Have you checked out Alex W. Bealer's "The Art of Blacksmithing"? The first edition of that got me started, and guided me through my first projects many years ago.<br><br>I set up a forge once with an old vacuum cleaner as a blower. It's counter-intuitive, but when I graduated to a rivet forge with a crank blower, and later to bellows, I found that I much preferred having more control over the draft than just on/off, and it saved fuel as well.<br><br>As much fun as this is, even if civilization gave up the fight tomorrow I imagine there would be plenty of factory-made knives around for many generations. Not sure I understand the question in the original post.