Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, the van pulled up in front of the hotel right on time.

Lin Yuan was already waiting at the door.

There were already three other contestants on the bus. A burly man wearing a baseball cap in the back row saw Lin Yuan get on the bus, looked him up and down, said nothing, and continued to throw chocolate beans into his mouth.

Upon arriving at the film and television base, the staff led them into the athletes' lounge.

A whiteboard in the corner displayed today's competition schedule—the morning session started at 8:00 AM, and the afternoon session started at 16:00 PM. Each session was a complete round of competition: three hours to forge the blade blank, eliminating one person; two hours to make the handle and polish it, eliminating another person.

After two rounds, the remaining two contestants will advance to the finals. In the finals, they will return to their respective workshops and have five days to forge weapons based on a specific theme.

Production assistant Mark pushed open the door and greeted the contestants in the afternoon session: "The audience area for the morning session is open. I suggest you go and watch it live to experience the atmosphere."

Lin Yuan stood up. The audience area was located on one side of the workshop, separated by a black fence.

He found a seat in the corner, placed his thermos next to his feet, and could see the entire view of the four workstations from his angle.

At 8:00 AM sharp, recording began. The topic was displayed on the big screen: a standard hunting knife, with a blade length of no more than five inches, made of 1095 high-carbon steel.

The competition began with all four contestants lighting their torches simultaneously.

Lin Yuan's gaze swept across the four workstations, and he quickly locked onto the object he wanted to observe.

The young man at workstation number two ran into trouble right from the start.

The steel billet was taken out for forging before it was fully heated, and the sound of the hammer hitting the billet was dull - the temperature was not high enough, and each hammer blow was difficult.

The flames in his furnace were whitish, the damper was opened too wide, and the surface temperature was high, but the center was not yet fully heated.

He clearly discovered the problem halfway through the forging process and sent the billet back into the furnace, wasting nearly twenty minutes in the process.

Lin Yuan mentally made a note of this: After igniting the fire, don't rush to hammer down. The steel billet must be thoroughly heated. When judging the color, don't look at the surface; look at the whole billet.

Robert taught him in the workshop that the forging window for high-carbon steel is inherently narrow, and the forging temperature range for 1095 is approximately between 980 and 850 degrees Celsius. Hard forging below this range is not only laborious but also leaves micro-cracks inside the material, all of which will be exposed during the quenching process.

The middle-aged worker at workstation number three operated the most neatly.

After forging, he performed an additional normalizing process, reheating the blank to above the critical temperature and then cooling it in air.

Lin Yuan understood the significance of this approach—uneven grains and residual stress are easily generated during the 1095 forging process. Normalizing can refine the grains and eliminate stress, laying a more uniform foundation for subsequent heat treatment.

But the cost was that it took almost twenty more minutes.

Lin Yuan considered it in his mind: if it were him, he would use the residual heat from the final forging temperature to directly perform normalizing, compressing the time to within ten minutes.

The process itself is fine, but time management can be made smarter.

After the quenching process began, the judges started walking along the workstation aisle.

The chief judge was a seasoned bladesmith. He stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest for less than three seconds in front of workstation number two. He glanced at the blank that had been criticized by the judges for not being forged properly due to insufficient temperature, and then walked away without saying a word.

Arrived three hours later. The judges inspected each of the four blank knives.

No. 2 was rejected because the forging temperature was not well controlled, resulting in micro-cracks on the cutting edge.

The remaining three advanced to the second round.

Lin Yuan watched as contestant number two packed up his tools, his hands trembling slightly. He remembered Matt asking him if he was nervous before the race.

Being nervous is a good thing, but if you're so nervous that you lose even the most basic sense of timing, that's another matter entirely.

After a short break, the second round began.

The handle installation and blade grinding were completed in two hours.

The materials on the shelf included handle materials: stabilized wood, Micarta, G10, brass, and antlers.

Lin Yuan noticed that among the three remaining contestants in the morning session, the bearded contestant number one was the fastest in choosing his materials. He glanced at them and immediately picked up the dark stabilized wood and the brass rod, clearly having already come up with a plan.

After he started attaching the handle, Lin Yuan observed more carefully—first, he drilled weight-reducing holes, then he made mosaic rivets, and the riveting was clean and neat.

The blade surface was polished using five different abrasive belts, from coarse to fine, while maintaining a stable rotation speed. After each section was polished, the blade was immediately immersed in water to cool it down.

Lin Yuan noted this down: the belt sander speed should not be too high, and it must be cooled down after each section of grinding. The high temperature generated by grinding will cause the cutting edge to anneal locally, and once the hardness is lost, it cannot be restored.

There was a mistake when installing the hand guards on No. 3.

The contact surface between the handguard and the base of the blade blank was not completely ground smooth, leaving a visible gap after installation.

He tried to fix it with a file, but the epoxy had already hardened, and it was too late.

Seeing the frustration on his face as he repeatedly pressed the gap with his thumb, Lin Yuan made a mental note: Before installing the hand guards, use a ruler to repeatedly check the flatness of the contact surface. The flatness of the surface made by filing is often not as good as that made by slowly grinding with a belt sander at low speed.

Robert mentioned in the workshop that the gaps in the handguards would become larger during subsequent use—not because of aesthetics, but because of stress concentration.

When chopping, the impact force on the handle is transmitted from the gap. The larger the gap, the more concentrated the stress, and the higher the risk of the handle breaking.

During the testing phase, the judges indeed pointed out the gaps in the handguard of knife number three—significantly affecting the grip feel when making precise cuts.

Fortunately, he had a solid foundation in heat treatment and annealing, so the blade did not chip or curl.

Knife number one performed the best overall, passing all three tests: cutting hemp rope, splitting wood, and chopping cow leg bones, with the blade remaining completely undamaged.

The morning session has ended, and players number one and number three have advanced to the final.

The one who was eliminated left behind grinding and burning marks on the blade blank—the belt sander was rotating too fast, and several bluish-purple marks were visible to the naked eye on the blade surface—Lin Yuan saw this in the audience and silently noted it down.

At noon, he ate a sandwich and salad in the lounge and mentally reviewed the key points he had seen that morning.

He reminded himself not to rush into action after igniting the fire, but to wait until the entire billet was fully heated before hammering it in. Hard forging is time-consuming and can easily leave hidden dangers.

The idea of ​​using the No. 3 normalizing process is correct, but the time arrangement can be more compact. Using the residual heat from the final forging can save several minutes.

Before installing the hand guards, the contact surfaces must be repeatedly checked to ensure they are flat, as gaps will be magnified during the testing phase.

The belt sander should operate at a steady speed, and the temperature should be reduced after each section of sanding. The mesh size should not be changed abruptly.

There are only a few points, and each one is about comparing your own process with the mistakes of others.

He remembered what his father had told him when he was in Longquan—it's much cheaper to stand by and watch others make mistakes than to make mistakes yourself and then correct them.

This morning's observation undoubtedly benefited him greatly, even more so than practicing on his own for three months.