Greetings from central Illinois

[Strider]

Newbie here. I've been interested in knife making for a while and decided this would be a great place to learn. Looking forward to meeting you all. 

[ThomasPowers]

Can you get to Quad-State Blacksmiths Roundup  the last weekend in September in Troy Ohio?

[Butch Waldron]

No I won't be able to make it. 

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard, glad to have your or heck both of you. If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many Iforge folk live within visiting distance.

Maybe there are just too many "Striders" out there as web handles? You could've picked "Aule" but you may not be a Dwarf.

Have you been making knives? Buying blanks or mono-steel stock and making stock removal blades is an excellent place to start. This learning curve is necessary to make blades and won't interfere with scaling the blacksmithing learning curve. I don't recommend a person try to learn bladesmithing by making blades at first. You have to forge the blanks and learn the steps for good heat treatment then furnishing it. Trying to learn several things at once just increases the number of failures you'll produce on the learning curve.

Believe me, blacksmithing even for the experienced is a life's worth of failure analysis. Nobody's born knowing this stuff and nobody'll live long enough to even sample it all. If you have a problem with being (ZZZZ buzzer sound) wrong it's a tough craft to learn. There's nothing wrong with screwing up, keep track of what you did and what happened that may have ruined THIS project but be THE THING for another down the road. This craft is: simple physics incarnate, cause and effect and deeply satisfying.

Frosty The Lucky.