I started the build during a truly rough patch in my life. The spring semester of my junior year, I was looking to get ahead and enrolled in 23 credit hours, nearly double the number needed to be considered a full-time student. That January, I lost two family members in a tragic and preventable fire. In February, the other side of my family was split by a legal dispute that was soon buried in courts and corruption. In March, I was robbed in Costa Rica while night-time skinny dipping and literally lost the clothes off my back as well as my passport and valuables. In April, my academic standing dropped dramatically while  I also faced ridicule and scorn while on a group project that turned from fantasy to nightmare. In May, things started to look up when I entered a relationship with a beautiful woman for whom I cared deeply. In June, she dumped me. Coincidentally, it was  my birthday. I found myself alone, with no one except God and my dog: all of my friends had gone home for the summer. Confronting the stagnant silence of a run-down rental house in a heat wave and no air conditioning, truly this was my lowest point.  My only coping skill was to channel my sorrows into my work. I stacked up ten pounds of high carbon steel and welded together a rough billet. The next day, I lit the forge, heated the billet until it was white and sparkling—and then wailed on it with my hammer with all of my strength and fury. With the help of a hydraulic press, I next drew the billet out into a long bar. Using a band saw, I cut this bar into equal sized chunks, stacked them tall, and welded them together. This resulted in a piece that looked much like my original billet, but hidden inside, several layers  told the story of my work. Pattern welded steel, often known as Damascus, is created when two alloys are bonded together and folded, twisted, or manipulated. When etched, acid “eats” each  alloy  differently, exposing a patterned record of the forging process. For the next six weeks, all I did was weld, forge, cut, and stack this billet over and over. With each layer, I grieved the tragedies that had befallen me. Each spark and hammer blow was a defiant shout at God. But he sat by patiently. All told, I didn’t need to fold the billet as many times as I did—but after almost two months, I finally found a moment of peace that I could only reach through the heat and the fire of the forge. 

At one point I stopped, checked my tally, and found that my billet weighed only two pounds but contained 5,312 layers of folded steel! I had made peace with God and decided to put my hammer down. With the forging finished, I hardened the steel: heating it to its critical temperature and quenching it rapidly in a bath of oil. This shock can destroy a blade, as any cracks hidden beneath the surface quickly propagate, ruining weeks of work. However, if the steel survives the shock, it maintains a higher energy state, with a fine grain that is hard and resilient to impact. Thankfully, my blade survived the shock. And in many ways, so had I. 

After the quench, the rest of the process passed by with a pleasant steadiness that I knew meant it was time to coast. Grinding, sanding, and filing soon turned into fluting, setting, and polishing. The really fun part of the project turned out to be twisting sterling silver wire that I inlayed into exotic blue mango wood. As its crown, I cast a silver bezel, in which I  set a stunning tanzanite gemstone. 

By September, my deadline neared and several sleepless nights counted down to a finale. My last coat of oil was still drying when I raced to campus to unveil my masterpiece. A huge crowd of several thousand attended the celebration on the day of the school’s anniversary. I arrived at the last minute, in my work clothes, covered in soot and burn marks. In a feverish state, I found myself holding a microphone and giving a hastily prepared speech to the crowd before me. I was exhausted and snapped to consciousness when the crowd erupted into applause—it seemed my speech was finished. I was told I spoke well and unveiled the sword confidently, although I have little memory of this. After hundreds of hours of labor and thousands of folds, my sword was finished. I was at peace.