I often see the question asked, "How do I start?" in regards to blademaking. While I am far from the resident expert, I can lay out a few ideas for consideration. And I'll try to do it without making a book out of it (after all, volumes can and have been written on the subject).
There are several methods for creating blades, but the most common seems to remain forging, and stock removal/reduction. Forging involves stock reduction as well, in most cases, but has the extra steps of rough forging and annealing/normalizing thrown in.
What you need to begin... For forging, you need a heat source, the metal to forge (naturally), a surface to rest the hot metal on to strike it (anvil, piece of old railroad track, etc. Lots of things can work for this to one degree or another), tongs (for shorter things that you can't handle with your hands without being burned), and a hammer or 3. You can get by with 1 hammer, but a variety of weights and shapes are handy. With these items, you can forge a blade. From forging, you'll anneal/normalize your blade, and go to working on stockremoval to refine your shape.
Stock removal skips the heat and forge. To do that you need tools to remove the metal to the shape you desire. Lots of ways to do it. A beltgrinder, angle grinder, files, scrapers, hacksaws, bandsaw, etc. (Don't overlook the files and scrapers in all this. Those allow a lot of refined work if you have the patience to work with them. I find them far more controllable, in my own work, than the grinders. )
Beltgrinders (sanders) are probably one of the staples of stockremoval. You don't have to have one to do knife or sword work, but it will be a blessing to you if you can manage to come up with a quality grinder. It will save you tons of time and handwork. That being said, I don't actually have anything other than a Harbor Freight special...A 1" x 30" little thing. It is not all that great, and to do work with it requires a lot of patience. You can spend hours and not get much done. What it is useful for, I've found, is removing scratches after drawfiling or rough sanding a blade.
Having said all that, what you *have* to have to do stock removal is minimal.
You can get by with a file and a hacksaw, and your metal stock to work. Add to that various grits of abrasive paper from rough to very fine and you can shape a blade, with patience. Machines are undoubtedly quicker and easier, though, but I'm just describing the bare minimum approach to beginning here.
From the stock removal stage you'll want to go into the heat treat. There are lots of methods of heat treatment you can do, but the simplest usually involves a heat source like the forge, or a furnace, and a quench tank to hold oil or water. I recommend some kind of metal container, plastic can melt to easily
. There are other advanced and more complicated ways, like salt baths, but those require some care in use and do tend to cost a fair amount to get setup with. I still do my knives in my forge and oil quench, mostly. It is pretty basic, so anyone can do this.
Tempering for shorter pieces, which is mostly what I've been doing, is accomplished fairly well by sticking the knife in the kitchen oven for several hours after the hardening.
Now, if you don't have a way to do the heat treatment yourself, there are commercial outfits that will do this for you. You'll have to look around to see, as I'm not in much of a position to speak on that, since I do my own in the backyard. I expect asking for advice on that here on SFI would garner some fine suggestions.
You'll want to have some files and a hand drill/power drill of some kind to do work on your hilting. I bought a cheap Harbor Freight drill press which while not high end, has made my hilting life a whole lot easier. Just so you have a way to shape your fittings and drill holes for rivets or for the tang to go through your handle material, etc.
Add to this some stuff you don't *have* to have, but I think you should: Gloves, safety glasses or faceshield, leather apron to keep you safe from burns and scale and whatever else might come your way. Maybe even some earphones/plugs. Grinding and hammering can be hard on the ears...
In a lot of ways, you can get by with a bare minimum approach to start out without a lot of trouble. The first thing I ever heated up and beat on was in an open pit dug in the ground with an old vacuum cleaner and a lump of coal. I used a ballpeen hammer and a rock. The result wasn't pretty, for sure, but it did work.
Looking over what I've listed above, you can see that you can do the work without a huge investment. There are ofcourse a million ways to improve on your basic setup and as you work you will find what works best for you and beging to recognize what you need to do the work you want to do and what you won't need. And as you can see, I've left a ton of information out on extra tools that make it all easier and what you actually do, step by step ( which varies from maker to maker a lot, anyway) to shape and refine a blade. As I said, I don't want to bore you and end up writing a book.
Speaking of which, I recommend you read any and all books you can find on smithing. I first picked up The Complete Bladesmith, by Jim Hrisoulas, in my research. It is, in fact, a book I recommend (as do others) as a great source for a general bladesmithing foundation. I found it quite valuable to me, as I had no one around to learn from at first.
As a matter of fact, I think books on blacksmithing in general would be very valuable to study, as well. Look around your library or check around the net to see what you can find. Those often have alot of great ideas in them.
There are also a number of blademaking videos out and about that might be of value to you. I haven't a lot of experience with those, so can't recommend any, but others here probably could.
If you check around a bit, you might be fortunate enough to find a working blade creator in your area. If they have time to show you what is what it would be a great boost to you as a beginner, no doubt. Also check around your local colleges/ tech school type places. These places have been known to have blacksmithing or bladesmithing classes open to the public. I know my local community college did, and I enjoyed the classes I
went to.
Do a little searching around the Net as well as reading here on SFI. There are some very valuable resources out there for information from some great makers. I spend a lot of time on Don Fogg's great site, for instance. He shares a lot of great tips on everything from forge building to polishing. And there are other such sources out there. Just look around a bit and see. You'll learn a lot. I still do....
(Well, I almost wrote a book after all, and I barely touched on the specifics of the craft... but, at least it is a kind of guide line and spells out a bit of what is needed to get a start... Hope it helps somebody...)
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. Don't ask me, I didn't choose to be born here. I was wondering how well this would work in a forge. Any help would be appreciated. Thus far I have only made wooden swords, so I have all the equipment like grinders and stuff, but I think I'm ready to make the leap.
I know nothing
) For the forge, I have an older wood stove in my basement surround by bare concrete for a good 6 feet around, and a window right behind which could act as ventilation i suppose. I've never checked the exact temperatures of my stove but I know that after 10 minutes at a good blaze it can turn brass tools glowing red hot. (I'm willing to purchase or make charcoal if neccesary for the right temperatures). For the anvil, the closest I could come to would be the top of the stove itself. It's flat and is made out of around 1/8 of an inch thick metal (I'm assuming cast iron), also it has alot of pieces to it that seem to make it very sturdy. For safety I have a goggles, gloves, steel toed leather boots, mostly cotton clothes, and it sounds ridiculous to me but would a leather jacket/trenchcoat be sufficient to replace the leather apron? Just economising and such 
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