Bladesmiths, congratulations.
You've made it to the final round of this competition.
Now it's time to send you back to your home
forges to recreate this iconic weapon from history--
the boar sword.
Good luck.
We'll see you in four days.
Good job, man.
JONATHAN: So it's day one.
Excited to get to work on this boar sword.
Ready to knock it out.
I've never made anything this big.
It's going to be an interesting build.
Swinging this four-pound sledge is getting heavy already.
My game plan for today is to get at least half
of the sword force out.
I want to get those curves established.
It's definitely interesting hammering those waves in there,
because the blade will want to walk sideways.
And so having to bring it back to establish that edge to edge
straightness, it's difficult. I was hoping
to be able to get a little bit farther along than what I did,
but I think it's going pretty well.
Bit of a geometry dilemma here,
and I'm hitting the ceiling before I can
hit the blade on the grinder.
So I'm going to have to either take some extra whet out
here, make a cutout here.
I can't underestimate the size of this blade.
I got to be really careful while I'm trying to grind
it in my tiny little shop.
Perfect.
So after cutting away a bit of the table
and a bit of the roof, it seems to be working now.
So I just finished forging up the crossbar,
so it's time to quench.
If this goes well, I'll be set up really well for the rest
of this competition.
If it goes poorly, the opposite.
This crossbar is making it a lot more
difficult than I was anticipating
to get this whole blade hot.
Fortunately, it should be OK still.
Here we go.
[blowing]
[blade scraping]
That's the sound I wanted to hear.
Ha ha.
JONATHAN: Today, I hope to accomplish the heat treat.
This is the biggest thing I've ever heat treated.
I've got a forge that I'm borrowing from a buddy of mine.
It's a five-burner forge.
And it's normally laid down--
laying perpendicular.
I've got it standing up.
And so this is the first time I've used it in this fashion.
I hope it works for me.
I'm going to take my forge and set up underneath.
That way, I get a normal heat treat all the way
from the blade tip to the tank.
This heat treat process is the most critical part.
If you don't have the heat treat process down right,
then all you have is a blade-shaped object.
You know, it's not going to stay sharp.
So I've got to get this heat treat done.
It has to happen today.
It's go time.
If it doesn't go right, I don't know when I'm going to do.
[sighs] I do have a slight warp.
We're good.
I'm out of the woods, but still have some work to do.
So I was tempering last night with the torch
and screwed the pooch a little bit and got way too hot
on my blade.
So I've lost a lot of hardness, and I'm
going to have to re-quench.
I've never done a torch tempering before,
and I guess that's what I get for my lack of experience.
A second quench is just additional risk.
Every time you quench, there's a risk of extra warping,
of a crack, a broken blade.
It is quite a setback.
If this quench fails, I may be forced
to start over from scratch.
Here we go.
[blowing]
[blade scraping]
Definitely hard.
Disaster averted for now so long as I can get the tempering
right on my second try.
This time around, I'm going to be really slow, really careful.
And I've got my heat gun right here pointing at this blade
the whole time.
If it goes above 350 degrees, I'm
going to immediately pull the torch
and make sure that I don't overtemper this blade again.
The deed is done.
It should be a strong, hard blade now.
I'm going to move forward, put a handle on this,
polish it up, turn it into the judges.
JONATHAN: It's the start of the last day.
It's raining like cow piss on a flat rock outside,
so we're working on the handle and the pommel.
And just a little bit of clean up and sharpening,
and we're done.
Now I'm going to go into shaping.
That feels good and balanced right there.
The farther along I got in this build, the more confident
I became in the weapon.
I didn't have enough time to test it,
but I'm confident that it'll pass.
Ladies and gentlemen, the boar sword.
All right, bladesmiths, to test the lethality
of your boar swords, I will deliver thrusts
and cuts on this boar carcass.
Jon, you're first.
You ready for this?
Absolutely.
[blade impact sounds]
Yeah.
All right, Jon, first up, I like the balance.
I like that I can put two hands on it.
It's void enough to where I can hold on
and I can tell where the edge is.
And when we're pushing and thrusting as it's meant to be,
the tip is sharp enough to thrust all the way through.
Your edges, as you can see, are sharp enough to cut pieces
out of this boar carcass.
Overall, sir, it'll kill.
Thanks, sir.
Congrats.
Thanks, man.
All right, Isaac, your turn.
Are you ready for this?
Let's make some bacon.
[blade impact sounds]
[grunts]
All right, Isaac, first up, it's much lighter,
so it's easier to control when you're moving with a blade.
And as you can see, when I was thrusting in there,
the point you have here, the edges are very sharp.
It thrust all the way in.
And even when it hits bone, it's got a very good flex to it.
Did not pick up a bend.
Overall, sir, your boar sword will make the bacon and kill.
Thank you.
Gentlemen, it's time for the strength test--
the sheet metal stab.
Now, to test the strength and overall construction
of your blades, I'll be stabbing into the sheet metal.
But this test is not about what your blades do to that target.
It's about what that target does to your blades.
Jonathan, you're first.
You ready?
Absolutely.
[blade impact sounds]
All right Jonathan, your blade is still sharp pretty
much all the way to the tip.
Now, the tip did get flattened a little bit,
but that was a very, very acute tip that you had on there.
All in all, it's a comfortable weapon.
It certainly held up beautifully.
Nicely done.
Thank you.
All right, Isaac, are you ready for this?
As ready as I'm going to be.
[blade impact sounds]
There is definitely a significant bend.
All right, there's a good flex in your blade, which
we saw in an earlier test.
But when you quenched this blade,
I'm assuming right in here somewhere
was where that quench stopped.
So this is not really solid right here.
You did lose your tip up here, but your edges held up.
It's still sharp.
But you can just see there's an obvious issue
with that bend there.
All right, bladesmiths, this is the sharpness test.
To find out if there's any sharpness left on your tip
and edges, I will take your weapon and stab
and slash at this deer hide.
Now, unlike the strength test, this
is all about what your blade will do to this deer hide.
Jon, you're first.
You ready for this?
Let's do it.
[blade impact sounds]
All right, Jon, looking at the tip here,
I can see where it flattened out.
Took a little bit of effort to be able to puncture
through, but it did.
Your edges are still sharp.
The cuts are clean.
Overall, sir, it will cut.
Thank you, sir.
All right, Isaac, your turn, sir.
Are you ready?
I am.
[blade impact sounds]
It's about what I expected.
I straightened it.
Oh, did you?
The damage to your tip on the strength
test really took it out.
There is no tip to this anymore.
I can put my finger on that.
But the edge of your blade on both sides, as you can see,
cut all the way through.
Now, the interesting thing to note
is that all that bending actually
straightened your blade.
Overall, sir, it will cut.
Thank you.
Bladesmiths, the judges have deliberated
right here on the forge floor.
They've made their final decision.
Isaac, your blade didn't make the cut.
Your blade took a bend in the strength test.
And for that reason, I have to ask
you to please leave the forge.
ISAAC: The end-all be-all of this task
was the fact that I couldn't get a full heat treat
all the way up and down my blade,
and that's what sent me home.
I made it to second place, and regardless of the results
of this whole thing, it's been the best birthday
present I've ever gotten.
Well, Jonathan, it would appear the warrior ethos
runs deep in you, because not only are you
an active duty Marine.
You are also the "Forged in Fire" champion.
That's a title that comes with a check for $10,000.
Congratulations.
[applause]
Thank you.
Being "Forged in Fire" champion, it feels great.
Good job.
Thank you.
It's a boost of confidence.
It's not the big things that really matter.
It's the little things-- the attention to detail--
that make a big difference.
[dramatic music]