Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

By the time Greg ripped the car keys off the wall, it was already pitch black outside the tin shed.

The March night wind in Alabama blew in through the cracks in the roller shutter, carrying the mixed scents of hay and livestock from the barn. He opened the door of the old Ford; the engine coughed twice before starting, the headlights cutting two dim, yellowish beams across the muddy ground.

The industrial supplies supplier in town closes at six o'clock, and it's almost five-thirty now. He stepped on the gas pedal above the speed limit, and the toolbox rattled loudly in the back seat as the wheels rolled over the gravel road leading from the farm to the highway.

On both sides of the road are endless cotton fields. It's not yet the planting season in March, and the turned red soil looks dark in the twilight. Occasionally, one or two farmhouses with their lights off flash by.

He knew he shouldn't have made that mistake.

The quenching oil needed changing quite some time ago. He noticed the cooling speed was starting to soften when he was making that hunting knife last fall, but he kept putting it off. Changing a can of new oil costs tens of dollars, enough to fill his oil tank twice.

Over the years, he has learned one thing: make do if you can.

He fixes the refrigerator himself when it breaks down, tightens the belt on his pickup truck when it's rattling, and mixes expired hardening oil with fresh oil to keep it running. He uses whatever is available on hand—a way of life he's developed over time, a habit formed from saving money, and this time he's saving where it matters most.

He turned the steering wheel around a bend, and the image of his ex-wife's expression when she last came to the farm to pick up her things flashed through his mind.

She stood at the door of the tin shed and glanced inside. She saw the scrap steel plates piled up next to the quenching cylinder and the second-hand belt sander he had dragged back from the scrap yard. Her lips pursed into a thin line.

That was three years ago. After the divorce was signed, he gave her the house in the city and moved back to the farm. The farm was left to him by his father; it wasn't particularly valuable, just fifty acres of barren land where nothing produced a high yield. He rented it to the cotton farmers next door and collected a small amount of rent each year, barely enough to cover the property taxes.

His main source of cash flow comes from forging – he makes a few hunting knives for local hunters and farmers, and occasionally takes on one or two custom orders from online knife enthusiast forums. At the end of the year, he can barely make ends meet.

When he got divorced, he still owed the community bank a loan for equipment, which he took out to buy the used belt sander and propane forging furnace. The monthly repayment notices arrived on time, in those white envelopes with the bank's logo, and he would take a deep breath before opening them each time.

The streetlights on the main street in town are already on.

He parked his car in front of the supplier store less than ten minutes before six. Old Jerry was standing behind the cashier sorting through the day's receipts when he heard the doorbell ring. He looked up and saw Greg push the door open and come in. His jacket was still covered in bits of tarnish, and his hair was blown around like a bird's nest by the wind.

"Quenching oil," Greg asked, still slightly out of breath. "Do you have any industrial-grade, medium-speed quenching oil?"

Old Jerry sized him up, his gaze lingering for a moment on the old scar on the web of his right hand, before slowly walking to the back warehouse and carrying out a bucket of medium-speed quenching oil, placing it on the counter. "The fast-speed quenching oil sold out last week; this is the only medium-speed one left. What are you going to do with it?"

"Hand and a half sword".

Old Jerry raised his eyebrows, didn't ask any further questions, and quoted a price. It was more than ten dollars more expensive than quick-quenching oil. Greg didn't hesitate, pulled out a few crumpled bills from his wallet and handed them over, picked up the can of oil, and turned to leave. Once in the driver's seat, he finally caught his breath, placed the can on the passenger side, and started the car.

It was completely dark when he returned to the farm. He pushed open the roller shutter door of the tin shed, poured the expired oil from the old quenching drum into the waste bin, cleaned the sediment from the bottom of the drum, unscrewed the cap of the new oil drum, and poured in the new oil.

Then he relit the furnace.

Flames leaped from the furnace opening, and the tin shed heated up again. He placed the sword blank into the furnace and stood in front of it, waiting for it to heat through. This time, he paid special attention to the changes in the color of the steel in the furnace, from dark red to cherry red to bright orange, not missing a single transition in each shade.

Pre-cool. Add oil.

The fresh oil hissed crisply the moment it touched the scorching hot sword blank, the oil churning rhythmically with a sharp, powerful motion, and the steam dissipating quickly. It wasn't the dull, muffled sound from before. He made a mental note—it was a problem with the oil. Not his skill.

After the sword blank cooled to room temperature in the quenching oil, he took it out. Under the light, the blade gleamed with the dull, muted sheen characteristic of quenched high-carbon steel. He gently scraped it with his fingernail, and that crisp, hard feel finally returned—evenly hard, crisply hard, from the tip to the root. He let out a long breath, placed the tongs on the workbench, and sat down in the folding chair beside him, allowing the taut string within him to slowly relax.

The flames in the furnace were still burning quietly. His breathing gradually calmed down in the quiet shed, and his gaze shifted from the unfinished sword to the geometric sketch of a half-sword on the wall.

A fine sword. Made of 5160 spring steel, with solid fundamentals and a well-proportioned structure, it would be presentable at any knife exhibition. But he also knew that solidity alone wasn't enough. He had personally witnessed what Lin Yuan had made—a nearly three-thousand-layer cloud-patterned steel dagger, its double-sided patterns so symmetrical after water quenching that it looked like a reflection in a mirror, its blade capable of cutting through hemp rope and chopping cow bones without leaving a trace.

His sword wasn't even made of stacked Damascus steel.

It's not that he didn't want to do it. He had indeed considered it before—for a sword as large as a half-sword, using the conventional stacking method to make Damascus steel would require a large amount of steel in the blank preparation stage, at least a dozen steel plates of similar size and matching composition.

The only good material he had was that one piece of 5160 spring steel plate. The rest of the materials stacked on the shelf were scraps: half a piece of leftover 1084, a few small pieces of 15N20 cut short, two steel plates of unknown composition taken from old farm tools, and some odd and ends.

These scraps are just enough to make a dagger or hunting knife, and the specifications can be barely met.

But the blanks required for a hand-and-a-half sword are much larger than those for a dagger. By piecing together these miscellaneous materials, a Damascus steel blank can be barely forged. How will the materials with unknown composition react at the interface? Will the pattern be formed after forging? Will it delaminate and crack during quenching? He had no answers and could not afford to gamble.

He's not the kind of person who would risk a final-round opportunity by betting on a sword with too much uncertainty. Steady progress is his way of life, and that's been his approach for the past twenty years. If he can't afford new materials, he uses old ones; if he can't make Damascus steel, he honestly perfects the craftsmanship of finished steel.

Taking risks is a luxury for those with savings and a backup plan, which he lacked. Every month, the white envelope from the credit union would arrive promptly in his mailbox, each bill a four-figure sum, and the tone of the collection requests growing increasingly harsh.

But a steady, methodical approach also comes at a price. There were no patterns, no special effects; it was simply a sword with the basic structure. That might be enough in a regular match, but his opponent was Lin Yuan.

He leaned back in the folding chair and rubbed the web of his right hand. The scar was darker than the surrounding skin under the warm yellow light, and its edges were somewhat irregular. He had no complaints about his grip strength now; at least rough forging and quenching were unaffected, and fine finishing would just take a little longer.

But then he thought of something else.

At least this time he made it to the finals.

He had watched several seasons of the "Sword Forging Competition," recording each episode and watching them repeatedly. Reaching the stage was something he had never imagined before. At forty-three years old, and having made swords for nearly twenty years, this was the first time he had reached the final round in a competition.

Regardless of the outcome of the finals, it will bring him some new orders. More people will ask him to make knives than before, and he will be able to get more work than he is now.

A night breeze blew in from outside the tin shed, making the blueprint for the half-sword on the wall rustle softly. He stood up, tightened the cap on the newly bought quenching oil, and pushed it to the corner. The sword blank lay quietly on the workbench, its quenched edge gleaming with a uniform dark gray sheen under the light.

He tidied up his tools, turned off the propane valve on the forge, and extinguished the light. When the roller shutter door was pulled all the way down, the tin shed became completely quiet, with only the occasional chirping of crickets from the fields outside.

He stood at the shed door for a while, gazing at the sky. The Alabama night sky was clear, with countless bright stars. Then he locked the door, went back inside, where the loan repayment slip stuck to the refrigerator waited quietly for him.