Bath metalsmith featured in episode of ‘Forged in Fire: Knife or Death’

by Wendy Turrell

Self-taught custom knife crafter Mark Campana of Bath recently appeared on the History Channel’s “Forged in Fire: Knife or Death” competition. The show invites metalsmiths to forge a blade and compete with it, cleaving obstacles in half that range from huge blocks of ice to swinging poultry and solid wood beams.

Campana has been professionally fashioning blades for five years, selling them on his website, knivesbymark.com. His father piqued his initial interest in the pursuit when he complained that he could not find a knife that wouldn’t dull.

Campana began watching YouTube videos, then bought basic tools and “made a pile of really junky blades,” he said. He purchased a $50 tutorial from Alec Steele, a teenage blacksmith based in the U.K., who Campana described as “amazing.”

“You have to be a person who likes attention to detail and has a lot of patience,” he said of crafting metal. “The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to take your time.”

Today, Campana has a garage full of professional blacksmithing tools, including a butane-powered portable forge, a kiln, a hand-grinder to hone the blades and several anvils to pound out the hot steel. One of the anvils he most enjoys using is an 1880s English antique.

“The heat-treating cycle and knowing what you are doing in that area is the difference between a mediocre blade and a great blade,” he said.

Campana admitted that when the “Forged in Fire: Knife or Death” producer called him “out of the blue,” he thought it was a joke. He did a Skype interview and two months later he was called to film an episode. His group of competitors included one woman and six men, and he considers the close friendships they developed to be the best thing to come out of the competition.

Campana, who owns a personal training business and has studied Kali Filipino martial arts, said his martial arts training enabled him to gauge the angles at which he needed to attack different obstacles.

Although he didn’t know what obstacles the show’s producers would throw at him, Campana had seen enough episodes to have a good idea. He crafted a Falcata handle blade, modeled after a style of Iberian pre-Roman sword. It weighs four pounds and is decorated with a Viking-inspired snakehead rune (decorative depictions of letters of an ancient Germanic language).

Before contestants are allowed to compete, the show’s master knife expert and metallurgical engineer, Travis Wuertz, must approve each blade. Campana’s proudest moment came when Wuertz said he was impressed with his blade’s “perfect geometry.”

Campana faced six trials. First, competitors stood in the middle of two 2-by-4-inch planks, held by three-inch ropes, and cut all three in half with one stroke. In the second, they cut two suspended, swinging wooden crates perfectly in half horizontally. In the third, they cut three 3-by-4-foot blocks of ice in half. Campana managed to cut all three at once, a feat that amazed the director.

The fourth challenge involved three tables set up in a semi-circle, on each of which was a different type of vegetable. Competitors had to halve the vegetables perfectly, proving the sharpness of their blades after cutting wood and ice.

In the fifth challenge ­– the one that eliminated Campana and all but two of the other competitors – they cut in half a raw chicken and a massive salmon, both suspended from ropes. Campana said he did not approach the challenge with the correct angle.

“My knife didn’t fail, I did,” he said.

The remaining two competitors advanced to the sudden death round and cut spider webs made of ratchet straps.

Many episodes of “Forged in Fire: Knife or Death” are filmed each season, but not all are aired in the U.S. Although Campana’s episode was cut from the national show, it aired Oct. 10 on the international version, appears online on the History Channel and on YouTube and will be shown in reruns. Campana was featured in the opening show credits and on the show’s commercial.

 

Featured image photo caption: Mark Campana displays the competition sword he used on “Forged in Fire: Knife or Death.” Photo courtesy M. Campana