Mountain Men trying to get in on the Knifemaking Craze.

Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith

Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith

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I watched a couple episodes of "Mountain Men" recently. They had a young fellow who made his own steel from iron ore he pulled from deep in a cave. The tartara and melt was sort of OK, but I doubt the product was much good, and it took way less time than it does in real life. For the weeks of work and poor amount of product (ignoring quality) he could have got a dozen feet of good steel from Aldo.
This week, they were making blades from a 20"saw blade that looked like shiny chrome steel. When cutting the blade out with a cutting torch, the saw blade was rusty steel. The blank was cut and they told the viewers tat you had to heat the blade to 1500F to make it pliable for forging. He forged it to a rough camp knife shape without even grinding off the torch cut perimeter. Then they pulled out a shallow pan of black goop and said it was quenchant. He heated the blade and quenched and it warped 2" sideways. He said you cam only requench the blade one more time before it is ruined, and did and edge quench, which came out prefect ... according to him. he told how the lower part was very hard and the upper part was soft. You could clearly see a crack going down from the spine at least 1/2 inch. He then struck the hidden tang in a vise and proceed to file away the hardened steel with an old file ( sawing back and forth with the file). He showed how he was filing down past the forge scale and getting the hard steel shine and shaped. You could see what appeared to be grinder marks from a belt grinder on the blade.

Anyway, it just trips my trigger to see stuff that clearly isn't vetted by anyone who knows what they are doing, as well as things to fake the results.
 
On the plus side, though, the more folks that see this method and try to duplicate it on their own only makes those who know what they're doing appear that much better....:rolleyes::cool::p
 
I saw the same episodes. Where I live in South East NM we have lots of limestone caves and I have been in most of them. I have never seen any kind of iron ore in any of them. Maybe caves in Arkansas are different. Like Stacy said with all the time and effort to make his own steel he could have gotten hundreds of pounds of leaf spring steel from a junk yard or better steel from Aldo. But that's TV for you.
I also saw the episode on "Mountain Man" I noticed they didn't ever give the audience a good clear view of the finished product. They also didn't tell how many hours or days it took him to file the hardened blade into the finished product ( I doubt he did it all with a file) But again, that's TV for you.
 
I've never watched an episode of Mountain Men, but I've known a few real live Mountain Men. For one thing the Mountain Men I knew were remarkably adverse to publicity. I can't see a single one of them wanting to be in the public eye. And while they could make do with what ever was available, you can be certain that whatever they made would at the least be serviceable and probably quite well made.

I find all of these so called "reality show's" lacking in any authenticity.
 
Yes, I was thinking that the "limestone cave" ore hunt was questionable. From what I found in searching it seems they may have got that info from the game Minecraft where you mine your iron ore deep in the earth in creeper caves (whatever those are).

I think the producers don't understanding the relationship of iron ore and limestone. You use limestone in reducing ore in smelting.
 
From a cavers point of view the segment of going into a limestone cave to find iron ore just doesn't happen at least not in all the caves around the Carlsbad Caverns.
Also, the segment gave the impression he went in alone. That violates the first rule of caving. Never cave alone (look up Floyd Collins). Second, he left no markers. (reflective tape on a stick) to find his way back out. Third he blew up part of the cave so he could go further. (Very dangerous and damaging to the cave). How many sources of light did he have?
Reality TV is really not very real.
 
Actually, he says something to the film crew when going through a tight place and again when setting off the explosion. It was all clearly set up for that camera and not as tight and difficult as it was filmed to appear.

The black powder explosion was stupid and silly. I know no caver who would have done that.
 
If you look deeper into the mountain men series you'll find out that non of them are mountain men for real and many on that show actually moved there to run from the law in the lower 48. Its a totally bogus show that does not deserve your time.
 
Mountain Men is one of the few shows I can tolerate on cable. The older gentlemen from the Northern Rockies in Montana, Mr Tom Oar, is by far the most talented, humble, and entertaining guy on the show. But I just have to laugh at these guys like Eustace from the Blue Ridge Mountains and Jason Clark (if i have his name right) making "his own steel", and their "knife making". I get it tho.....they aren't as educated as we are, they don't understand the nuances that we do, especially when it comes to heat treat. I appreciate the effort, and the ambition. But, as far as the craft goes....no. It's like Forged in Fire. Just.....NO.
 
I suspect that after a group of episodes are filmed, they get into their brand new $75K Chevy truck and drive to their very comfortable homer in town …. or, they fly back to LA until time to film the next six or so episodes back to back. While filming, I suspect there are some very nice RV's or trailers on the set.

A show more fake than Mountain Men is Alaskan Bush People.
 
Jason was actually on an episode of forged in fire if that means anything lol.
 
The thing I think about when watching shows like this is what the “actor” (if you can call them that) is going through. I don’t know Jason but he seams to have some set of skills and has to know what he is saying is wrong. How hard up would you have to be to betray what you know because a producer tells you what to say. I don’t think I could do it and I think that’s kinda why I like forged in fire. It seams my real the 99% of the reality tv out there. Sure thy are not given optimum conditions or materials but I have come to grips with the fact that it’s not about that. It’s about how good are you with XZY conditions. And yeah it needs drama to hold audience.

Wife and I use to enjoy mountain men but after the last episode “mining iron ore because its cheeper” we stopped watching.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
I suspect that after a group of episodes are filmed, they get into their brand new $75K Chevy truck and drive to their very comfortable homer in town …. or, they fly back to LA until time to film the next six or so episodes back to back. While filming, I suspect there are some very nice RV's or trailers on the set.

A show more fake than Mountain Men is Alaskan Bush People.
Click to expand...
I was on an Episode of Pawn Stars. All of these “Reality” shows are completely staged! There is very little to nothing real about reality TV ..
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Yes, I was thinking that the "limestone cave" ore hunt was questionable. From what I found in searching it seems they may have got that info from the game Minecraft where you mine your iron ore deep in the earth in creeper caves (whatever those are).
Click to expand...
It's been some time since I played Minecraft but there aren't limestone caves in Minecraft.
Creeper is an enemy in the game. Basically a zombie that explodes.
The more you know I guess?
 
And how much could they get for one of those "blades" just because they are on the TV? :rolleyes:
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
I watched a couple episodes of "Mountain Men" recently. They had a young fellow who made his own steel from iron ore he pulled from deep in a cave. The tartara and melt was sort of OK, but I doubt the product was much good, and it took way less time than it does in real life. For the weeks of work and poor amount of product (ignoring quality) he could have got a dozen feet of good steel from Aldo.
This week, they were making blades from a 20"saw blade that looked like shiny chrome steel. When cutting the blade out with a cutting torch, the saw blade was rusty steel. The blank was cut and they told the viewers tat you had to heat the blade to 1500F to make it pliable for forging. He forged it to a rough camp knife shape without even grinding off the torch cut perimeter. Then they pulled out a shallow pan of black goop and said it was quenchant. He heated the blade and quenched and it warped 2" sideways. He said you cam only requench the blade one more time before it is ruined, and did and edge quench, which came out prefect ... according to him. he told how the lower part was very hard and the upper part was soft. You could clearly see a crack going down from the spine at least 1/2 inch. He then struck the hidden tang in a vise and proceed to file away the hardened steel with an old file ( sawing back and forth with the file). He showed how he was filing down past the forge scale and getting the hard steel shine and shaped. You could see what appeared to be grinder marks from a belt grinder on the blade.

Anyway, it just trips my trigger to see stuff that clearly isn't vetted by anyone who knows what they are doing, as well as things to fake the results.
Click to expand...
 
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