Forge a kitchen knife from raw steel

The forge glows orange, and the steel bar you feed into it soon matches it, heated to somewhere near 1,150°C until it's the colour of a low sun. You pull it out with tongs and start hammering, and the ring of metal on anvil is louder than you expected, loud enough to feel in your teeth. A day of this—heat, hammer, quench in oil, watch it hiss black—leaves you with a knife that's crude but yours, sharp enough to cut a tomato without mangling it. The horn scales on the handle smoke faintly as you shape them, and that smell rides home in your sleeves for days.