and sharpen this blade.

♪

- It's good to see him get past the issues

he had at the critique. - Yeah.

- He's reshaped that blade into something

that's gonna work.

- I'm grinding on my bevels and flats one more time.

I need to put a sharp edge on this blade.

It's gotta cut nice, or I'm going home.

♪

- Five, four, three,

two, one!

Bladesmiths, put down your tools!

This round is over!

- I'm feeling exhausted.

After these two hours

and how much work I've put into it,

I am so happy.

I love the way my knife looks.

Handle looks like crap, but it's smooth,

it fits good in my hand.

It's gonna work.

♪

- Bladesmiths, welcome to our functionality test.

First, I'd like to introduce our expert

from the culinary world, Chef Plum.

♪

We're gonna have Chef Plum do some slicing and dicing

on these vegetables, this way he can use

a variety of knife handling techniques

as well check for the versatility,

comfort, and function of your chef's knife.

Willow, you're up first. You ready?

We gotta do this, yeah? - Okay.

- All right.

♪

- The thing that scares me is tomatoes.

It takes a really sharp knife to get through a tomato.

♪

[energetic rock music]

♪

- All right, Chef, what do you think overall

about Willow's chef's knife?

- Well, Doug, the knife itself is very heavy,

but the handle feels really good in your hand.

Cutting the onion, as you can see,

it wasn't quite as easy to get uniform cuts on it,

but when cutting the pepper, the dexterity of it,

feeling versatile, and I could move it,

it felt very, very comfortable.

- All right, Willow, overall, it will cut.

- Yes!

- Matthew, you're up. You ready, sir?

- Yes, sir. - Let's do this.

♪

- Due to the weld that I had to do for the crack,

I'm worried on the sharpness on the front of the knife,

and I know that's a sweet spot the chef

is gonna be looking for. I'm definitely nervous.

is gonna be looking for. I'm definitely nervous.

I'm hoping that my blade doesn't break.

[energetic rock music]

♪

- Yeah, so I couldn't get all the way through with that.

♪

- All right, Chef, what do you think

of Matthew's chef's knife?

- It wouldn't rock like I like to have a knife rock

through an onion, and cutting the pepper itself,

I feel like I had to put a lot of pressure in there.

A lot of pressure is a scary thing.

It usually means a dull knife.

A dull knife is a dangerous knife.

And cutting the tomato itself,

you know, when I tried to slice that paper thin,

I had to really kind of get in there

and do the sawing back and forth action,

but I do love the color of it. It looks beautiful.

- All right, Matthew, overall, it will cut.

- Thank you.

- All right, Cody, you're up. Are you ready?

- As ready as I'll be. - All right, let's do this.

♪

- I know my knife is very sharp,

but I'm a little bit concerned about the overground spot

on the edge.

Definitely could affect how easily it is to cut.

♪

- What do you think of Cody's blade?

- Doug, this handle feels really nice.

It might be the best feeling handle we've had so far.

It does have this little notch in the blade.

As you saw when I cut the green onions,

I think it got stuck in there.

However, the edge is nice,

and I really do like the feature here

how he kind of made it a sharp point on the end

so if you're gonna cut something small,

you can do that.

But overall, I like this knife.

- All right, Cody,

it will cut.

- Thank you, Doug.

- All right, Chef Plum, thank you for gracing us

with your expertise today.

Next up is a dynamic strength test with Dave.

♪

- All right, bladesmiths,

welcome to our dynamic strength

and sharpness test.

Kitchen knives usually last a lifetime,

so we're gonna just sort of speed up the process

of all the abuse it would take over those years

and put it into one test.

Willow, you're up first. You ready?

♪

I'll take that as a yes.

♪

[heavy rock music]

♪

- [gasps]

- All right, Willow, the changes you made

to your handle, that flare at the back

gave me a lot of retention. Super sharp edge.

It went right through the apron with no problem,

and all in all, it held up beautiful.

Nicely done. - Thank you.

- All right, Matthew, you ready?

- Do it.

- We'll get through this.

♪

[heavy rock music]

♪

- [bleep].

♪

[bleep].

♪

- So Matthew, first off, you can see on the apron

those lines are torn more than they're cut...

- Yeah.

- And that's because this whole section right here

just isn't sharp, but the weld you did

to fix that crack, excellent job.

- So nicely done.

- Thank you. - All right, Cody, you ready?

- You bet. - Okay.

♪

[heavy rock music]

♪

- Mm-hmm.

♪

- All right, Cody, right there where my thumbnail is,

do you see that discoloration?

There was a teeny, little crack there

that I didn't see, and just going in and out of that wood,

it caught it.

I would love to continue testing with it,

but, you know, one more hit on that,

and that blade will probably go flying,

and that's-- it becomes a safety issue.

- Cody, you did a phenomenal job,

but you have a massive chunk out of your blade.

We consider that a catastrophic failure,

so unfortunately, we cannot continue testing your blade,

and for that reason, your time in this competition has ended.

I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off

The Forge floor. - Thank you, guys.

- Thank you.

- I think where the blade broke was so unexpected,

and I didn't see any cracks on the blade

when inspecting it several times

throughout the challenge.

The experience has been a lot of fun,

and I've learned a lot.

I'm proud of myself for how far I went in the competition,

and I can't wait to keep making more knives.

♪

- Well, Matthew, Willow, congratulations.

The two of you have proven your skills

and are joining us in the third and final round

of this kitchen themed competition.

Over the past two rounds, you've both built

a small chef's knife.

In the next four days, we're upping the ante

and asking you both to build

a slightly more intimidating blade

from the culinary world.

Bladesmiths, we want you to build this.

♪

The hog splitter. - Bring it.

- The hog splitter is an evolution of size

and strength of one of humanity's oldest tools,

the butcher's cleaver.

This monstrous tool features a broad, square blade

with a sharp, straight edge designed to be strong enough

to hack and chop cleanly through thick slabs

of meat and bone, and a long handle

to aid with precision.

Its size and power are so renowned,

its inspired many gruesome recreations

in pop culture, including the video game "Bloodborne,"

where the title character's main weapon is a saw cleaver.

Bladesmiths, this massive cleaver blade

will have to be between 22 and 24 inches long

and be no less than 4 inches tall

throughout the entirety of its length.

The handle needs to be between 14 inches

and 16 inches long, and on top of that,

we want you both to include a maker's mark

that resembles an animal.

- A hog splitter is this giant cleaver

for splitting entire pig carcasses in half.

That's awesome.

I mean, it's not kosher,

but, like, that's okay.

- Bladesmiths, one of you will leave this forge

as a "Forged in Fire" champion and get a check for $10,000,

so good luck.

We'll see you both in four days.

- Let's go.

♪

It's beginning of day one,

I'm gonna start making a hog splitter.

I've never made a weapon this big before.

The challenge is drawing it so wide

and so far out.

I'm starting with 36 layers of 1095 and 15N20.

♪

I have some wrought iron around here.

I'm gonna do Damascus San Mai,

and it's gonna look awesome.

[bleep].

I think I got a little overzealous

and banana'd my top layer.

♪

We're gonna pull it off and go from there.

It looks beautiful.

♪

I've got the wrought iron all drawn out.

♪

It's time to get our full billet together.

End of day one, I have a successful forge weld.

I'm happy. Let's keep moving.

All right, good.

♪

- It's the morning of day one.

My plan is to make this hog splitter

out of San Mai Damascus

with a core of 80CrV2.

♪

I set up my Damascus billet, and I chuck it in the forge.

Oh, my God.

Dear God, it's heavy.

♪

I am starting to get a little worried

because it's just such a hard material.

It's just so much to move.

The billet is an inch and 1/2 wide.

I'm aiming for a 4 1/2-inch wide blade,

so I clean it up and then restack

and triple my layer count.

At the end of day one,

I have a 72 layer Damascus.

I'm feeling reasonably good so far.

Here we go.

♪

- First thing I need to do this morning

is draw out my billet.

♪

Looking good.

Looks like I need about another inch for my width.

It's going pretty smooth.

Now that we're forged to length and width,

it's time to grind the profile and get a shape on this blade.

♪

I'm starting to see a few

little inclusions on the spine.

♪

Getting cracks is one of the worst things

that could happen to a blade of this size.

When the judges go to test it, it would definitely fail.

I'm at the edge of my parameters right now,

so I don't want to grind any farther,

so I'm just gonna fill it with weld

and make it solid.

I'm happy with this result.

Hopefully we can make it through testing.

♪

- Morning of day three, I still have to draw out

this hog splitter to size.

♪

It's just taking forever.

Carbon steel is really, really hard.

It feels like pounding on a rock.

♪

I am worried that I just won't have enough width

in my blade to make this work and to meet parameters.

- I'm running out of material to get my hog splitter

to the size that it really needs to be.

I thought I had enough, but I don't.

Time is limited,

so I decide to weld a 1-inch piece of bar

onto the spine so that I meet width parameters.

[energetic rock music]

I am just praying that, when I put it in the oil,

it doesn't bend or warp.

♪

It is straight. Nothing seems to have cracked.

I'm feeling tentatively triumphant,

but tomorrow might be terrible. Who knows?

[bleep] jeepers, my goodness.

I think I'm done for the day.

♪

- Day four, we gotta get an edge on our blade,

and we gotta do all our handle work today.

Yesterday, we got a quench done,

and then I painted a bear paw

with nail polish, so when I etch this,

when I clean off the nail polish,

it will leave the negative image

on bare steel.

First thing I'm gonna do this morning

is clean off that nail polish.

I want to see that maker's mark pop.

Looks great.

It's time to get the handle ready.

♪

It's the end of day four. This thing is awesome.

It is sharp. It is sleek.

I can't wait to see it cut.

I'm happy as hell right now.

♪

- Day four, I have a fully hardened blade.

I just need to put the rest of my handle on,

etch, sharpen, and put an animal on it.

I go for an etch, and it's beautiful.

It's not as bright as I'd like,

but you can't have everything in this world.

♪

I need to engrave a dragon into this thing.

I'm carving a dragon because they're kind of my signature,

one of the things that I teach and that stands out

about my classes is that we always finish

by making a silly, little dragon face.

♪

Now I can get to my fit and finish work.

♪

It looks really good,

and it feels really good in the hand.

I guess I'm done.

[dramatic music]

♪

- Bladesmiths, welcome back to The Forge.

It is time to find out which one of you

is going home with the "Forged in Fire" champion title

and a check for $10,000.

Now, in this final round, we asked the both of you

to go back to your home forges

to build another culinary blade.

This one is a beast, but before we test them,

I want to hear about 'em.

So, Willow, how'd the build go for you?

- Kicked my butt.

♪

The core is 80CrV2 San Mai'd over

with 144 layers of 1080

and 15N20 on each side,

but it wouldn't take an etch.

I don't know if, like, a sheep peed in my etch--

- A sheep?

Do you have sheep? - I do have sheep, yes.

- Okay, good.

- And the bucket was right out near the sheep.

[laughter]

Matthew, how about you? - I had a blast.

♪

36 layers of 1095 15N20, and then I jacketed that

in 1800s wrought iron from an old anchor chain

with Caribbean rosewood for the handle.

- Right on.

All right, bladesmiths, well, the time has come

for us to find out which one of you is going home

with the big win.

Now first, the KEAL test with Doug.

♪

- Bladesmiths, welcome to the Kill test.

♪

In keeping with our culinary theme,

I'm gonna take your hog splitter

and try to use it like a butcher

to split this hog in half.

Willow, you're up first. You ready for this?

- Let's go full hog. - All right, let's do that.

- I want to throw up.

I want to curl up into a ball.

In order to meet parameters, I had to add some steel

along the spine.

All I can think about, is it okay?

Will it cut?

♪

[dramatic music]

♪

[laughter]

♪

- All right, Willow, let's talk about your hog splitter here.

First up, the overall look, kind of unique.

I like that point at the tip over there.

It kind of gives it a different look.

Holding onto it was nice and smooth,

and with a very heavy, top loaded blade,

I can control even with light cuts to make sure

that I can split a whole hog in half.

And overall, your hog splitter,

it will Kill.

- Yes.

- Matthew, you're up. You ready?

- Do your worst. - All right.

- Going into this test, I am close to [bleep] myself.

It was a heck of a huge weapon to build.

I definitely had some struggles,

but it's awesome. I love looking at this thing.

♪

[dramatic music]

♪

[bleep].

♪

- Gentlemen, this does not look like its within parameters.

It looks smaller. What do you guys think?

- Had to be at least 4? - Yeah, 4 inches.

- Throughout the entire-- - Through the entire--yeah.

It has to be a minimal of four. Let's just find out.

♪

- What are we at?

- He's at least an 1/8 of an inch short,

1/8 to 1/4 short. - All the way through.

- So it's a parameter failure. - Mm-hmm.

- Yeah.

♪

- [sighs]

- All right, Matthew, we got a bit of an issue.

With this blade, we had a series of parameters,

one of which was that it should not be

any less than 4 inches throughout the entirety

of the blade, and it seems

that you did not meet that mark,

so this is considered a parameter failure.

We want to say thank you for coming out.

You're clearly a talented smith,

but unfortunately, your time in this competition has ended.

I'm gonna have to ask you to please step off

The Forge floor.

- Before I ground my edge, I knew I was darn close

to get parameter, and I must have just gone

a little bit too small. It is what it is.

But overall, this experience was awesome.

I would definitely do this again

if I was invited back.

- Well, Willow, congratulations.

That makes you a "Forged in Fire" champion.

You'll be receiving a check for $10,000.

- I had an absolute blast. I have learned so much.

I'm, like, 20 times the bladesmith I was

even a week ago.

- Thank you. - Creative work around--

- Hey, can I give you a hug?

I know you're very big and scary, but can I hug you?

[laughter]

- I'm not very big. - Well, you're bigger than me.

- All right, sure.

♪