Forged in Fire

There is a show on the History channel about competition blacksmithing. http://www.history.com/shows/forged-in-fire Last week's show (we finally watched it last night) required them to obtain steel for a knife blade from a used backhoe bucket. It was almost comical to watch four different smiths try to find the best steel to use. The judges were all about removing the 230 series teeth and using them since they were "hardenable" steel. The one guy to try a tooth just cut the tooth and shank off as a unit and failed, the more successful used pieces of medium carbon steel from the sides. I probably would have tried using the cutting edge. Watching the poor smith try to forge a tooth in a shank, with a massive layer of dirt and rust in between was awful...the tooth just squirted off the shank, red hot from the forge in the power hammer. But no one even tried to remove a tooth from a shank...and they had grinders, cutting torches, hammers, punches. Probably a winning solution would have been to remove a couple of teeth, cut them into square blanks, grind off the rust and scale, weld as a stack with borax and hammer weld into a Damascus style. However, they were time limited! The guys who cut plate from the sides and from around the mounting ears did OK. All in all, fun to watch. And yes, I do smith a little on the side. Howard