Not for nothing, but nobody seems to have asked the obvious question of how much general forging experience Scott has to start with. I would hesitate to tell a novice smith to start forging on tool steel. First of all it's expensive, and secondly, it's fussy stuff to learn how to forge with. To start learning the basics of forging (drawing out, fullering, upsetting, etc.) you should begin with mild steel. It's cheap to buy new and scrap is even cheaper, so who cares if that first dozen "knives" wind up in the trash? Maybe I just learned blacksmithing first and then migrated to blade smithing, so I'm biased, but If Scott is trying to learn to forge, he should start with easy to manipulate steels. If Scott has a lot of forging experience, and knows how to move steel under the hammer, then forget everything I just said.