I am one of those people who will try to leap into somethign at an advanced level without having troubled myself to "learn the basics." Sometimes this has worked out well for me and some times it ends up with a slew of compromises. I made my first Guitar which I played for decades, until a flood wrecked it , in ecxactly this manner. I knew almost nothign about woodworking or musical instruments but I learned as I progressed on the instrument. I made my first living room set of furnitue in the same way. 36 years later I still have the Coffee table.
In fairness, I'd been an old school manual machinist for several years already.
Needless to say, it is unlikely that a chunk of a guitar or a couch will break away and open one's throat.
This is, I should think, the only real problem with the newbie cum sword maker.
Or stated in the colloquy: "You'll shoot your eye out kid."
The enthusiastic newbie usually does not want to make a sword as a result of any great intelectual pursuit. He won't have read metalurgical texts or historical materials pertanent to the era of the swords he hopes to replicate. And he certainly won't see the effort as the next logical phase of mastering his trade craft.
Odds are, He wants a way-far-cool weapon. A shiny bauble that reeks of action movie testerone.
Who can blame him? I wanted a beautiful guitar that would make into Andrés Segovia overnight. Well, I'd been playing a crap guitar for years prior, but you know what I'm saying.
In the spirit of: "You'll shoot your eye out kid." I did the same thing with home renovation. I wanted a house but couldn't afford a decent one, so I bought a fixer-uper. It was an ancient huge two family Victorian. For Example: I ended up replacing a lot of of the old peg and post wiring as I tore out walls and rebuilt the living spaces. This meant I needed to learn how to do electrical wiring. I didn't know anything about the trade. I shudder to think of all the Boston Loups I installed in the Romex connectors before I knew that it was a "Boston Loup" or that it was both illegal and a serious fire hazard.
"You'll shoot your eye out kid."