Greg,
You ought to pick up a copy of Machinery's Handbook. It'll answer some questions for you.

i have one...but i didn't know they had a section on practical blacksmithing

i'm just looking for the basics ..... i got a feeling that the handbook might get a little more technical than is practical for what I'm doing in my garage.

I'll check it out though...cuz I'm replying w/o having looked yet. :)

Well since it's usually blademaking where you run into forging high alloy steels; may I commend to your attention "The Complete Bladesmith" by James Hrisoulas which has information on most of the typical steels used and their forging requirements.

If you are in the USA your local public library should be able to ILL a copy for you to check out before you go find one to buy. If you plan to forge blades you should probably plan to own your own copy.

It's the black finger prints that always gave me away...

Good point Thomas. forgot about jph's books. Haven't got one myself yet.
Greg, there's all sorts of data about forging temp, hardening temp, tempering temp, annealing process, etc. etc. for most alloys in the machinerys handbook.

Good way to think about a knife, surely it will perform well.

Since I have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of misc metal on the farm, what with machinery repairs, I have learned to quickly adapt to the steel at hand. Between all the chisels and punches I've made as well as random quick repairs on gates and such, I've been lucky enough to never work one type of metal long enough to really develop instinctual habits for either type.

New metal or scrap both have pros and cons, primarily one is cheaper and one is more consistent. If you want to pay to learn on something you won't have to think about whether it was the metal that caused the crack, or if it was technique, then buy new. I personally like scrap because it is cheap which is important for a university student. If I keep running into the same problem with different scraps, I assume it's my technique and go from there. It takes longer, but I find I learn more by looking at all aspects but that may just be me and my learning style. I need more than just the bare minimum to memorize. I need to know some background and reason things out.

My biggest problem is going to a demo and working with coal after working with charcoal, not to mention smaller metal and then getting distracted by spectators.....

Not sure about such a thin blade but if you get that sucker to take a case hardening it would beat its chest at M2 ((more like it would be all case hardened and warp like a potato chip)). I designed a feeder system for a National 2500ton Maxi press used all cold rolled and case hardened and by my guess its seen well over a millon parts and scoffed off wear. Perhaps this steel may not make the best thin blade but with a little work and trial and error you'd be surprised.
It would take a surface hardening like WearTech that runs around 60 or 62 rockwell C and you could mask off what you didnt want hard, wouldnt need to sharpen it then after the intial. Ill take a poke and say 99.9% of board members are scratching their heads over the WearTech process ehh???
Nice blade BTW and I have a Iverson ((havent looked at the book in awhile)) book of steels I could run off some copies of steel grades and uses. This book gives steel mill tolerances, sheet sizes, bar lengths...info that informs way before the consumer gets their paws on it. Heck you can prolly find it on the net. LMK

ty for the tips.
forging1,i would try to look for it, and if i couldnt find it, i ll just come back and ask you ^^

I AM a metallurgist and I gotta agree with with Dodge. No time spent at the forge is wasted if you learn something. Just keep hammering and reading, you can't learn without doing both.