Mt. Lebo grad judges ‘Master of Arms’

Imagine “Project Runway” but instead of making outfits, contestants construct weapons. That’s pretty much the concept of the new Discovery Channel competition series “Master of Arms” (10 p.m. Friday), which includes Mt. Lebanon native Ashley Hlebinsky among its judges.

Ms. Hlebinsky’s path from her hometown to a cable TV reality competition series was not a straight line. The 2007 Mt. Lebanon High School grad grew up around doctors — several different orthopedic conditions required more than 10 surgeries — and wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon. But a Civil War medicine tour of Gettysburg and a similar tour at Colonial Williamsburg during her freshman year at the University of Delaware changed her career course.

“I was always interested in the history of medicine growing up, but I never really thought about people who work in museums or at historical sites,” said Ms. Hlebinsky, who is now curator in charge of the Cody Firearms

Museum, part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyo.

She changed her college major to history and began studying military history while on spring break. That led to an internship in 2008 at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland, where she learned to identify different types of weaponry along with the history behind the guns.

“There was a Civil Warera gun on display, and a Civil War soldier carved every battle he fought in into the stalk [of that gun],” she recalled. “It was one of those moments for me where I realized there is so much more to this history than just the ballistics of everything.”

After undergrad and grad school at the University of Delaware studying American history and museum studies (while also interning at the Smithsonian), Ms. Hlebinsky moved to Wyoming in 2013.

For the past five years, Ms. Hlebinsky regularly has been a talking head on the docuseries ( “I’m the one sipping my tea, saying, ‘In 1865…’”). A casting agent found her last summer based on those appearances.

“Believe it or not, there are not many women doing what Ido,” she said, chuckling.

In January, Ms. Hlebinsky was selected among three finalists to be the historian judge on “Master of Arms.” The series filmed in April and May in Bethlehem, Pa.

In each episode of “Master of Arms,” three contestants face off in challenges that feature era-specific weaponry that may include firearms of the American frontier or Viking-era-blades.

Ms. Hlebinsky said the show’s contestants include bladesmiths and gunsmiths who have no idea what type of weapon they will be making inadvance.

“So you have a gunsmith trying to make a blade and a bladesmith trying to make a gun,” she said. “It surprised me that most people finished, and they finished [the challenges] with really good, quality stuff.”