I put a friend of mine through a Forged In Fire type challenge by tossing an old rusted reel push mower covered in dead vines and grass down on the forge floor and giving him 3 hours to forge a 21-24" bolo. He did it and a weekend later I gave him the same time as on the show to complete the piece from scrap furniture I tossed onto the floor of the forge. He did. We tested it the following weekend and it survived the toughness and sharpness tests handily, but he wasn't satisfied so he broke it near the tang to check grain size and distribution to see what he could learn from it.
A few weeks pass and he's taken that big chunk of blade and turned it into THIS! The guard is some meteorite damascus scrap, the grip is more of the scrap furniture I'd tossed on the floor of the forge and the 8 inch blade is forged from the remains of the rusty rotary mower damascus bolo.
I should call him Midas since he's turned scrap into treasure!
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