A lot of good info.

After thoughts provoked by Raspy's post, I might MAKE a spear with a knife in a survival situation, even without an abundance of knives at my disposal. If you needed a measure of defense, it would be good to have. Otherwise, I would avoid using a knife as a spear point, but I also might be able to do so by following your other advice.

I think the advise about making a spear point is great stuff. I knew of fire-hardening, but would have been at a loss for how to get it done.

One thing I would add: If I ever felt the need to create "a method of refining metal from raw ore," I think I'd much more quickly look to melting scrap. Metals are all over the place in our world. It may not be in a form I'd want it to use, but any form of scrap is likely to be easier to come by and purer than any ore I might be able to locate.

My first use of some type of scrap metal would be to try to fashion tools or weapons without a forge, as Raspy suggested. But if time and circumstance allowed for me to refine metal, after THSHTF and TEOTWAWKI, my ore is likely to be scrap material.