VCU news

By Brian McNeill

Jesse Adcock, a mass communications major at Virginia Commonwealth University and an amateur bladesmith, was featured on the History Channel’s “Forged in Fire,” a show in which bladesmiths compete for $10,000 by creating iconic edged weapons from throughout history.

“I’m Jesse Adcock. I’m a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University,” Adcock said in the show’s introduction. “If I won that $10,000, I would go somewhere nice, where there’s like expensive cheeses, red wines and hilltops and live like a rock star for two days.”

Adcock, a senior studying journalism in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture in the College of Humanities and Sciences, competed against three other bladesmiths on the April 10 episode, “The Kabyle Flyssa,” in which they were asked to make a knife out of two different steels from cannon components.

While Adcock was eliminated in the first round, he said the experience was tremendous.

“From all the new equipment I got to try out, like their gas forges and belt sanders and power hammers and presses. I’d never really used a real anvil before, so that was a lot of fun,” he said. “But, all of the pressure and stress that the competitive atmosphere leveled on my shoulders was formative as well. I’ve never really been pushed that hard physically. It gets upward of 100 degrees in that workshop, with those four gas-powered forges blowing consistently. And with all those cameras and eyes on you? Whew. Like nothing I’d ever experienced.”

“I’d also never met another bladesmith in my life,” he added. “Now I have. The three I met there – Bob, Daniel and Collin – were all kindhearted and supportive, and honestly it wasn’t much of a competition, as we were consistently helping one another throughout the trial. They are all immensely skilled, and I learned a lot from watching them.”

Adcock began bladesmithing six or seven years ago. He taught himself and built his own forge and anvil.

“Bladesmithing has always been a passion project for me,” he said. “Something I do in the backyard, mostly over summer and winter breaks, when I can really soak uninterrupted hours into it. It’s often a meditative activity for me. I would classify myself as an amateur. ‘Forged in Fire’ was a chance to test myself, and expose myself to something greater, in this passion of mine.”

Adcock took part in the show in the fall, having applied after seeing an open casting call posted on a blacksmithing forum.

“I figured why the hell not? It could be a lot of fun and I could learn something,” he said.

Being featured on the History Channel is not the only exciting thing to happen to Adcock this semester. He won two first-place awards in the Virginia Press Association’s 2018 annual news awards earlier this month for his journalism. The VCU Capital News Service distributed his work, which was published in The Commonwealth Times. Adcock is also a member of the VCU Honors College.