WIL WILLIS: Blade smiths, congratulations.
You made it through a really brutal round of testing.
And now here you are, that much closer to being
"Forged in Fire" champions.
Well, now we're sending you back to your home forges
to recreate this iconic weapon.
Ready to see what it is?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
[ninja sounds]
Yah!
The nine ring broadsword.
Good luck, blade smiths.
We'll see you in four days.
Thank you.
Good luck.
BURTON: It's day one here at the home forge.
I don't really have much experience making something
this big or this wide.
The plan for today is I've got to get to the end of the sword
drawn out quite a ways.
I'm going to use 1080 steel.
Nice big heavy bar of it.
1080 is nice, hard steel that's forgiving for heat
treatment in an open forge.
Let her start warming up.
I'm doing most of the work on the press.
My plan is, just to kind of get it
worked out a little bit here.
Just trying to break that down and spread it out.
Heat her back up.
It has to be a minimum of two and a half
to four inches from the tip.
So I'm going to go for three, that way I've
got a little bit of movement to do any tweaks
I need to after heat-treat.
I'm halfway there, maybe.
Yeah, tip's coming right in there now.
It's starting to take shape of a sword.
That's it for day one.
We are at my home forge.
I start forging the blade today.
And I'm looking to have it fully forged hopefully midday
tomorrow to where I can start doing some grinding.
My biggest concern with this blade is heat-treat.
I'd really, really hate to have to start over
again at the end of day two.
I've got a lot of meat in this thing
that needs to be thinned out.
Fortunately, I have a power hammer that's going to help
a lot with making that happen.
Oh, you've got to be [bleep] kidding me.
All of a sudden, my power hammer decides it
doesn't want to play anymore.
It stops working.
That sucks.
So in-between heats now, I'm trying
to rewire my power hammer.
All right, well, that ain't working.
Finally get the switch back together.
Ta-da.
It's alive.
So I'm working on the blade and drawing it out.
And I notice there's a crack in the blade.
[sigh] And there's no saving this.
Yeah, it's junk.
So my back-up steel is 01.
It is a tool steel.
But it's not a good steel for swords.
Hopefully I can temper it right and it'll still hold
together through the testing.
BURTON: It's day two for me today.
I'm going to go ahead and take some of the 3/16 rod.
And we'll scroll and jig and try to set up some,
like, inch and a half rings.
I'm going to hot cut them off one at a time.
Once they get attached on the sword,
then I'll just give them a little TIG weld
to hold them together on there.
We're getting ready try to drill the holes for the rings.
It could have possibly got too hard in the forging.
Find out here in a second.
Looks like it's drilling like butter.
First two holes drill just fine.
[grinding noise]
That's harder.
[bleep] Oh, I was hoping they would drill easy.
[grinding noise]
That's what I was afraid of.
It can't be a nine ring sword without nine
holes for the rings to go in.
Feeling the clock now.
It's not soft.
I'm going to heat the spine of it up with the torch
and try to just draw it back and hopefully it'll
be soft enough that I can get those last seven
holes punched through it.
If this doesn't work, I'm screwed.
I'd hate to start forging again.
MIKE: There's still a heck of a lot of work to do.
So it's critical that I really hit the heat-treat tonight.
If it breaks, if it cracks, if it
does anything other than quenches hard and straight,
I'm done.
I have no backups anymore.
We've got a hard blade.
It's straight.
So as I started profiling the blade more,
all of a sudden I notice something's gone wrong again.
I've got a [bleep] crack in the blade.
I have no more steel to work with.
All right, so how do I fix that?
I decide to just put scallops in between all of the eyelets
for the rings, and hopefully grind far enough down where
I'm beyond where the crack is.
No more crack.
Doesn't look like the picture.
But i kind of like it, to tell you the truth.
I got some sweet tea.
Day four, finally punched through the last hole.
So now we've got a nine hole broadsword.
Got the sword quenched yesterday.
But I'm still under the gun.
Time to get all these rings welded on here.
Does rattle-- they're on there.
I'm going to use a camo color para cord to do the wrap.
And it gives enough grip and thickness to the handle.
[laughs] Thing's beastly.
I'm finished.
It's sharp.
It's an instrument of death.
It's a wild thing.
Thing looks wicked.
MIKE: First thing I'm getting after is the rings.
I'm going with eighth-inch [inaudible] steel.
I created a jig a while back for bending this kind of stuff.
I'm going to put it in the jig, bend
them around until they're pretty symmetrical and pretty even.
Yeah, not too bad.
So all I have left to do is get these rings welded in place.
Boy, that looks like [bleep] it just doesn't want
to weld together very well.
I mean, it starts to melt. It starts to do other things.
Damn it.
But finally, blade's finished.
Nine ring broadsword, brother.
I love this thing.
I'd like to keep it, put it on my wall.
But I'd rather have 10 grand.
Blade smiths, you have our gratitude.
Gentlemen, your swords look magnificent.
But are they deadly?
To find that out, we will take your swords
and deliver some clean blows on this pig carcass.
It's all about the kill in this particular test.
Burton, you are first.
Are you ready, sir?
Yes, sir.
Let's do this.
Pretty much what could go wrong is the blade breaks
or it's not sharp enough to cut what it's supposed to cut.
Let's see how it holds up.
[dramatic music]
Damn.
[dramatic music]
[gasps]
Well, there it went.
Goodness, look at that.
All right, Burton.
First up, what I love about this blade was the balance,
the way I was able to move with the blade everywhere.
Now let's talk about the breakage.
OK, so the break happened right there,
where the ring was attached.
You can see it's really not a bad core
structure you have there.
It could be finer.
But rings, when you're digging into that
could cost stress risers--
and it broke right there with the ring was.
Well, gentlemen, the fight is not over.
Because Mike, your blade still has to survive nine strikes
on its kill test target.
Good luck, gentlemen.
Doug?
MIKE: Burton's blade broke right at one of the holes.
I have them same holes in there.
Plus on my spine, I've already had two cracks.
I'm terrified it's going to break.
Oh, the heart's starting to flutter a little bit.
[dramatic music]
Good job, bro.
Burton, unfortunately your blade broke and it can no
longer continue with testing.
And for that reason, I have to dismiss you from the forge.
Good job, brother. - I appreciate it, man.
That sucks.
[inaudible]
Gorgeous weapon, though.
Seeing my blade break, it's a disappointment.
You know, you make it to round three, you want to win.
You know, them nine holes burnt through four drill bits
doing them.
So somewhere through there, I probably
was giving a little too much pressure
and caused the stress riser to run down that blade.
That was enough to cause a critical failure in that blade.
I'm still proud of myself with what I've done.
You know, it was way out of my wheelhouse.
What's next for me is not swords,
especially nine ring swords, [laughs] that's for damn sure.
WIL WILLIS: Mike, congratulations.
The strength and integrity of your blade
has made you a "Forged in Fire" champion.
And that's a title that comes with a check for $10,000.
Good job, brother.
[clapping]
I won 'Forged in Fire."
Holy crap, man.
Come on forward and shake our hands, my friend.
Thank you. Thank you.
- Good job, brother. - Thank you.
With some of the things that went wrong in my home forge,
I was really sure that that blade was going to break on me.
But it didn't. (SINGING) Da da da.
This is a happy dance.
Doing a little dance.
[music playing]