Thread: 80CrV2....?
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Old 09-23-2020, 08:55 PM
Dana Acker Dana Acker is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Mt. Airy, North Carolina, USA
Posts: 1,888
Chris, "the sexiest seax ever!" What a compliment! And you were complimented as the first smith in 4 years of the show to check the grain structure after quench. Both of those things impressed the judges. So hats off to you Bro. Sure it would have been nice to go home with the prize, but what was said about you was gold. To me that showed more about your abilities than if you had won.

The problem I have with FIF is it is really unrealistic in that if you had been commissioned to make any of those pieces for a customer, I'm sure you would have spent more than 3 hours or two days creating them. I know the show has to be done in an hour, and really less time with commercials, so as to increase the drama, I get that. But it also gives the impression to those who know nothing about smithing that one can just go into their shop and create a $1000.00 piece of functional artwork in a couple of hours. But it's drama and competition, and it does draw attention to the craft, so I'm not knocking it.

What I'm knocking is that it doesn't begin to measure the real talent, experience, and craftsmanship of the smiths involved. Somebody has to win and three or more have to lose, in a setting that's hardly fair to the craft, which like any craft cannot be rushed.

I was cheering when the judges gave you the two complements that they did. That told a whole lot more about you as a smith and an artist than the whole rest of the competition. So good on you. You made the NTM's look good, and I'm proud of you. You may not have won, but you WERE the pro in the room.

And, who the hell tries to chop through stag horn anyway? Furthermore, if I had chopped the horn and "hurt my wrist," I'd have committed ritual suicide by eviscerating my abdomen with a dull tanto before I would have showed back up on camera with an ice pack. Bad form. And who's to say he wasn't holding it wrong anyway? Yeah, it's the handle's fault. Right. There's a line from Genet's "Waiting for Godot," where one of the characters says, "That's man all over for you; blaming on his shoes the faults of his feet."

You did us proud, Brother


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Last edited by Dana Acker; 09-23-2020 at 10:33 PM.
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