Upperpeach

Thanks for the tip, I've looked into NJ Steel baron and am probably going to order some 1084 for my next project. I've heard about leaf springs but have never really known much about the steel quality. I suppose in hindsight it would have been better for me to look into getting a leaf spring as opposed to flat-bar from the hardware store but I can use this blade as practice for remaking it with better steel.

As i said before this was my first knife. That being said, I wasn't exactly expecting everything to be perfect and was using this blade to test the waters and get some practice. I thought I was diligent in cleaning off the scale, but truth be told I probably missed some. I know/have read about the quality of hardware store steel but that brings me to a much bigger question of where to buy higher quality flatbar? I have looked all around locally and am having trouble finding a non-bulk supplier of blade quality steels.

Hey guys, I've just completed forging my first knife today using some flatbar i bought at a local hardware store. Everything turned out great except for that while I was sanding it and polishing it up a little bit, there were deep pits in the blade. I know this is why I should sand and polish the blade, but after close to 2 hours of working with a electric hand sander with a very course grit, I still had the pit marks. I thought it was from the hammer strikes during forging, but these pits seem too small in area to have been caused by my hammer. So my question is does anybody know what these are, and if so how to prevent them in the future? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.