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Forged In Fire Tests


OtterHere

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I am watching this show on History, "Forged in Fire." I don't know how many people have seen or even like it. I watch them quenching their blades for hardening, but not tempering it. Is that even possible; to harden the blade and not temper it?

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depends on the alloy,  how you harden it and what you plan to do with it and your personal preferences.  Some traditionation katana are hardened without tempering as they used a shallow hardening medium carbon steel and the clay backing to keep the back from hardening and so support a more brittle edge.

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I also remember reading about smiths who begin the hardening quench, only to remove the blade from the liquid before it goes fully "hard". I think there was an article in Blade magazine some time ago about a knife maker in the South Pacific islands who used Jeep leaf springs as his "really good blade steel" and quenched them in water, but removed them at "the right moment" when he was certain it had reached the right hardness.

Maybe Rik Furrer will chime in on this. I think he did something similar with that +Ulfberh+t sword in that Secrets of the Viking Swords documentary. http://video.pbs.org/video/2284159044/

I may be totally wrong about that, but that's what it looks like is happening at around 46:20 and there's no mention in the video of any tempering process following the quench.

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  • 5 weeks later...

one of the contestants just heated it long enough for the blade and the bevel to get to quenching heat. that way the edge was hardened but the spine wasn't.

Do you realize than a few of those contestants , are members here at IFI ? Including the man you are talking about, David Roeder , who did the Hamon with out using clay.

 

 

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Been wondering about this also.  With the numerous blades that have shown up with cracks on the show I would have expected these expert blade smiths to at least torch temper the spines.  Based on the typical requirement for both chopping and slicing capacity I'd probably temper fairly aggressively.  I think that is just as exciting to watch ( especially if they could capture the color change and have the expert commentators talk about why this is critical) as seeing yet another crossection reduced in the press or power hammer.  It does appear like the smiths are often quenching their blades in the last 10 minutes of their allotted forging time.  You would think leaving that 5-10 minutes to either torch temper or tong temper would be prudent.

Of course what I would really like to see is demos of austempering, marquenching and Cryogenic hardening, along with detailed analysis and descriptions, but can see how that might not be as interesting to the general public.

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Editing can make things appear to occur in any order, whatever the editor THINKS is most dramatic. Reality isn't really a factor in "reality TV."

Today they run the whole series as a lead in for tonight's episode so I've been watching. In two instances, I caught, the editor sequenced it so the bladesmith said he was about to "temper" the blade for . . . Cut to shot of bladesmith Quenching the blade. In one of the above scenes hen the bladesmith said he was about to temper the blade he was holding in the tongs was still smoking lightly. There isn't one of the bladesmith contestants who'd make that level mistake in terminology or he wouldn't be able to talk to other bladesmiths.

Don't let the editing fool you. What we see is a small fraction of the jobs they're doing. We're seeing two 3 hr. competitions and a 3 day competition in maybe half an hour actual show time.

Frosty The Lucky.

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I just re-watched the video on the Viking sword,  Rik Furrer  does temper it just before the polishing portion.  They don't cover it very well but it is mentioned.

The Forged in Fire show is pretty lame.  Nothing is said about materials and very little about processes that we all know the Smiths had to use.  It reminds me of just another 'reality' show. 

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  • 1 month later...

I just found this thread. So to clarify to those watching...

 

We as the contestants did the heat treating ourselves, on the show, during the taping, but even though the tempering process was not shown, J.Neilson did the tempering for everyone after hours. So, were they tempered, yes they were. 

Hope that answered the question.

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I just found this thread. So to clarify to those watching...

 

We as the contestants did the heat treating ourselves, on the show, during the taping, but even though the tempering process was not shown, J.Neilson did the tempering for everyone after hours. So, were they tempered, yes they were. 

Hope that answered the question.

Boy am I glad you jumped in here! Can you give us an idea how much production time went into an episode as opposed to the hour show time? I'm thinking it was a week anyway.

Thanks, Frosty The Lucky.

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Would those be 8hr. days, longer shorter? I'm aware it takes a lot to produce an hour of air time show. Old days they took a week to produce a 1 hr.show and there were only about 20 minutes of commercials per hour. Now it's more like 40 minutes of commercials per hour.

If I were to be simplistic and say eight 1hr. days it'd still be an 8:1 production ratio and even with modern tech, that's really unrealistic.

Just so you know I enjoyed the program. Then again I didn't expect instructional TV and it was pretty close to what I expected. Sure I wish there was more time looking over you guys shoulders while you did the tricky bits. Say: how you isolated sections, How you estimated finished dimensions from stock dimensions and how close you got to your estimation.

Oh heck, who built the forges? What make were the anvils? You used your own hand tools yes? What do you estimate the air temp on the set?

Okay, I'll let up. . . for now. ;)

Frosty The Lucky.

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Mr. Roeder, yes, please elaborate on the details of the show, Myself and a whole bunch of amateur smiths, and some of our metalworking adjacent buddies, have been hashing out what happens on Forged in Fire for months now.   The show is not really instructional, but compared to a lot of reality TV out there, its pretty good.  People with skills, who respect each others work, and compete based on those skills in admittedly contrived circumstances?  That's a far cry from a lot of reality shows, where the most dysfunctional personality rises to the top.

I get the exciting TV bit, slow mo swords through meat and sand bags (I want an 'it will kill' t shirt), but personally, I'd rather see smiths forging Suffolk latches or hinges, maybe with everyone using the same kit of hammers, tongs and punches.

 

 

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  • 4 months later...

They do in fact temper their blades. They just don't show it because it doesn't look good on tv. Just imagine that. I mean I guess they can talk a little about tempering it or cut to a short scene on the blades getting tempered but other than that, unless your actually physically tempering it with a torch or something, standing in front of an oven for an hour or so is kinda boring especially in filming it. Another note, this show is not an instructional knife/weapon making show. It's a show for entertainment. For instance the Food Network. Most of the shows don't even elaborate on the techniques of cooking. They just cook the xxxx dish and show you the end result. Some shows do in fact go into detail but those are the boring instructional stuff. Some people like that kind of thing and some don't. Of course us being the blacksmiths/bladesmiths etc. would love to watch a show that instructs in great detail what goes in to making stuff but that wouldn't appeal to everyone. Forged in fire is show is for everyone. Even my 80 year old Grandma loves the show and she knows nothing about blacksmith and such. It's entertainment! It's interesting! It's not an instructional show! So let this show open eyes in how cool, fun and interesting it is and then everything else falls into place. More and more people get curious and want to know more. It just sucks that a lot of people say, "wow they don't temper their blades? This show sucks! Dumpster diving for steel? This sucks! This sucks that sucks! Blah blah!" Be happy, be positive and don't hate. :)

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If we want an instructional blacksmithing program blacksmiths will have to produce one. Something like "Good Eats" would be outstanding but I doubt if there'd be enough public appeal to keep it up long. TV time is expensive. I'd watch though, you bet. We need Mike Rowe to narrate, great voice and he picks up the important details quickly so he's not just a talking head.

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 1 month later...

Ok so on last nights episode in the final test for the blades they lined up like half a dozen bungee cords that were pulled a little taught and said that a sharp blade should cut right through that line of cords even after already cutting through a carcas. I just wanted to know is that even possible at all. I mean to me a few of the tests have been a bit on the out there side of things but this one just bugged me. So any thoughts on this?

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i also notice this and when you see the replay you can notice that the angle of the blade is not totally perpendicular to the bungee cord when Doug try to slice them. I don't see those bungee being cut without a back and fort slicing  motion witrh the cord resting on a hard surface.

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Not delivering a perpendicular blow is something I've seen on "I THINK" all the crunching, chopping and slicing test slomos. Handles have a lot to do with misalignment of the blade on contact but not all of the handles can have been too round, loose, whatever.

I'd have to go stretch some heavy bungies, sharpen my sabre and take a slash it to see. No Theo I didn't make the sabre I bought it like 40 years ago and don't even have it hanging on a wall right now. I took a file to it before buying it and it's reasonably hard for what is undoubtedly a ceremonial or dress uniform sabre. It holds an edge fairly well chopping brush, the only "test" I've ever done.

I'll still watch and even pick up the odd bit of info.

Frosty The Lucky.

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What I noticed was that the first sword bounced back and whacked him pretty hard on the upper arm/shoulder, edge first.  Had that been a razor sharp blade, things could have gotten really ugly.  I was surprised that they didn't skip the second test or take some precaution against it happening again.

Had to point that out in case someone decides to test bungies themselves.  Leather coat or something might be a good idea.

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4 minutes ago, Kozzy said:

What I noticed was that the first sword bounced back and whacked him pretty hard on the upper arm/shoulder, edge first.  Had that been a razor sharp blade, things could have gotten really ugly.  I was surprised that they didn't skip the second test or take some precaution against it happening again.

Had to point that out in case someone decides to test bungies themselves.  Leather coat or something might be a good idea.

Yes it sure did. Have you noticed he's wearing leather over ballistic nylon? When it recoiled Doug also turned the blade to strike flat. I'm surprised he did another test using that method.

I wasn't thinking of swinging the sabre myself if I wanted to reproduce the test. I was thinking of an air driven "robot" ALA Mythbusters. A little steel a little welding an old semi brake can, an air compressor, some bungis and VIOLA! A robot would be a good way to make sure the blade hit on it's slicing plane too.

  Frosty The Lucky.

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On 4/13/2016 at 3:06 PM, Kozzy said:

What I noticed was that the first sword bounced back and whacked him pretty hard on the upper arm/shoulder, edge first.  Had that been a razor sharp blade, things could have gotten really ugly.  I was surprised that they didn't skip the second test or take some precaution against it happening again.

Had to point that out in case someone decides to test bungies themselves.  Leather coat or something might be a good idea.

Yea i noticed that too. I had flashbacks to that video of the guy on the shopping channel who was selling some blades and one broke while he was banging it and it stabbed him in the shoulder. I sure as xxxx wont be trying this any time soon at home.

Honestly i was just wondering if it was even possible. I mean imagine you worked your hardest to make a blade for them to test and then they put you up against something that is actually impossible to do. You look like a failure on national television and its not your fault at all.

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