A few months ago I met up with a local knife maker, he took me under his wing to show me the ropes.  He is a hobby knife maker of 20+years. He also make primitive bows and soon I will be learning how to make those as well. Here is some of my work.  I started out with steel  stock and doing cutouts, finding scrap metal, and just started using old lawnmower blades.  I have done kephart style, nessmuk, TANTO style machete. I dye and sew the leather sheaths as well. Use antler, bones,  and some exotic woods. I have about 4 currently in the beginning stage, I am still working on.  I also make ferro rods, and gear towards bushcraft.

Nice.  It's exactly the perfect hobby for guys.

Because... 

It's got fire.

It involves beating on something.

There's lots of noise.

You're using tools...and power tools.

You're making weapons.

What's not to like?

Looks like someone is in love with tantos and Nordic knives styles 
Nice knives and nice working place.
May I suggest to use smaller rivets for the handles? the bigger they are, the higher is the risk that they split the handle under stress.
Which kind of coal are you guys using? Fossil one?

Ok. Fossil coal is good and relatively cheap. Can be found easily and grants high temperatures for long time even if it takes long to ignite.
Natural coal is divided in 2 types, hard wood and resin wood.
Hard wood (eg. oak and similar) gives you the highest temperature, lasts reasonably but is hard to find and not cheap (around 1 Euro a kilo).
Resin wood is not good to forge cause it delivers low temperature even if lasts long.

Careful using hard wood coal cause you can melt iron with it, you better use fossil coal at the beginning 

I have a large metal can with a tight fitting top.  When drought conditions lift and the outdoor fire ban is lifted, I plan to make my own charcoal.  I have willow, (which I plan to try to make black powder or actually gun meal out of) ((For the matchlock I'm building)) oak and pecan handy.  I actually have a variety of other trees but that would require cutting them down.  The parts I plan to use are limbs that have fallen from the trees.

Some of those limbs are larger than your upper leg, so some splitting will be required when I cut them to length.

Or should I leave them that large? 

I have used the commercial stuff and like Mauro says, it leaves a lot to be desired.  It will work, but barely, you have to use a lot and keep a constant stream of air on it and the ashes build up very quickly and require lots of stirring and shaking.

I like the bone handled one and the first one - the rest, not so much (does that hand wobbling gesture).
Each to their own

But cool stuff anyway

Watched another couple forged in fire last night. Guy who won the second one used nothing but dirt basic hand tools and his 'forge' (for want ofa better word) was initially a saucepan, which proved too small so he cut a chunk out of an old satellite dish for more cooking area.
Made a real rustic but effective viking battle axe and beat the guy who had the all singing and dancing tooled up workshop.

Fascinating to see what can be done with such limited resources.

One of our members makes some truly exceptional knives (see if I can find the thread) 
This is the one I bought: http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1381591178

well I'm buggered if I can find any trace of the thread he posted his knives in originally, or in fact any trace of his username anywhere.
If I didn't have the knife I'd think I'd been imagining things

I have definitely strayed deep into the:

Bill, this is the model of a "ncotta".
"Ncotta" is the way mountain men in my region used to make coal until not long ago.




You can see how they used to build a kind of a pyramid with the bigger logs in the center and the smaller ones all around.
They then lit a fire in the middle and let it burn - with no flames - for days.
Once all the wood is burnt, you get the coal.
They used to do "ncottas" indoor, inside tiny chambers made of simple metal sheets.

The guy I used to buy my oak coal from was a 92 years old boy who periodically took his tractor and his axe and went up in the mountains to cut some wood... and then he made the wood pyramid all by himself too 
That coal was worthless 

And there he is, at work. My good old friend Venanzio, the "carbonaio" (coal maker):

That is awesome,  thanks for the pics and insight into other cultures