If you haven’t seen Forged in Fire yet, you need to.
It’s the HISTORY competition format where, in each episode, four bladesmith’s exhibit their craft with the winner taking home a $10,000 cash prize. Basically, ‘Bake Off’ with blades.
As a US-produced series, we needed to find a way to give the strand a local feel for our UK audience, and with a rich history of blacksmithing we didn’t need to look far.
Barcroft TV produced a series of five short films with the top forging talent in the UK dubbed Forged in Britain. The films even made national press.
One such film features Alec Steele (shown below), a YouTube star, and his energy is infectious.
Afterwards, we met up with each of the five forgers to continue our journey with them.
Visiting each of those featured in Forged in Britain, we asked them to show us around their workshops in what we dubbed their Tour de Forge (perfect punning there). You can watch Josh Burrell’s below.
Every one of the forgers we met had a connection to the past, which isn’t tough when we’re talking about an age-old craft.
Here, Rod Hughes shows us some of the history that lives on in his Viking-inspired forge.
You can watch the rest of the films on HISTORY’s YouTube channel, and Forged in Fire on HISTORY every Thursday at 9pm.
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