Congratulations, bladesmiths.
You've made it to the second round of this competition.
And now that your blades have been tempered,
it's time to turn them into fully functional weapons
by attaching handles to them.
However, we've got the added enjoyment
of including a hidden lanyard hole in your pang design.
Good luck, bladesmiths.
Your three hours starts now.
Let's talk a little bit about this recess lanyard hole.
The one thing that I'm nervous about
is that these guys are going to get into a focus,
and they're going to get their glue on there, they're going
to put their pins, and forget to give a little
hollow for that lanyard.
[chuckling] Welding.
The first thing I have to do in this round
is fix this void by adding material without heating it up.
But you can't do one without the other.
If I apply too much while welding this void,
it's going to ruin the temper.
Oh, no, no, no.
It's really easy to want to cool off that weld quickly.
And what you wind up with is a weld that's solid.
But the metal on either side of that weld
is now brutal as heck.
BRENDAN: Dave doesn't like the way this fits in his hands.
It's the weakest part on the blade.
I can only remove so much without it just snapping,
flying across the room.
And then it's back to square one.
And square one will be me scratching
my head in my own shop, reliving this event over and over again.
Putting a hidden lanyard hole in that the handle is
going to be no problem at all.
But I feel like three hours is not
enough time for me to finish the 500 things I have to do.
My biggest worry is, there's no transition between my blade
and the handle.
I really need to resolve that.
So I'm adding a guard.
An unprompted guard-- has that ever
happened here in the forge?
I've never done a hidden lanyard hole,
but anything's easier than a cold foge.
I chose G10 for the handle.
And I'm going to do a little razzle dazzle.
This handle is going to be beautiful.
Your cutouts on your handle material
should curve, match up with the back end of the hole,
and then curve out again, so when
you push the lanyard through, it just slides through the hole.
I'm grinding away at the grinder,
and taking as much meat and handle
off, because that's exactly what they told me to do.
But to do a good hook job, you want
a little meat on your blade.
So I'm going to leave mine a little thicker
than the other guys.
I get a little advantage there.
Brendan has grabbed some handle material.
It looks like quarter-inch Micarta.
BRENDAN: This piece looks like it's going
to be just the right thickness.
I won't have to take away that much.
And then I gotta put a nice little hidden pocket
so you can put a lanyard through that lanyard hole.
What I'm doing is using the natural radius
of this grinding belt wheel to just router
out a sweet little pocket.
Now, the one thing I hope is that that lanyard hole should
be bigger than a quarter-inch.
There's nothing worse than having a lanyard hole
that it's really tough to get a lanyard into.
That ain't bad.
I like it.
You have 60 minutes!
That's 60 minutes remaining!
BRAD: I'd glue the handle on, and the holes don't line up.
I'm totally paranoid that the epoxy was getting hard.
This could be a disaster.
[groans] Oh, whoops.
[laughs] I realized I just grabbed the wrong side scale.
Good thing I realized that before the epoxy set.
It went together fairly well.
But it's crazy.
There's just not much time left.
I'm usually relaxed at home doing all
this with some music playing.
I feel like a clock is just killing me.
Bladesmiths, there are only 30 minutes left on that clock!
JEFF: The second round, and even making it here, I'm in heaven.
I'm enjoying every minute of it.
It may not look like it, but I'm smiling.
It looks like he's kind of going with that nap look, where
you put a lot of little dents and grooves
all over everything.
Done right, it can be a pretty comfortable handle.
Done wrong, it's just a million hot spots throughout your palm.
I fixed everything the judges wanted me to fix,
and I'm just going to town.
I'm just cruising along.
MAN 1: It still looks like a really beefy knife.
MAN 2: He seems to like the heft of it.
But people also think their babies
are cute when they're not.
[laughter]
JEFF: I think I've got the best blade going in so far.
So I think I'm going home to the final round.
10, nine, eight, seven six, five, four, three, two, one.
Bladesmiths, drop your tools.
This round is over.
I'm confident that I fixed the issues
the judges had with my knife.
But Jeff's handle looks pretty sparkly.
I don't know.
Maybe he is Magic Mike.