Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

Lin Yuan sat on a bench in the corner of the workshop for twenty minutes, drinking every last drop of water from his thermos.

As the uncut sword slowly cooled in the annealing furnace, he placed the cup beside the bench and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

Mark came over with what looked like the umpteenth cup of coffee and sat down next to him: "What are we doing this afternoon?"

"Form the sword shape." Lin Yuan stood up and put the thermos back in its usual spot by the tool wall. "The structure of a half-sword is different from a dagger. The thickness transition from the base to the tip needs to be much longer than with a dagger. I kneaded the silver in this morning, and I need to form the shape this afternoon."

The annealing furnace beeped softly once to indicate that annealing was complete.

Lin Yuan walked over and picked out the sword blank, its surface covered with a uniform layer of dark gray oxide.

He scanned the interior with his internal vision—the holy silver was evenly distributed and the fusion area was stable, so the cost was at least worthwhile.

He clamped the sword blank back into the furnace, and the flames licked the metal surface.

The required length of the sword blade is much longer than the steel billet. He first stretches and elongates the steel billet, and then begins to forge it in sections from the tip of the sword.

After the steel billet is heated to the required temperature range, he takes it out and begins to hammer it from the direction of the sword tip.

The film crew's cameras followed them from a safe distance for an entire afternoon.

Mark replaced the camera battery again in the middle of the process.

Lin Yuan paid no attention to these things. The blade gradually took shape under his hammer, and he knew the thickness transition of each section before the hammer fell. He had just finished making the practice sword blank yesterday, and the geometric structure had already been engraved in his mind for the second time.

The sun slowly moved past the high window, and the light in the workshop changed from bright white to orange.

Lin Yuan stopped hammering, used a ruler to measure the thickness transition, and then used calipers to confirm the positioning line of the blood groove.

The thickness of each section from the root to the tip of the sword matches the data in the notebook.

The sword blank lay quietly on the anvil, in the same standard half-sword shape as the practice sword blank from yesterday.

Unlike other swords, this one incorporates blessed holy silver into its blade material, resulting in a completely different effect once completed.

Mark stood up and looked down at the unshaped sword on the anvil. "Is the sword shape finished?"

"All done. Tomorrow's heat treatment, the most crucial day." Lin Yuan put the tools away and cleaned the oxide scale off the anvil. Before opening the door, he briefly told the camera about tomorrow's plan.

Mark turned off the camera, and the sound engineer took off his headphones.

When the door closed, the red brick house became a little darker.

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Meanwhile, on a farm outside Birmingham, Alabama, Greg was forging metal in his makeshift tin shed. The shed was next to the livestock pen, the air thick with the smells of hay and engine oil, and the muddy ground was strewn with pebbles here and there.

Dozens of steel plate scraps were stacked on the shelf against the wall. The tool cabinet door could not be closed properly, and the handle was tied with a rubber band.

Greg stood in front of the workbench and used a hacksaw to cut the 5160 spring steel plate he had bought from the materials store into two pieces.

The sound of a hacksaw echoed back and forth in the tin shed. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, turned on the propane forging furnace, clamped the steel plate into the furnace chamber, and stood in front of the furnace waiting for it to heat through.

He glanced at the geometric sketch of a half-sword held on the wall by a magnet. He had drawn the sketch himself, referencing the blade dimension table in David Baker's knife tutorial and finding center of gravity data shared by others on several knife enthusiast forums when replicating half-swords.

The lines on the drawing are not very neat, and some places have been erased several times, but every key dimension is clearly marked.

5160 slowly turned red in the furnace. His right hand gripped the wooden handle of the iron tongs, the old scar on his palm rubbing against the wood grain. He wanted to make sure every step of this sword-making process was thorough, to do his best.

He glanced at the setting sun outside the shed, planning to roughly forge the sword shape before nightfall, then perform the final firing that night. He would do a rough grinding tomorrow morning, allowing ample time for heat treatment.

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When Lin Yuan returned to the dormitory, the hallway was filled with the mixed smell of potato chips and energy drinks, Matt Wayne's signature scent as always. He pushed open the door, and a live broadcast of a new game was playing on the TV. Matt was sprawled on the sofa in the exact same position as yesterday, with a bag of potato chips on his lap and two empty Coke cans on the coffee table.

"You're back?" Matt asked without turning his head. "How's today's progress?"

"The sword shape is complete. Tomorrow it will undergo heat treatment; quenching is the most crucial step in making the entire sword."

Matt placed the bag of chips on the coffee table, turned around, and sized him up for a few seconds. "The way you're talking makes it sound like you're going to jump into the quenching tank yourself tomorrow."

"More or less." Lin Yuan leaned back on the sofa and briefly explained the difficulties of quenching the longsword—the blade is long, and uneven cooling will cause it to warp. If the warping exceeds the tolerance range, it cannot be corrected.

The thermal conductivity of silver differs from that of steel, resulting in varying cooling rates in silver-containing areas and a more complex thermal stress distribution compared to ordinary steel billets. Every parameter—the angle, speed, and dwell time—must be precisely calculated.

After listening, Matt had a blank look on his face, as if he understood but not quite, just like the expression he had every time he tried to figure out what "a little" meant when Lin Yuan made braised pork.

He picked up the Coke can, took a sip, leaned back on the sofa, and concluded, "Anyway, from what you've said, it sounds like you're going to gamble with death tomorrow."

"It's not as exaggerated as you say." Lin Yuan turned his head and glanced at him.

Matt placed the Coke can on the coffee table and stared at him for a few seconds. "Braised pork. I'll have to make it for two meals after your competition. No, three."

"OK."

"And braised beef. A large portion."

"OK."

Matt jumped up from the sofa, opened the refrigerator, and checked the remaining ingredients. "I'll buy the ingredients before you get back tomorrow night. What kind of beef should I get?"

"Beef shank. Same as last time, no snowflakes."

Matt took out his phone. "Write to me."

Lin Yuan took the phone and typed four lines in the memo: beef shank, pork belly with skin, a whole chicken, scallions and ginger. Then he handed the phone back.

Matt took the phone, glanced at it, and flopped onto the sofa. "Okay. I'll buy the stuff. You focus on forging your sword."

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At eight o'clock the next morning, Lin Yuan pushed open the workshop door. The film crew had already set up their equipment in the corner.

Mark didn't bring coffee today; instead, he had an energy drink in his hand, and there were two dark circles under his eyes that were even more pronounced than yesterday.

Lin Yuan placed his backpack on the workbench, walked to the corner, and picked up the sword blank. After cooling overnight, the dark gray oxide layer on the surface of the sword blank was a bit darker than yesterday. It lay straight in his hand, without warping or cracking.

He scanned the interior with his internal vision—the holy silver was evenly distributed, and the fusion area was stable. He flipped the sword blank over and slowly ran his fingers along the positioning lines of the blood groove to confirm that all preparations were complete.

Normalizing and annealing are preparatory processes before quenching.

Normalizing refines the grains and eliminates forging stress, while annealing reduces hardness for easier grinding. He had already verified the parameters for these two processes on the practice sword blank. The heating rate of the silver-containing area was slightly different from that of the pure steel area. He used stacked forging and waited a while to allow the heat to be conducted evenly before completing the process step by step.

Annealing takes several hours. He cleaned the workbench, put the tools back in their place next to the quenching tank, and arranged the belts of the belt sander in ascending order of mesh size.