Blademithing series on History channel

[Jim Coke]

Long winter... Your getting grumpy.. LOL

[Frosty]

19 hours ago, Jim Coke said:

Long winter... Your getting grumpy.. LOL

 

[jukejoint]

How many believe that there should not have been a winner last week

[Forging Carver]

On March 6, 2016 at 6:32 PM, Frosty said:

 

This is kind of off topic a bit, but you were speaking about winter. So frosty, I understand that salmon is good fishing up by you and a lot of guys there store their catches for the winter. I am not sure if you like fish, but if so I got a good recommendation for you. What you can do is cut up some extra salmon and put some spices on it. Then you can either smoke it, put it in a dehydrator, or even bake it in the oven. Then what you got is salmon jerky. I really want to try it out one day. A few guys I know make venison jerky and I have even heard of kangaroo jerky. Don't really know how I got to this, but it has been in my head and I figured I would just share  

[Frosty]

Thanks for the thought Carver but there are lots of cook books just about smoking Salmon. It's not my favorite fish, too rich for me but some nice cold smoked silver for nibbles is tasty. Good salmon fishing depends on how far you want to drive when they're running, the ones spawning in Lucille Cr. about 1/2 mile from here aren't legal. Now if a fellow wanted to drive say 30-50 miles the Salmon runs can be good. Serious Salmon fishing is done a couple few hundred miles from here, on the Russian or Kenai rivers. You can catch them deep sea too.

Halibut's my favorite fish, though trout's darned good too, quick fried in butter over the camp fire while they're still wiggling out of the creek. Almost anything out of the ocean's good but I LOVES dem big flat fish. Yes I do. Mmmmmmmmm.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Takeru691]

15 hours ago, jukejoint said:

How many believe that there should not have been a winner last week

They needed a winner and i think that the judges had to chose the best of the worse. i kind of agree when they said that a bent sword can be repair but not a broken one. 

[Steve Sells]

and the poor guy that could not even harden a knife used to be a member here, too bad he never read the Heat Treat stickys   none of them seemed to understand the full HT process, but the two finalists got further than I would have in only 5 days to make a sword.

[Forging Carver]

Now I don't know much about knifemaking but I have made a few knives before. I have also watched enough knife makers make knives that I have a general sense of what's right. When I saw both of them quench their swords, I was thinking that one was too dull of a red and the other was around the ball park, maybe a bit higher. That explains why the one sword bent. As far as the other sword goes, his tempering must have not gone well since it cracked. Again, I don't know much but that is what I saw even before the outcome.

[ThomasPowers]

I once judged a very nice "first sword": fellow was on the tank course at Fort X blew a leafspring off an APC, (BOOM) and then made them stop the tank so he could lug it back (It's good to rank your underlings...rather a tautology I know...)  So he spent all this time with primitive tooling to make a sword; I tracked him down to discuss the heat treat as he had not documented that on his entry.  Good alloy, a bit  questionable to possible damage being blown off the APC. So I was asking how he heat treated it:  Heated it to temp Y (visual colour check) then quenched it; too hard, heated it up to temp Z (VCC) then quenched it; still too hard; Heated it up under the full austenitizing temp (cue Arghhhhhhhh!) and quenched it.  Acceptable hardness in his opinion.  No tempering on any of the tries.  No concept of what heat treat is and how it works.  Immense amount of work wasted when an hour's worth of research would have allowed him to make a blade and not a bomb.

[Aditya B]

On 3/7/2016 at 4:31 AM, jukejoint said:

How many believe that there should not have been a winner last week

perfectly said 

as far as my opinion concerned a bend and broken both are failure

and as this week was concerned Illya was a certain winner for shield making. I watched his videos over man at arms as compared to them his knife came out under expected.

[jukejoint]

Yep they always say that the weapon must not fail in a battle situation, umm a bent sword is a fail 

[ThomasPowers]

Under severe battle abuse a sword will bend (take a set) or break.  Japanese swords are heat treated to bend rather than break, (well the edge may break---look up the reason for Ashi), you can still parry with a bent sword, not so much with a broken one.  Back in the ancient times Roman swords were described as having to be straightened after a battle; though in Viking times one fighter knew his good sword had been swapped out for a low grade one as he had to straighten it under foot during a battle.

[Frosty]

Were you in a battle you wouldn't stop fighting if your sword broke. . . Well right away that is. The stub of the snapped sword would still be pretty lethal.

 Frankly I don't think either would've left the bladesmith's.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Forging Carver]

I agree, you rather have your blade bend than break. A bent blade can still be fixed. How bout the last episode though? That one guy was a trooper. He kept going even though he could barely move his arm. Also, this was the first time i saw that something other than a blade was made for the finalists. It was pretty cool. I have to say though, what they make these smiths do in that 3 hour period is getting harder and harder. That's why I don't lose any respect for the losers because just like what Steve and Frosty say,they would never let nothing but the best to their expetations out of their shop. 

[jukejoint]

I agree but this sword bent over like a wet noodle , has there been any master blades smiths on the show excluding the judge ?

[Frosty]

I can't recall his name but his hammering style is the main reason he's in such beat up shape. Hard grip on the hammer and driving it into the anvil like he was punching it. IIRC he had his thumb on top of the handle as well. He taped his arm just below the elbow meaning he was gripping the hammer in a near death grip. Maybe if I can get a short video of that I can play it for students to show what happens if you do it wrong.

I teach my students how to hold and swing a hammer for max power and virtually ZERO impact damage back through their skeleton. I cringed first time I saw him swing a hammer.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Forging Carver]

There we go, didn't pick up on that. this summer I am going to try out selling some forged stuff. Mainly some small pocket change stuff, but I am going to try and get into a few simple knives. I think I'm going to start out with simple Viking style knives that have the handles that draw down and then wrapped in a almost funky looking p/oval shape. Don't know how to describe it.

[ThomasPowers]

So got any pictures of them from digs relating to the viking era?  Generally I call that type "self hilted" but they are not common in the historical record. Probably due to the amount of metal that hilt takes up---compare them to the wittle tangs in "Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London" 

[Forging Carver]

On 3/10/2016 at 9:55 PM, ThomasPowers said:

So got any pictures of them from digs relating to the viking era?  Generally I call that type "self hilted" but they are not common in the historical record. Probably due to the amount of metal that hilt takes up---compare them to the wittle tangs in "Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London" 

I'll have to pm you. They took away the post and put it in another thread which then got deleted. 

Your post was deleted because it was not yours but another makers knife  We do not allow copyright violations to be posted here. We suggest in the future you only post  your own work.

[notownkid]

On ‎3‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 7:02 PM, jukejoint said:

master blades smiths on the show excluding the judge ?

I think I've seen all the shows most times 2-3 times to look closely at the shop & Equip.  Has anyone seen products of the Judges?  I also like seeing the "Home Shops" of the 2 finalists.  I as impressed this past week when the winner said he would use the $10,000 to pay  down Student loans and help his wife/girlfriend with her education.

[Frosty]

I liked the Ilya, I'd like to spend time with him in the shop. I'll bet he knows some great jokes and funny stories.

I think he was just too ambitious making his billet, there just wasn't time to refine out the inclusions nor a hot enough forge. Mostly the hurried wrap was just sloppy and pretty much doomed to inclusions. I was frankly surprised he was able to refine as many out as he did.

Of course there were chips in his blade, the changes in alloys were too abrupt and inclusions were nothing but distributed cold shuts.

That he won is a testimony to how poor the other blades were. I'm thinking if Ilya had time to refine the billet a few more times, say a couple few folds and aggressive fluxing it might've turned out to be good stock and a striking etch. With that time limit? . . .

Notown: Two of the judges are top shelf bladesmiths, you can look them up and see what they've made. You can also tell they have experience by their comments during the forging sessions. They're calling mistakes sometimes before they're made. Misreading the steel's temperature before quenching every single time it's been screwed up. None were present when the swords were screwed up in heat treat.

The host/ narrater/ whatever is a special forces of one branch or another I can't recall not a maker. He has the voice and hosts a couple other shows. It's not hard to tell he's not a maker, he's been surprised by obvious faults a number of times and basis his comments on the judges opinions. His recent use of the term "tempering" for the entire heat treating process is a prime example of his call it, inexpert or vernacular knowledge of the processes.

One of my main enjoyments watching FIF, calling results during the making. I'm not into the show for the "neener neener neener" value(?) of calling out the mistakes but I do enjoy being able to call results during making. I've been a little disappointed in a couple episodes when they awarded a "champion" when there were no successful blades. such is "reality" TV. Oh well.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Smoggy]

Back on topic...... I've avoided this thread for the most part, just in case Forged in Fire is ever aired here in the UK, I didn't want any spoilers.......

It starts on History channel this month.....

[notownkid]

Smoggy I must say from past experience what the US sends your way for shows are inferior to a lot you send our way.  It's interesting to watch, one has got to learn something watching people do what we do (using the term loosely)  even if it's what not to do that way.  I was surprised to see it come back for another season.  Certainly seems to have generated a few 100,000 new bladesmiths looking for anvils! 

[Dogsoldat]

Did anyone else notice the dies used in the press to shape the Viking sword last night.  Thought that was a pretty slick idea.

 

[Kozzy]

8 hours ago, Scrambler82 said:

 

The winners sword…  nice enough, is there a way to determine the proper heat treating method for that particular steel ?

When the testing of the swords was going on, he said something about not knowing if the steel cold be hardened ?

it performed well, didn’t bend or break, so I am guessing his hardening method wasn’t too far off !

The problem was he started with an unknown alloy from old far equipment.  One can guess but you never know...In this case, he got lucky.

I just did some basic poking about regarding those handheld x-ray fluorescence spectrometers (XRF) and they run in the $ 20K USD range.  People selling the "service" of using their to ID your metal seem to charge about $ 100-$ 150 USD.  Maybe we should get everyone one who signed up to IFI to chip in a buck and buy one to share   I get first dibs.