the main purpose of forging to final shape would have been to save waste of precious, hard to make, steel. And also save on grinding minus power tools.

Am still blown away by the lines in the spine of Marko's knife, and assume small bar hammered out flat and doubled back on self multiple times to build up a large enough piece of steel in order to have enough to even start forging the knife. Which is quite the opposite of starting out with a large chunk and then extruding a tang. Which would also go back to very old ways of wasting nothing. I also suppose/hope that 5-7 folds would do it, as by 10-11 folds would be circa 1000 and 2000 layers respectively. All done the very old way in order to preserve it, even when invisible to a buyer on higher finished versions.

The Lauri blades are quite good and often these $15 blades hold up as well as many costing magnitudes more, and prices quite reasonable on Ahti, Wood Art, etc complete knives starting at $50-$60 including leather sheath using the Laurin Metalli Oy blades.

In english, a good little essay on the Taonta name basically brought back by a nephew and starting with junk pile of old shop, hoping to expand and improve equipment. He does more what I term the basic forged blade, of banging out a piece of heavy stock, and forging out tang/edge/point and grind....

https://nordiskaknivar.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/yrjo-puronvarsi-blades-yp-taonta/

Interestingly enough, many of these guys now doing great work have only been doing this for 4-10 yrs, including Tapio, Marko, and the Taonta family nephew. If they continue, one wonders what they will be in 25yrs!