I Have a Taste for Edgy TV

I want to brag about a great achievement. I have recorded and watched nearly every episode of Forged in Fire.

When I first saw promos for the show, I thought it was stupid. I didn’t trust reality TV game show contestants to know anything about making knives, and I figured the whole thing was BS. I am not sure my opinion has changed, but nonetheless, I got suckered in.

Here is how Forged in Fire works. Four oddly-dressed guys with strange social quirks arrive in a room full of forging equipment. Two guys just like them, plus a very unusual martial arts expert, sit at a table to judge them. A man who used to be an Army Ranger or something stands by the table and plays emcee. The contestants get three hours to make blades out of weird materials. Then one contestant gets tossed. Then they get three more hours to finish their knives. Then one more gets tossed. Then the remaining two are sent home for five days, during which time they produce blades to be entered in a final competition.

They don’t tell you the show takes two days to film. After the contestants make their knives, the people who run the show temper them, and the contestants return the next day. In the interim, the contestants are sequestered in the Hallowed Hall of the Bladesmiths’ Guild, or as you and I call it, “La Quinta.”

The winner gets a life-changing check for $10,000. It’s kind of funny watching the emcee say, “TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS,” like he’s telling them they won at Powerball. It’s a real Dr. Evil moment. “I’ll destroy the world unless you give me TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, plus some frickin’ sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.”

There are only three guys who are there every single time. The first is David Baker. He made swords for the Highlander shows. He has a goatee. He will remind you of the old guy who played the Wizard of Oz. He wears a very tight vest with a tie. Makes me uncomfortable to watch him.

The second permanent fixture is Wil Willis. This is the Army guy. He has thick, kinky hair which is different in every episode. You never know what it will be. Man bun. Pony tail. It’s like he, or his hair, is searching for something.

The third fixture is Doug Marcaida, a Filipino who teaches an art called kali. I know nothing about it, and neither do you, which means it’s probably not a great martial art. Knives figure prominently. Martial artists agree: an art which allows you to carry a bunch of knives is more effective than all the ones that don’t.

Marcaida is great because he tests the weapons to see if they will kill. The show buys very expensive see-through ballistics dummies made of gelatin. They have plastic bones and guts, and they’re full of colored fluids to simulate blood. Marcaida lunges at them and does all sorts of gross things to them. Then he sticks his fingers in the wounds and makes them spurt. If he likes a blade, he sort of bows his head and says, “Your weapon…will KILL.” This is the highlight of the show.

The “kill” and “weapon” stuff is contrived. The show’s creators are behind it. Most knife makers pay the bills with things like chef knives, but no audience wants to see a show where people compete to make kitchen equipment. No one wants to hear Doug Marcaida say, “Your weapon…will SPATCHCOCK.”

The contestants make knives in what is possibly the worst way known to man. They take steel that rusts, heat it up, and pound it with hammers. This was great technology in 300 B.C., but now we have magnificent stainless steels and electric grinders. If you actually want to make a good knife, you buy stainless, grind it into shape, and send it off to be heat-treated.

Forging knives on an anvil is very cool, but the results are hard to predict, and you end up with a rust-prone knife which is inferior to modern knives in every possible way, including cost of production. It may have hidden faults that will make it snap when you put pressure on it. The edge may have soft spots. The steel may have a coarse grain that makes it weak. Still, a home-forged knife looks pretty neat when you put on your kilt or viking horns or whatever and prance off to frolic with your interesting buddies at the nearest medieval reenactment festival.

“Toss me a Pabst, ye varlets, and check out my new panzerstecher.”

Unless you know what you’re doing, using a forge to make a knife is an iffy business under the best circumstances, but when you get just three hours to do it in a TV studio with no air conditioning or fans, and you have to make the knife from an old tricycle or a frying pan, it’s even riskier. The creators of the show love to give the contestants total garbage to work with, and often, the results are about what you would expect. The amazing thing is that many of the smiths manage to make beautiful knives that actually work.

Blind hogs and acorns, I guess.

Many of the contestants are certified “master smiths,” accredited by an organization known as the ABS. The BS part may be dominant. Over and over, men who say they are master smiths make awful knives on the show, and sometimes you’ll see them get thrashed by kids just out of high school.

I could start an organization tomorrow and call it the International Guild of Expert Knife Dudes. No one could stop me. I could certify people left and right, in exchange for beers. I kind of wonder if this is how the ABS works. Except they probably ask for mead.

If you’re a master at anything, you don’t screw up royally, even on TV. Take a master cooper, hundreds of years ago. A guy like that couldn’t survive if 30% of his barrels leaked. Full-time, serious craftsmen know their stuff. They learn from repetition. I seriously doubt that a man who spends an hour a week using a propane forge in his lawnmower shed is a real master.

If you want to win on Forged in Fire, I can tell you how. The contestants always do the same dumb things. They don’t get beaten; they lose. All you need to do is avoid their mistakes.

1. Do NOT try to impress the judges with a fancy blade with unnecessary Damascus, a fuller, finger rings, USB ports, or anything else that isn’t required. You will fail. You have three hours to do a day’s work, so cut the crap and make something that functions. Let the guy with the Viking-rune face tattoos do the overreaching.

2. Do NOT take the judges seriously when they tell you to incorporate a useless type of steel in your blade. If they say you have to use a Slinky in your knife, weld one quarter of an inch of Slinky to the end of the handle and let it go. Do NOT incorporate huge amounts of Slinky in your blade or try to harden Slinky steel. It will fail, and it will not walk downstairs by itself, either.

3. Do NOT try anything new. Are you kidding? This never works. As a cook, I learned something a long time ago: when you’re cooking for guests, you don’t experiment. Cook your dishes exactly the same way you cook them every week, or you will be disgrace yourself. Same thing goes for making knives. If the camera catches you saying, “I’ve never tried this before, but…”, you WILL be sent home after the first round.

4. Do NOT wear a leather hat, a leather vest, leather pants, a leather apron, musketeer boots, and your favorite long-sleeved wool tunic. Do NOT dress in your favorite impractical nerd costume, even though all your pals down at the D&D club are watching. Contestants say it gets to over 100 degrees in the studio, and heat exhaustion will get you even if you’re wearing all your mystical Asatruar amulets and praying to Wodin. Not even boots of escaping can save you from the laws of physics. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people collapsed on chairs while the show’s EMT’s try to get them to drink fluids. If you’re wearing a hat indoors while working over a forge, people already know you’re bald, so go ahead, take it off, and release some heat.

5. MICARTA! MICARTA! MICARTA! How many times do I have to say it? NEVER make a handle from something brittle like antler, bone, “stabilized” pine cone, wood, kirinite, or ANYTHING THAT BREAKS. Micarta is essentially fiberglass made with cloth. It is nearly impossible to break. USE IT.

6. MEASURE YOUR BLADE. The hosts always tell people how long to make their blades. Then people show up with blades that aren’t even close. How are you a master smith if you can’t work a ruler?

7. Do NOT wait until two minutes before the time is up to heat and quench your blade. Your blade will warp. Your blade will fail to harden. Something bad will happen. Give yourself time to fix whatever goes wrong.

8. When you’re making your blade at home, PUT THE QUENCH TANK OUTDOORS. Do NOT start an oil fire inside a building where you keep $100,000 worth of tools. Obvious?

Forged in Fire is a lot like life. Avoiding obvious mistakes will get you far. If you don’t smoke, drink, use drugs, or stuff yourself, you will probably make it to 70 in good health. If you don’t make the classic Forged in Fire mistakes, you are almost certain to make it to the last round.

I don’t know if it’s smart for a knife maker to appear on Forged in Fire. When you make blades in private, no one sees your mistakes. If you make a bad blade and it breaks, you can replace it quietly. If you screw up on Forged in Fire, people will think you always screw up, and there goes your already-struggling business. One contestant complained about his business tanking after his loss.

There’s a Youtube guy who makes neat videos on knife forging. He comes across as a person of gravitas; a guru. He seems totally self-possessed, and besides, he makes Japanese-style blades, which adds a level of smugness. I don’t know why people are so convinced the Japanese are the master race. They make nice cars, but they have nearly every Western vice, plus dental problems and racism.

This guy appeared on Forged in Fire and made a blade that snapped in the first round. He says it was because the studio lights were so bright he couldn’t tell how hot the knife was when he quenched it. Probably true, but if you’re going to spend $300 on a dubious handmade knife, is this the guy you’ll choose?

Some of the contestants really are masters. They plod along quietly and do everything right. They produce works of art, even in the early rounds. Tellingly, they rarely require breaks or oxygen masks. They do very impressive work without struggling or fretting, which is what you should expect from masters.

I remember a guy named Burt. He has a gorgeous workshop. He makes flawless knives. He even makes them for his wife. Their kitchen is full of them. His work is on a level way beyond the stuff most other contestants make. When he works, nothing goes wrong, because he knows his job. That’s what “master” means. Once you’ve seen a guy like Burt at work, it’s hard to be impressed by someone who dresses like Robin Hood and makes blades with cracks in them.

I love the tools some of the contestants have at home. I admit, some work in the dirt, using modified hibachis or whatever. On the other hand, some have huge shops with giant power hammers and machine tools. The quality of the tools and the quality of the work aren’t always related, however.

The Forged in Fire people have a new show: Knife or Die. It’s hard to discuss, because I don’t want to ridicule anyone. Any person with a desire to compete can show up with a big knife, and they will turn you loose on an obstacle course of things to cut. The first episode featured a Caucasian man wearing an Aikido costume and running shoes. I am serious. He carried a katana or “samurai sword,” even though aikido guys aren’t taught how to fight with swords. He hit a block of ice with it, and it bent in the middle.

That was a major blow to the Japan cult. Katanas are supposed to cut concrete blocks! At least that’s what they say in the Tokyo airport gift shop.

Why does aikido attract troubled people with unrealistic expectations? A high school friend of mine took up aikido. The Internet says he runs a dojo now. He gave his life to aikido. Unfortunately, aikido has a serious problem: it doesn’t work at all. Sure, you can twist people’s wrists and immobilize them if they are stupid enough to give you their hands, but everyone who has tried aikido in the ring has had his behind handed to him in individually wrapped slices. I can’t understand devoting your life to a martial art which can be defeated easily by 95% of angry untrained drunks. Would you open a store that only sold appliances that didn’t work?

Here are the words that start every single aikido demonstration: “Give me your hand.”

People are enchanted by Japan. They think the Japanese have deep wisdom we lack. They do, and here it is: do your job well and treat your elders and your boss with respect. That’s about it; the rest is hocus pocus. There are no Japanese superpowers. There is no chi. Steven Seagal has never once used magical Japanese aikido to fight a real fight because he knows he would experience humiliating losses.

Forged in Fire has its funny moments, but Knife of Die is a little too ridiculous to lampoon. It’s almost sad. It’s probably dangerous, too. Untrained eccentrics swinging razor-sharp knives of unknown quality in a timed test are a recipe for deep wounds and severe blood loss. I would hate to be in the studio when half of a knife goes flying off at 60 miles per hour.

They hired Goldberg, a former professional wrestler, to do commentary. Thank God. A TV wrestler! That will give the show a little dignity.

It’s a fun watch, but not nearly as entertaining as the original.

Now you know how to win on Forged in Fire. If you compete, I will expect a check for $5,000.00. You better cough it up, because if you don’t, I have my aikido costume and running shoes hanging in the closet.