Valkman,
A good hammer-in with cooperative makers and you could get easily get started forging.
The drop point was my second knife that I made the first day and it and the first knife were complete blades by the afternoon of the second day. "Complete" meaning that they were hammered out, normalized, descaled, ground, quinched, tangs filed and ready to be cleaned up and put guard and handle on them. Really only about 8 total hours went into the process on the first 2 knives, what with a late start on Monday and all of Larry's visitors during the day. I averaged beating out 2 knives a day.
Temps were ~90 degrees and relative humidities were >90% so it got a little warm with Larry's big forge. I forged in T-shirt and shorts with my leather apron for protection. I found that electronic ear muffs were a big help after the first day since the ring of the anvil may be music, but it can be loud music. I used a heavier glove on my left hand since the steel got to be hot even with an extra foot of steel left on to handle.
Larry charges $500 for a week and I stayed a couple of days extra on the weekend since Wes Byrd had come in for the weekend for an ABS sponsored youth event and Larry told me that I had to stay to help. Wes showed me how to draw file and stone finish (see the shortest blade in the image) so I could finish knives without power tools. While exhausting, draw file work certainly keeps you from feeding the grinder gods too much of the forge god's blade. I showed a 10 year old how to forge a basic blade while Wes worked with his dad and Larry "supervised" my instruction. "Supervised" consisted of Larry saying "Michael" with varrying inflections to remind or correct me in my instruction.
I went to Kim Breeds on Saturday to show off my first work and he gave the 28kilo anvil in the picture to me. While I had been contemplating finding a 200lb die block I realized that I've read of making knives using railway rail sections for an anvil and the little anvil is certainly a step up from that. All I need to do is get it onto a heavy non-shock absorbing base and it should do very well.