I keep saying that I'm not going to watch any more.... then I keep running across it and can't turn away. It's like a train wreck, I guess.
The last episode with the crusader swords was interesting. I would really like to know how a perfectly made monosteel sword would handle chopping through those bones. The bones certainly didn't look fresh, and I wonder if a bending sword isn't better than a broken sword in a real world situation.
Generally, I find the smithing portion fun and interesting. It's only when the "panel of experts" gets started that I get a bit queasy. There have been too many times when the panel failed a knife that didn't pass a test.... all the while failing to mention that they were intimately involved in the testing and could have had a negative impact on the performance of the knife.
And the tests, in general, are really screwed up. Some knives can be perfect, but still not jam deep into steel drum full of blue goop. And chopping into a log that still has the bark on it? That's inherently flawed because bark thickness varies tremendously all over the tree and they don't tell the smiths what kind of chopping the knives are expected to do. Nobody in their right mind would make a light, thin kitchen knife if they knew they were going to be chopping Washington's Cherry tree! Never mind that the human doing the chopping could have hit a knot or pulled the punch a bit.
If you're gonna call it a competition, level the playing field a bit and give the smiths enough info to make the right knife for the tasks it's going to asked to perform.
The last episode with the crusader swords was interesting. I would really like to know how a perfectly made monosteel sword would handle chopping through those bones. The bones certainly didn't look fresh, and I wonder if a bending sword isn't better than a broken sword in a real world situation.
Generally, I find the smithing portion fun and interesting. It's only when the "panel of experts" gets started that I get a bit queasy. There have been too many times when the panel failed a knife that didn't pass a test.... all the while failing to mention that they were intimately involved in the testing and could have had a negative impact on the performance of the knife.
And the tests, in general, are really screwed up. Some knives can be perfect, but still not jam deep into steel drum full of blue goop. And chopping into a log that still has the bark on it? That's inherently flawed because bark thickness varies tremendously all over the tree and they don't tell the smiths what kind of chopping the knives are expected to do. Nobody in their right mind would make a light, thin kitchen knife if they knew they were going to be chopping Washington's Cherry tree! Never mind that the human doing the chopping could have hit a knot or pulled the punch a bit.
If you're gonna call it a competition, level the playing field a bit and give the smiths enough info to make the right knife for the tasks it's going to asked to perform.
But again, apparently that's the sort of thing TV producers want.