Bladesmiths, this is the strength test.
To test the strength and durability of your blades,
I'm going to be taking each of your knives
and chopping into these butt stocks 10 times.
Tony, you are up first. You ready?
Get her done.
If there is going to be a failure on my blade,
it's going to go at the chop test.
Well, Tony, first thing, there's
a little bit of deflection of the edge right here.
But the rest of the blade held up pretty well.
Well done.
Corey, you're up. You ready?
- Absolutely. - All right.
I really don't know anything about a gun stock.
It's probably not some kind of like soft pine.
That's probably not going to be easy on the blade.
Well, Corey, I'm not supposed to work on your knives.
But I think I put another thumb groove on this side.
It's rolled completely around.
There's no denying that's a pretty significant role.
Frank, you're up.
Are you ready. - Let's do it.
I know I heat treated that edge correctly.
And the blade is strong.
I'm just hoping that warp, nothing will happen there.
So Frank, you can see, it took a little bend.
But the good news is that your edge held up really well.
Your handle was very comfortable.
The shape of it was easy to control.
I could index very easily.
But there's no denying, it took a pretty significant bend.
I see that bend in my blade, and it got me nervous,
you know.
All of our blades suffered damage.
So it's up in the air now.
Anything could happen.
All right, gentlemen, this is the sharpness test.
I'll be slicing through these apples.
What I'm looking for is a really clean cut where we're splitting
apples as opposed to breaking them or just
pushing them out of the way.
And unlike the strength test, this test is all about what
your knives do to the apples. Tony, you're up.
You ready? - Yes, I am.
All right, so your edge is very sharp.
Even on the damage here where it deflected,
I mean you can see the apples, it went right through them.
And even with that notch, cut beautifully.
Well done. - Thank you.
- Really well done. - Thank you.
All right, Corey, you're up. Are you ready?
We'll see what it can do.
All right.
With all my catastrophic edge deflection,
there is just no chance it's going to be able to perform.
All right, so the apple kind of tells the tale right there.
You can see that dip in the apple, what happened
is it just skated the blade up and out of the way.
With so much edge damage, it's just not a cutter.
Frank, you're up. Are you ready?
- Yes, sir. - All right.
So, Frank, your blade is plenty sharp and actually cuts fine.
The problem is that warp.
With the warp in that blade as it moves across,
it just starts pulling up.
And once it starts changing direction,
it just flies up out of those apples.
I mean you can actually see this big curve up in the cuts.
But it's sharp.
It's still a cutter. Nicely done.
Thank you.
Bladesmiths.
The judges have made their final decision.
The Bladesmith leaving the forge is Corey.
Your blade did not make the cut.
Well, Corey, although Frank's blade did take a bend,
yours took unfortunately a catastrophic
and irreparable edge failure.
And it's for that reason we have to let you go.