Completely new to Knife Making.

I see a lot of you guys referring newbies to getting hand files instead of a cheap 4" angle grinder, and wondering why. I imagine that is because using a file is foundational in manual skill building, which it is, but it seems a bit high school shop class ish to shape an entire knife blank with. When I was 18 and made my first knife, the first tool I grabbed after annealing my forged blank was my 4" angle grinder with 30 grit wheel, and even used it to manually hollow grind it (once you create the trough, its not too hard to keep the wheel seated into it, especially when crossing hatching).
The 30 grit cut so well (dressing along the way) that it never burned the steel, coupled with many dunks in water. The tip of my belt sander worked great at finishing the hollow grind as well. This all, of coarse, assumes you have excellent manual skill with power tools, which I had then, but I'm sure any newbie could develop great manual skill over the coarse of a few test blades.
 
I can’t speak for the others, but it maybe partly due to dangers of an angle grinder (I realize many tools we use are dangerous), but for a beginner who may be a minor, this should be emphasized.

For me, the files kept lines very crisp and built a good foundation to see how the steel should look and perform. I’ve never been very skilled with an angle grinder.
It also taught me that a 2x72 should come as soon as possible!
 
I feel that if you want to learn something well, it is good to take it slow and learn to do it bij hand first.
When you understand and appreciate what you're doing, speed it up with powertools.
I chalanged myself to make my first knife with no powertools besides a drillpress
 
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