Forging, blacksmithing

Cool, thanks guys. I've been doing quite a bit of reading up on the topic since posting this yesterday. I'm just really fascinated by it. I'm probably going to start small, forging knives is what I'm mostly interested in.

Rob, I'm not on Facebook, but thanks for the suggestion. Dave, sounds like you've done a fair amount of metalwork. Thanks for your info. And thanks for the link 64dartGTinAz, I didn't know about the NW blacksmith assoc. Barbee6043 post up some pics of your hand made Spurs, man! I'd love to see em.

Something else I'd like to know along these lines, is how did them old blacksmiths treat their forgings to protect the metal? I was told once that they had some mix of something with bees wax that they would rub onto their project (?) but that would eventually wear off. Did they somehow 'blacken' the metal to make it more protected from corrosion?