>>makes his own knives here (Chris? Presumed?)<<<br><br>Not I. I did try a few small ones, decades ago when I was into blacksmithing, but I was never impressed with my own efforts. They worked, and I got some differential tempers to work, but they were pretty spectacularly ugly. I never had enough patience with grinding, polishing and fitting... and my thoughts as to what makes a good knife have changed a great deal since those days. Any web search on "primitive" knives will turn up smiths with a lot more skill and talent that I ever came close to. You can't forge for long without wanting to give it a try, though.<br><br>I've worked with smiths who said that they could judge a carbon steel, or at least the amount of carbon, by the amount of sparking it does on a grinding wheel, and how much the spark paths branch. I doubt that you can judge modern knife steels that way, but you can use it to easily see the difference between high-carbon and mild steel, so it's at least useful if you're scavenging steel.<br><br>I have hand-forged stainless tool steel, and I don't recommend it. It requires a great deal more force than forging typical high-carbon steel.. conservatively, three times the hammer weight, and more heat. The stuff is tough and nasty to work, difficult to control properly. <br><br>Except for some 18th-Century reproductions that I've bought from the makers directly, I buy knives from the same places everyone else does.