What's the Toughest Part for a Newbie to Learn??

No one mentioned jigs.
Look up bevel jigs on Utube. They are guides that allow some of the guess work to be taken out of the equation.

Here is something else that WILL help... Practice.
Cut an old wooden baseball bat into slabs, and make a dozen wooden knives.
You will quickly gain confidence.
From there go into Aluminum. You will learn how to maintain you equipment, and gain more skill.

Then you can go to cheap steels. Nothing lost there if you mess up. That reminds me of Bob Ross... There are no mistakes. Just happy accidents.
If you have a happy accident... adjust your game plan to rescue the project. That's what the steel wanted to be anyway.

Lastly... The blue junk is called Dykem. It's actually a surface dye for metal.

Good luck!
 
I have never used a big grinder for making knives. If you are trying to make quite a few or something like that I could see it to speed up the process. No jig, just hand file. For a first knife hand file it. You'll gain your patience, dexterity skills for holding a line and shaping skills for handle shaping. No gouging out a big mistake with a file. Slow and steady.
 
You mentioned scribed line down the centerline of the cutting edge this can be easily accomplished with a tool you will use often "Calipers". You will find that measuring is an integral part of keeping everything lined up. Once you measure the thickness of the stock you divide the measurement add 0.010-0.015 thousandths lock the caliper rest one leg of the caliper on the flat side and draw the tip of the other leg down the center line of the edge now do the same from the other flat side. You should have two parallel lines which are your starting point for the bevel grind LEAVE the material thickness between the lines this material will be the FINAL EDGE ground in the sharpening last step.
 
Just because something happens and you screw up your original design, don't stop! There is still a lot that piece of steel can teach you. Look to see if there is another knife you can still make with it. Many a paring knife started out as a Bowie.
 
For me, without a doubt, it's grinding bevels. I'm pretty new at this as well, and keeping the grind lines straight is currently my bane. It's hard to not give up on the knife when a huge mistake is made, toss it, and start on a new one. Though like someone above said, it's very true that you can learn a lot from keeping with it and trying to fix your mistake. Even if you have to totally change the design of the knife, and make it smaller than what you intended, there's still something it can teach you and you'll actually get the satisfaction of completing it.
 
Kevin Cross said:
Just because something happens and you screw up your original design, don't stop! There is still a lot that piece of steel can teach you. Look to see if there is another knife you can still make with it. Many a paring knife started out as a Bowie.
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He he! Had to do it!
 
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