Many thanks to this forum and the thoughtful responses to newbie questions (and archive). After much reading and some good advice I have finally completed some knives and my shop has most of the parts needed.
My KMG got here and my dad and I got to work. I built a rack for the extra tool arms and we as neither of us have ever used a tool like this we started making sparks. (Respirators/goggles used now)
Had some good advice on belts from this forum. Thought I bought enough stock for a while but had to put a second order in this week.
I made 3 gas forges so far, these little ones work great for heat treating 1084. Many thanks to Ray for making his video.
First knife each for my dad and I. We were pretty happy that we ended up with a "knife like object" each having never made one.
We made 8 knives this week. Five for me, 3 for my dad. Mostly similar blade shapes, all 1084. We tried different handle materials, pins, corby bolts, etc.. We learn something new with each one and have moved on now to some kitchen knives with bolsters (will be another first). These are cell phone pics, I will take more time with better camera gear once I figure out how to make my plunge lines presentable and fine tune a couple of things. Lots of lessons in these 8, including the only one forged (from a horse rasp).
I took the larger of the orange handled knives and sharpened it with a 25 degree bevel and slight convex on the slack belt. I chopped through two sides of a 2x4, cut a large cardboard box up into shreds, and then cut a bunch of rope. No edge rolling or chipping and it still felt very sharp to me. This is about all I can do at this point to check my heat treating. I really like the medium scotchbrite finish on these "using" knives.