FORGED FROM THE ASHES
My experience with History Channel's "Forged in Fire"
In 2018, I had the opportunity to film an episode for History Channel’s “Forged in Fire” reality TV show. I had applied on a whim and didn’t for a second entertain the notion of competing until I got a call back asking me for a brief interview. Obviously, things progressed from there and I got to take part in season six’s “Washington’s Colichemarde”. It was a wild ride in many ways. On one hand it was an extremely stressful ordeal. At the same time, it was one of the most fulfilling and rewarding experience I have ever had.
I have often said that I learn best from failure, and this is not different. In a way, who I am, and what I do is forged from failure and that isn't a bad thing at all.
PREPPING FOR “FORGED IN FIRE”
Although I am competitive, I have never actually had any reason to use my hobby as a vehicle of competition. The main reason for this, is that I have a career – one that gives me more than enough stress to succeed already. It is a regimented career with due dates, and progress reports and time management. Although I love my job, it still very much feels like work and I primarily use metalsmithing to relax, recover and most importantly exercise my artistic and creative tendencies in unique ways. It is, for me, a form of art therapy and an activity that I generally have no interest in polluting with the drive to win. You can’t “win” at art – you just do it for the satisfaction of yourself and others. It is for this reason that I haven’t wanted to do this for a living.
This is also why I went into this competition to challenge myself. If I won, it was because I did my best. If I lost, it was because I didn’t. That win/lose relationship really had everything to do with my own definition, not the show itself. I went into this knowing that I might be going up against some of the most talented smiths out there. I also went into this knowing that I was going to be surprised. I even prepared for surprise. For the weeks leading to filming, my wife would come into my shop, pick out a random piece of steel and tell me to make some random blade design or object. It was a fun game, and it helped me try and adapt to what I had believed would be the challenge set before me. I had seen dozens of episodes that started as a “junk challenge”. Scrounge for useful material and make a blade from it to chop through the object of the week.
What wasn’t there to love? Scavenger hunt – awesome. Art project – awesome. Destroy something with art project – even more awesome.
THE ROUGH RIDER
Arriving to the show, I first met my competitors. Josh, John and Andrew are awesome. We were all roughly the same age and had similar loves for both this craft and anything associated with it. It was a recipe for comradery, and something that I was not expecting. Competing against strangers doesn’t exactly fill you with the image of late-night bar crawls and playing games – which is exactly what we did instead of brooding and plotting on how to beat each other.
I remember the exact moment the Rough Rider Bowie was unveiled to us with the parameters. I had an even mix of eagerness and frustration. I had spent weeks, maybe months, preparing for an artistic challenge only to be faced with a replication project. About an hour in, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was working. That wasn’t so much a bad thing, as I mentioned I do really like being an engineer and scientist, just that it was not what I was expecting. I had to reverse engineer something which is always fun, but at the same time, that unexpected hit-to-the-face tapped into my creative side. It is hard to describe that feeling of being both being elated and frustrated at the same time.
THE ROUGH RIDER
Ultimately, the challenge came to accuracy in replication and time management. I am self-taught, for the most part, which is a super diplomatic way of saying I have learned through failure. Adapting is the number one reason for human dominance on planet Earth, and I have a lot of practice in it. I even said when I got a little overzealous with the power hammer, that you need to “fail fast, fix fast”. If you can identify when things are going wrong or are about to go wrong, you stand a way better chance of succeeding. That methodology carried me through the first challenge. I was constantly having to look at the timer and reevaluate my plan.
Speaking of the timer: Fuck that timer.
There is nothing more humbling than thinking you are doing really well only to find out it took you twice as long as you had planned. Each second of that clock felt like another step of Jason Vorhees, machete in hand, bearing down on me down a long, dark hallway. I cannot tell you how many times I looked at that clock and had to rethink what I was doing, and whether or not I could finish in time. Ultimately though, I was too busy to get complacent, or think about finishing touches. For all I cared, I was in my own little world being heckled (in a purely jovial manner) by the judges (who I cannot speak of highly enough) All in all, though, I got the edge done on my knife just as that buzzer sounded, and I was happy with what I had made. Sure, I had to cut some corners. Sure, I had to leave some stuff rougher than I wanted. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that that Rough Rider bowie wasn’t the best damned 1-day knife I have ever made, let along the best 6-hour one. I really wish I could have taken it home.
WASHINGTON'S COLICHEMARDE
Coming off of a very proud moment, and a respectable blade, Josh and I arrived at the final challenge reveal pretty eager and confused. We knew we were going to have a presidential theme and had joked that if we did Teddy Roosevelt’s bowie, we would be making the axe George Washington had chopped down the cherry tree with. Turns out we weren’t too far off: Right president, wrong weapon.
When that cloth came off, my stomach managed to fight its way up into my throat. I knew what it was, and knew that it was the singular sword design I feared the most. Firstly, it is a hollow ground, trifoil blade. I had not ever successfully made a hollow grind that didn’t look like garbage. Secondly, the trifoil presented a challenge in heat treatment. Asymmetrical objects warp after the quench. I have had blades (which for the record were not anywhere near as long as my colichemarde) twist and warp because my grind lines were not symmetrical enough. Lastly, they tended to be very ornate by most knifemakers standards. The escutcheon, half arms, quillons and knucklebow all needed to be present. Here I was, on what would eventually be national TV staring at a sword that I absolutely thought would be my downfall. Again, I didn’t care what Josh thought, I knew that if someone had asked me to make one I would have declined the commission in a heartbeat.
I started off pretty sure of how I wanted to do things. I also knew I had to make a lot of new equipment in my shop in order handle this challenge at all. I made a new propane burner, made a austenitizing furnace for quenching the blade and had to cut a hole in my tempering oven.
I knew, going into that studio that the last two inches or so of my blade wasn’t up to the barest standards of sharp. The first round of testing proved it. I was fully expecting that pig to remain unscathed, but what I wasn't expecting was that blade to take a set. Once the strength test was up, I had a feeling I was done for.
As a friend of mine at work said, “Looks like you tried to pain the barn before putting up the walls.”
I decided to put some serious bells and whistles on my blade, and had neglected the core of it. The sharpness concerns were something I had known about since the clock ran out. The heat treatment… That was a stab in the back. It came as an utter surprise to me at the time, but given how many corners I had to cut with the heat treatment process of this blade, in hindsight, it wasn't a surprise at all. The engineer in me needed to know what I did wrong. The smith in me knew I hadn’t managed my time properly. And this ultimately was why I had failed.
THE TAKEAWAY
All in all though, even with the grievous failures on my part, I was still very proud of what I had made. It was certainly more art than function, but I walked away from the experience a better smith. I got to work along side some very talented competitors who I now call friends.
When I was handed this challenge, I thought it would be the end of me. Even though I didn't walk away the Forged in Fire champion, even though i botched my heat treatment and didn't sharpen my blade effectively, I still succeeded in making a colichemarde in 5 days. Something that still surprises me to this day.
But I am not done. At least the engineer in me is not. I am currently working on a thorough failure analysis to determine exactly which part of my heat treatment failed. In order to learn from your mistakes, you need to know what you did wrong, and I intend to find out. Expect to see my report some time in the spring.