SHESHEQUIN TOWNSHIP — Longtime Bradford County resident J. Neilson isn't the prototypical TV personality. He describes himself as anti-social, says he lacks a filter and doesn't get much enjoyment from travel.

On the surface, his involvement with the History Channel's hit TV show, "Forged in Fire," wasn't supposed to work — and maybe that's why it did.

"Three seasons. Max," he said Friday morning when asked how long he thought the show would last when it began airing in 2015.

Neilson, who at that point had spent 10 years making blades for a living and achieved the title of master smith from the American Blade Society, thought he was being pranked when he received a call from the show asking him to participate as a judge.

That phone call turned into 252 episodes over 11 seasons and led to widespread recognition of the Sheshequin Township resident, who became known as the "Simon Cowell of knife-making" due to his brutally honest critiques of countless contestants. He was the only personality on the show that consistently received hate mail, which he noted with a smile.

A hobby first

Neilson spent much of his early 20s working odd jobs searching for direction before he began making knives when he was about 25 — a decision that would lead to him making a name for himself in the small but close-knit world of knifemaking.

He says he latched on to the trade in large part because it allowed him to work without a boss and fed into his desire to be away from people. His knives are rarely flash, but instead feature clean and classy craftsmanship paired with quality materials.

"Do it well. That's all you need," he said.

By his mid-30s, he began making a living just off of knife sales and momentum continued to build for about another decade, when producers from the TV show's production company reached out to him.

But he wasn't sold just yet.

"They called me back a few months later and said, 'Hey come to Brooklyn,'" he said. "I told them 'No, I don't go to New York City,' and then they started asking me to fly there and I finally gave in — but I said I'll drive. They fought me hard on that — I was the only person on that set that drove. Everyone else was trapped with their plane tickets, but they didn't trap me. I could leave anytime I wanted to."

The idea for the show was simple and followed the already successful format of Food Network's "Chopped," which pits chefs against each other in dish-creating competitions judged by resident experts. Instead of food, the show invited on aspiring and established bladesmiths to create weapons to be judged by Neilson and two others.

Neilson said the show definitely came from humble beginnings. While filming the pilot episode in Brooklyn, he said there were several safety concerns with the studio that raised red flags.

"The reason the pilot was never aired was because it was so damn dangerous," he said. "They had rubber gas lines going across the floor. People were dropping hot steel on it. I'm like, 'We're gonna die. Something bad's going to happen."

But the show moved on, and by the end of the first season it had become evident that there was something behind the show's format that appealed to more than just men interested in knives.

"It's one of the few shows that the whole family would watch," he said. "Usually, mom's get her shows, dad's got his shows, kids got their shows. But people told me for years that they would all get together, sit down, and watch 'Forged in Fire,' and usually it was women that would come up and tell me that."

The eight-episode first season gradually became more and more demanding for Neilson to the point it encompassed his whole life, he said. Season five alone consisted of 40 episodes.

Gaining momentum

Neilson's involvement in the show had profound impact on both his business and the knifemaking community at large.

Thanks to his newfound national recognition, his business amassed a five-year backlog of orders for custom knives as he struggled to balance the order flow, demands of the TV show and his family life at home with his wife, Beckie.

Those same effects were also distributed across the bladesmithing world and brought positives and negatives — demand for custom blades skyrocketed, leading to a renaissance that resulted in an increase in creativity among bladesmiths and the ability to demand higher prices, but also sent equipment and tool prices through the roof as well.

"We started pulling these crabby, old (guys) out of their shops all over the country, throwing them on TV and they became popular — they started selling and they started teaching more. The price of everything went up," he said.

And it wasn't just the industry that Neilson and "Forged in Fire" were affecting — it was also having an affect on the viewers.

"I had kids writing letters and parents sending me emails thanking me because of the TV show and saying they were spending more time with their kids — pretending to play Forged in Fire in the backyard."

On set, he became known amongst the production crew as "Half-Day Jay" because of the brutal on-camera tests he would perform on contestant's knives. If he managed to break the knives that were slated for judging on that given day, then filming concluded and all employees were able to go home early.

Despite his tough-to-please on-camera personality, he said fans would often comment that he was "actually really nice" after meeting him in person. Neilson said he has always been an extremely honest person and feels obligated to tell it like it is. On the other hand, he has been described by those who know him as young at heart, a perennial jokester and incredibly youthful at the age of 55.

A sudden and tragic turn

During his time speaking with The Daily Review Friday morning, Neilson participated with a lighthearted, extremely open and almost aloof approach to talking about his time on "Forged in Fire," until he discussed a 2022 tragedy that led to a significant change in how he approaches life.

After returning home from a local fire company's chicken barbecue, Neilson found his wife dead after the two had taken a nap on a Saturday afternoon.

"Beckie literally died on the living room floor," he said. "After that, I was like, 'Nah, I ain't doing this no more.' It really showed me how fleeting life is.'"

"Forged in Fire" was winding down after its nearly decade-long run, and the unexpected loss of his wife led Neilson to cancel the five-year backlog of orders he had taken for his knives and focus on trying to create passive income that would allow him to spend more time doing what he wants and less time worrying about obligations. He refunded $15,000 to $18,000 of deposits — a move that the vast majority of his potential customers understood — and started making knives that he wanted.

Fans of the show and those in the bladesmith community reached out to Neilson in the wake of his loss, which led to him making a social media post, stating, "I miss Beckie more than anything and I know a lot of folks do but, I don't know if I can handle constant, though well meant, sympathies."

A new look on life

Neilson didn't expect "Forged in Fire" to last as long as it did, but he always knew it would come to an end — and he's not at all upset about it.

The long days, stress of travel and trying to juggle his own business with the demands of TV production are long behind him and he's been able to get back to exactly what he was doing 10 years ago.

Neilson lives in the same home. He's working in the same workshop. The lifestyle creep so many would likely have experienced given the opportunity he received never really happened. Instead, he bought freedom.

"I might be the only guy in history that used his TV money the right way," he said. "I paid off my house. I paid off my car. I paid off my wife's student loans. No debt whatsoever. ... I make the knives I want. I think my interview with you was the only thing I had scheduled for this week that I had to do."

Last year, he met Shelley Jack, a nurse from Texas, and the two have been together since. Neilson said she has pushed him to step outside of his comfort zone, while he has encouraged her in pursuing a new endeavor — bladesmithing.

And while Neilson will always cherish his time on the History Channel, he said he's probably the only guy that's OK with "Forged and Fire" being finished.

"Everybody else is freaking out because they don't know what they're going to do," he said. "Everybody asked me for 10 years, 'What are you going to do when the show dies?' And I always gave the same answer. 'I'm going to go back to making knives.'"

And that's exactly what he's doing.