Before he was a Forged in Fire Champion, Liam Hoffman spent years failing over and over again. We talk bladesmithing techniques, $8,000 knives and how lightsabers will impact his business plans. Then, we countdown a special “Sharp” Top 5.
Liam Hoffman : 01:38ish
Pointless: 24:30ish
Top 5 Sharp Things: 42:17ish
https://www.instagram.com/hoffmanblacksmithing (Liam Hoffman Instagram)
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http://www.hoffmanblacksmithing.com (Liam Hoffman Website)
Interview with Bladesmith Liam Hoffman
Nick VinZant 0:11
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, Master blade Smith's and our favorite sharp stuff.
Liam Hoffman 0:21
But I do think that you should suffer to a healthy amount of suffering is good for you. And learning. I think that a lot of people who are first starting out, get down on themselves too quickly about their progress that they're making. Because if you were to look back at my progress, it's pretty horrible compared to a lot of people's. So when steel is red hot, it is rapidly oxidizing, just like rust. But that rust is, like I said, quickly, rapidly peeling off of the hot steel and it falls on to you. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If
Nick VinZant 0:57
you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So our first guest has a fascinating story. Because not only does he do something that is just incredibly interesting on how this gets done, but he's also somebody that has gotten so good at his craft, that his knives and axes sell for 1000s of dollars, and he's a forged in fire champion. But before any of that, he spent years failing over and over and over again. This is Master bladesmith. Liam Hoffman, how did you get started in this? What drew you to blacksmithing?
Liam Hoffman 1:41
Simply boredom. You know, I'm in the mountains of North Carolina and right on the Tennessee North Carolina line. So there's it's either you growing up, it's either drugs or something creative, pretty much because there's no nightlife or anything like that. So you just have to find things to do. And I, when I was young, about 13 years old, I started hammering on a piece of steel, not knowing what I was doing. And then it just evolved from there.
Nick VinZant 2:09
When was when did you make like, what would you would call your first real blade?
Liam Hoffman 2:15
Probably not till I got out of high school. So I had, which was probably seven years ago or so I had been blacksmithing for around four years before I got out of high school. So I wasn't very proud of what I was doing until probably five or six years in
Nick VinZant 2:32
is that now is that normal for a lot of people? I mean, is it usually take that much time? No,
Liam Hoffman 2:37
no, a lot of people are really confused when they hear me talk about that, because a lot of people see what I'm doing now. And then they just assume that I started that way or it was like really quick for me. But there's so many people that are beginners who are coming up to me now like wanting me to look at their work. They've been doing blade smithing and blacksmithing for a few months, and their work is better than mine was four years in. And I had a very slow start to stew it to it and then it picked up exponentially.
Nick VinZant 3:08
What How come this, how come the start was so slow?
Liam Hoffman 3:11
I would say mainly because I was just so ignorant about everything. I was 13 years old. And I'm also very shy. So as a kid, I wasn't very outgoing towards adults who may have known more about blacksmithing than me, so I was pretty sheltered and what I knew about everything tool knowledge is how to use normal tools or how to ask someone for advice. So and I wasn't until I got to high school that I started really like getting more exposed to blacksmithing community and and taking off from there.
Nick VinZant 3:43
I guess I'm not I'm not entirely sure how old you are. But I guess this is kind of before like the YouTube era where you could essentially just look, Google it and figure out pretty much everything right?
Liam Hoffman 3:52
No, I was I'm 20 I just turned 25. So when I was in high school, I had the YouTube, all the all that type of information. And so I was just trial and error trying to figure things out. But maybe I'm just not as good as a lot of other people. And that's why it took me so long. But I think that a lot of people who are first starting out, get down on themselves too quickly about their progress that they're making. Because if you were to look back at my progress, it's pretty horrible compared to a lot of people's in terms of like the technical aspects like you didn't get it the forge wasn't hot enough.
Nick VinZant 4:30
You didn't hit it with another enough strikes, or you didn't have like the artistic capabilities.
Liam Hoffman 4:36
I didn't know what good work were supposed to look like, which is what I've told a lot of people before is that you don't know what good work looks like. If you don't know what good work looks like. If you have no example then you don't know what you're striving for. I say it's a lot easier to tell in person. What work should look like when you get to hold a knife that's made by Master, then to see something on YouTube 99% of blacksmiths or knife makers that you're going to meet are like top notch guys, they're going to share everything with you, they're going to invite you in, they're going to cook for you, they're going to camp out with you hang out with you and share everything with you. And I wasn't really exposed to that early on.
Nick VinZant 5:20
Do you think looking back on it? Was that a good thing or a bad thing. Uh,
Liam Hoffman 5:26
I don't necessarily think that that specifically was either a good or bad thing. But I do think that you should suffer to a healthy amount of suffering is good for you. In learning. I, when I'm teaching people, I often try to show them the wrong way to do something so that they then understand the right way to do something. If you're only showing the right way to do something, then you don't actually understand why that's the right thing. So it's important to go through hardships and suffer and make mistakes. And then you can say, Oh, I know why that's a mistake. I know not to do that. I know not to do this. I know how that mistake happens. And now I know how to prevent it.
Nick VinZant 6:07
So that so that we have a better understanding of the difference between something that you make, and something that we can go to Target and buy, right like, what's what's the difference between a knife or an axe that you make, and something that I can go pick up for even like a high quality, something like I'm paying 100 bucks for this kitchen knife. Like what's the difference?
Liam Hoffman 6:27
Basically, everything, every single part of it 100 knives, sorry, $100 for a kitchen knife is not a lot of money. Maybe for target it is but my kitchen knives are insanely expensive. But blade Smith's who specialize in high end kitchen knives, I mean, you're talking about a three to 10 plus $1,000 kitchen knife, not $100, a $300 kitchen knife. And so when I say everything is different, I'm talking about the shape the design, the geometry of the cross section, which is the cutting edge, the spine, the types of bevels, where it's a flat grind, a convex grind, a hollow grind, a combination of a hollow grind, or a flat grind. The ergonomics of the handle, if it's an integral style handle, if it's a full tang, if it's hidden Tang type handle, there's everything the materials, the heat treating, which is the way that you process the material. And then of course, just the design, the design, the ergonomics of the knife is everything is different about it. And then when prices go up from there, you're mainly looking at brand and reputation because with high end blacksmithing high end knife making it is art. So you are paying for not just a utilitarian functional piece you're paying for someone's brand someone's art someone's reputation someone's experience.
Nick VinZant 7:56
Is it like one of the things if I did a blind test and I pick up your knife and I pick up somebody else's knife like that the mass produced 1am I noticing the difference? Like oh, my that's that's the second I pick it up really? Yeah, you should be able to Yeah. Is it different? The feel of it, the weight of it are all of the above
Liam Hoffman 8:17
all of the above? Yeah, without even looking at viewer in a blind test, I think that someone would be able to tell the difference between most production knives and most custom high end knives. Of course, there's gonna be some knives, you know, on the spectrum that might be closer to others. But there really is a huge difference between a an actual masterfully made high quality knife and a factory made knife. That's
Nick VinZant 8:43
I guess that's kind of surprising to me, because I would be under the impression that like a computer can do just about everything better than a human. Like, we haven't figured out a computer program that can design a knife that's better than one that that you can make yet.
Liam Hoffman 8:59
That's not necessarily it. So there's Yes, maybe we have the capability of doing it. But is that profitable? Is and then if you take like, we were just talking about the functionality aspect out of it, you have art, you have brand, you have reputation, and that's not something that a computer has. It's not personable, so people will spend X amount of money on my knives and axes, not just because the X or the knife is good, but because people because I made it because it's one of my axes.
Nick VinZant 9:32
Are we better at this, like blacksmithing as a whole? Are we better at this now than we were 1000 years ago? Or did we kind of have to re learn this skill? Better and what way? I don't I don't even know enough about it to even clarify it. I guess
Liam Hoffman 9:50
so like yeah, so I would say that. Shoot, I don't know uh, in terms of technological metallurgical processes were better now 100%. So when you, when you heat treat a piece of steel, that means that you, you change the properties of that steel. So you can have a piece of what's called high carbon steel. And that steel can be in a kneeled state, which is a soft state, I could bend it over my knee, if I had enough leverage, or that steel could be in a hardened and tempered state, which would be total opposite of that that same piece of steel could be hard enough to hold the knife edge. So and then, of course, you have different alloys of steel, there's hundreds of different types of steel, which is like it's like a recipe. It's like baking, you have iron, carbon, and manganese are three main ingredients. And then you can add other elements to that. And they didn't have that back then. So I would say that modern day steel selection, and our understanding of how to heat treat steel is far better than it was just 100 years ago, much less 500 years ago. But in terms of the artistry, I honestly haven't seen any advancement there, maybe, maybe we've degraded, you can look at pieces from 300 years ago, especially in the Middle East area, that are more ornate than I, I find it difficult for me to think of someone off the top of my head, a modern day maker that could make some of these pieces that were made 300 years ago without electricity. So I don't think that we have gotten any better in terms of what I would consider craftsmanship.
Nick VinZant 11:38
I don't know how much of like a historian of blacksmithing you are. But was the art ever kind of lost. Yeah, right. Like we had to relearn how to do these things.
Liam Hoffman 11:48
Absolutely. I'm not much of a historian on blacksmithing. But I do know that there was kind of a lull between early 1900s and the 1980s, where we got really into mass production, importing, and that type of thing, where the blacksmith was like a thing of the past, it was obsolete. And there was a long period of time, probably close to 60 years, where no one was really into blacksmithing as a hobby or anything. It was just seen as like this old thing that you don't, what's the point in it. And then there's something that people call like the blacksmith renaissance in the 1980s. And there was a resurgence of guys, and men and women that came forth and became began blacksmithing again, and they did have to relearn a lot of things and dig up a lot of things. And then there was another lol again until about seven, eight years ago, and it's just exploded.
Nick VinZant 12:48
Like say you're going to make a knife or an ax. How long of a process are we talking for you to make one
Liam Hoffman 12:55
depends on what type of x. So if I'm making like a production x, it takes a lot less time than if I'm doing a custom type of X a one off type of x. So when people come to order an x from us, we have a catalog of products, there's like eight different models, for instance, that you can order. If someone comes to me and says I want this x to have this specific shape with this specific length handle, like I won't do that type of thing. So you can either order what's on my website or you can't, or go elsewhere. Because I'm not interested in doing custom types of work. But whenever I get spare time away from production, that's when I can be more creative and just make whatever I want to make in a call that like a one off type piece people would see that more of like as an art piece a collector's piece, something that's more desirable and an X like that, or a knife like that could take anywhere from not very long at all, which I would consider maybe eight hours to it could you could be talking about a 60 to 80 hour project.
Nick VinZant 13:58
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure. Yeah, bring it on. What is the most important tool in your workshop?
Liam Hoffman 14:08
The forge because you can't do anything without steel being hot. There's lots of alternatives to an anvil or tongs or a hammer but there's not many alternatives to a forge which is what hits the steel up.
Nick VinZant 14:23
How many times a day or week do you think to yourself man this forge is hot?
Liam Hoffman 14:31
I'm probably at least I don't know. It's always hot the other day it was 105 degrees and and that's that's what like ambient temperature outside being 75 it's not hot where I live if I couldn't imagine if I was on the on the in a desert or down in like Texas or Florida or something. That'd be so horrible. But even in my climate where it's not that hot, it's like over 100 degrees. With humidity also on top of that in the summer and yet it's it's hot as it's horrible. You burn yourself to
Nick VinZant 15:09
like the I mean, it's getting burned something that's going to happen pretty much all the time. More than anything ever like really serious,
Liam Hoffman 15:16
huh? No, not that serious. I have all my digits and everything. But yeah, I've gotten burned really bad lots of times, just from like a spark coming off or sparks are, sparks aren't gonna hurt you, it's what's called, The most common type of burn is going to be from something called scale, which is it's a flakes of steel that come off of the workpiece while it's hot. So when steel is red hot, it is rapidly oxidizing, just like rust. But that rust is, like I said quickly, rapidly peeling off of the hot steel and it falls on to you. And that oxidation is called scale. And that scale is very hot. And it is a almost every time you forge you're going to get a scale burn.
Nick VinZant 16:04
Were you more excited or nervous when you got the call from forged in fire?
Liam Hoffman 16:10
Well, I've had multiple calls from them, the first couple I wasn't interested at all in doing because I didn't think that I was good enough to make myself look good on TV. I knew that if I was going to go on on TV unfortunate fire, I needed to be confident in myself and be ready for it. I wasn't just going to jump into it. So I had a couple of calls. The first couple seasons that they aired, and then the call that I decided to go on to the show. I was I was more excited than I was nervous. I don't get super nervous with a lot of things. And I prepared myself really well. I'm pretty logical and methodical. So like, I mean, I trained. I had all these scenarios in my head, I was like I was there to win it. I was there. I was there to not play around. So I wasn't super nervous about it. I knew what I could do. And I was just excited to try and win it. And you ultimately want it What did that kind of what did that do for your business? nothing but good. So before, before I was on the show, my business was already doing really well. I think we had like a 10 month backlog before I went on to the show. And then I went on to the show. And it's just been ridiculous ever since
Nick VinZant 17:33
what is the most durable thing you've ever cut through
Liam Hoffman 17:36
this terrible thing? I think this is I can get into this a little bit. But like a common misconception when a market is a marketing trick that knife companies or knife makers will use is to take a knife that seemingly shouldn't cut through something and then cut through that object like cutting through a nail with a knife. And I was like, Oh, well cut through a nail with a knife. And you can change how durable a blade is based on the geometry or the thicknesses and the cross section of the edge of the knife. And so what that means is that I could take a chef's knife, which is supposed to be really good at cutting tomatoes, which is a difficult thing to cut well. And I could change the angle that I sharpen it at to be able to cut through a nail. But does that mean it's going to actually work? Well as a kitchen knife? No, it's going to suck. So it's like a marketing misconception scam when you see someone cutting through some like crazy objects, so I don't have anything that I'm like, Oh, I can't believe I cut through this crazy hard object or anything like that. It's more like, Okay, if I make an axe that's designed to do this specific task, and it does that specific task. Well, that's what I'm proud of. Or if I take a chef's knife in it, I would say one thing that I was really proud of was taking a chef's knife and cutting through a tomato without holding the tomato in my hand cutting through it horizontally on a table without the tomato moving. That's a really difficult task because the knife has to be thin enough and have the right geometry to it.
Nick VinZant 19:12
This kind of segues a little bit into that how do you feel watching those infomercials on TV where they advertised knives? It's just I don't even know how to react. It's horrible. Yeah, it's just joke. Are you like what What irritates you about it? You're like, Oh, that's not the right handle. There's no way that blade can do that. Like what are you muttering to the person next to you about that infomercial?
Liam Hoffman 19:40
It's not it's just not even worth your breath. This is all just horrible. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. Yeah, it's just like for an educated consumers that. Like I said, it's like a gimmick. It looks good if we don't know. But then what do you know it's like this is just so bad in so many ways. What blacksmithing item Do you enjoy making the most? I would say axes, axes and knives. I like forging axes. And I like the finish work on knives more so like knife making high end blade smithing is not a lot of forging, it's more finished work. It's the sanding, the grinding the woodworking, the polishing the elegant shaping. Whereas axe making is primarily this, the primary skill lies in the forging, not as much the finishing. So if, if I'm talking about what I like to forge most is probably going to be an axe because it's more interesting, more difficult. A knife, not as much of a challenge to forge but it is a lot more involved in the finish work. Most Expensive knife you make or most expensive item, you make the least expensive item you make, like at least expensive acts that I make this I think around $220. And that would that's like a 12 inch long, little camping hacks. The most expensive thing that I've sold, which is actually just recently like a couple weeks ago, was a knife for $77,250. And that was a hunting small hunting type knife but it had in custom engraving work on it that was not actually done by me. It was done by a friend of mine named his Instagram name is the hand engraver. His name is Ivan Watson. And then I had a fancy handle on it. And it was one of those things where this knife was it was actually the last of this design that I was ever making. So that increased its value. My prices can range anywhere from a couple $100 to around $8,000 right now.
Nick VinZant 21:56
Last two from me, what is your favorite historical sword knife or axe? Hmm,
Liam Hoffman 22:03
I wouldn't have to put it in like a category of Persian Persian style knives from the late 1700s or mid 1800s. Those are to me the most ornate beautiful shaped, detailed knives that
Nick VinZant 22:23
that I've seen. favorite fictional one.
Liam Hoffman 22:27
I don't know I I'm not much of a fantasy knife guy. And I get a lot of requests for fantasy types of swords and knives from like video games and stuff. But I've never really never really been interested in that. So I don't think I have a favorite one.
Nick VinZant 22:43
We do have a question that says How do you feel about lightsabers?
Liam Hoffman 22:49
I feel like that would be great. If if it was real. Yeah, that'd be great. It'd be super helpful. I think in a lot of ways.
Nick VinZant 22:58
You could definitely make stuff a lot faster. Good and shit. Yeah. Yeah, I could. I could heat up stuff be great. But would that hurt your business though? Because I'd have a hard time buying a knife. If I could buy a lightsaber. I'm gonna be honest with you.
Liam Hoffman 23:12
Right? I mean, people's probably still gonna want a knife or an axe for the novelty even if they can cut a tree in half with a lightsaber. And be faster.
Nick VinZant 23:23
You are a businessman. Um, Oh, I missed this one. Do you have time for one more? Yeah. What advice would you give to a young blacksmith? Somebody just starting out?
Liam Hoffman 23:34
I would say to not lose sight of the big picture. Be persistent, do not give up so easily. And understand that suffering is just part of the process and it's going to help you in the long run.
Nick VinZant 23:49
That's all the questions I got man. Is there anything else you think that we missed or what's kind of coming up next for you?
Liam Hoffman 23:57
Just just constantly busy, got lots of stuff going on. I would say that if if anyone wants to find out the types of things that we're doing on a day to day basis, you can follow me on Instagram, which is Hoffman blacksmithing. or on Facebook. We have a closed Facebook group, also Hoffman blacksmithing.