What about a good ‘stone’? I dunno whether you have them in the UK, but they’re a lifetime purchase thingy that has two grades of sharpening ability on either side…coarse or fine. And I give my kitchen knives a whack every week or so, AND my bone-handled eating-knives as well. Doing it with a steel never quite made the sharpness grade.
If he’s in the south, he may well be in a smoke-free zone, which will preclude a forge.
Maybe you can ask someone that blacksmiths at a heritage site. I’m sure they would be helpful.
Are there any falconry classes around? There aren’t many in the U.S. but I always thought that would be a great thing to learn (and incredibly useful too).
Aye… 
But, he was thinking along the lines of “If he’s going to use a torch, he needs to use a torch that produces enough heat to work steel, and propane isn’t.” 
As you can see, I posted again about a home-made forge with firebricks, coal/coke and a blower etc.
[nitpick] the steel doesn’t really sharpen the blade it re-aligns it
Honing steel - Wikipedia [/nitpick]
Please refrain from blowing the $140 on coke.
The pottery course is starting to look attractive - there’s one starting at the end of this month at a local college - 11 weekly 2 hour sessions for almost exactly the amount I have to spend… and it’s a workshop course, so they encourage you to cover the range of skills, but let you make whatever you want (within reason, I suppose).
But there’s a working smithy up by that maybe-thousand-year-old pond I mentioned in the other thread - I might ask him if he’s prepared to do a little tuition - although I wouldn’t expect my money to go very far there.
Coke, the stuff you burn in blacksmithing sometimes, because it is cheaper, and hotter too IIRC. 
Yes, it is. It just depends on what type of steel work you do. Maybe he just wants to make a fireplace poker, for all I know. But, if he wants to make knives, then just build this:
http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/wheelforge01.html
And I weld, too - Stick and MIG.
Cool, he’s got certification in MIG, TIG, oxy-acetylene, stick rod, and MIG flux core. He was thinking all-purpose I would posit. (Me I admire him not only for his killer smile, but his sharp, sharp eyes that can spot things I couldn’t spot…)
Adding, go for the blacksmithing if it really interests you. The Mr. had a lot of fun with it. I think he said he learned a crude/rudimentary form of welding too, but I might be mistaken. I know he would complain if others came up to the forge he was using and mess with how he had the coals banked, apparently most didn’t think to bank the coals to make the fire hotter. I’ll ask him later to be sure he did learn some form of welding, but I think so. Seems to me he mentioned it on one of the other projects he’d made.
Pottery is lots of fun…playing with mud, really, but this time society approves. I’d be really torn on this one too, as I don’t have any really first quality knives, but I loved pottery when we had it in arts class. And I still have a couple of my projects from that class.
I found a Basic Blacksmithing class for Old World Wisconsin. This guy does 2 to 4 people at a time. This gives you an idea of what a blacksmith class may require if you find one at a heritage site near you. Mostly it shows the classes exist.
I like the knife idea. A thousand memorable meals could come from it.
Or a pretty nice tree.
Hell, my roomie is a blacksmith and will teach anybody what she knows for free. She occasionally will get an honorarium if she is invited to a school, but generally when she is at an SCA event she is surrounded by students. She does like it if you bring your own lump of metal as good steel can cost a bit. Oddly enough railroad spikes can be forged into decent work knives=)
Her entire forge setup is portable and everything including anvil and anvil stump fit in the back of a chevy s-10.
My uncle rented a farm that had a forge and all the tools. I so wanted to try them out back then. The old guy that owned the farm was beyond teaching a kid at the time.
The tattoo should read “Property of” followed by the missus’ name.
How about paying someone to make some house improvement you have been wanting to do, maybe even have promised to do, or that has been nagging at you, but never got around to?
Installing a handy shelf; doing some yard-work, that kind of thing? I recently had a young man (a landscaper in training) over for a morning, which cost me about 90 euro’s. I was amazed at how hard this guy worked and how much he could do, with the proper training, the proper tools, and just his drive and energy. Of course I could, and maybe should have done it myself; or nagged my husband into doing it, but after six months, I just knew it wasn’t going to happen. Now I feel relaxed everytime I look at the garden.
The 75 euro’s the sewer guy cost to poke through all the drainpipes (took him 20 minutes) was also the best money I spent in months. I almost got used to the idea that a slight sewage smell in the bathroom was normal, and that it was just a construction error that the washing machine gurgled up some grey muck into the bath everytime it ran. And that the only thing I could do about it was setting some horribly agressive lye on it. Which did nothing but eating the plastic doohickey covering the overflow-hole in the bathtub.
A professional makes all the difference.
PS: the advantage of spending the windfall on a service, instead of on stuff, is that you don’t end up with more hobby related stuff that needs a place to live in your home… aka clutter.