After multiple sessions of cold-forging and polishing, the blade is finished. I tried to anneal the edges of the tang with a flame weeder, and I do think it helped. As you can see, I didn't manage to polish out the last of the grind marks.
The flange is quite shallow, maybe a millimeter and a half at the most. But I think even one this shallow will serve its purpose. A higher, thinner flange could, as I understand it, be crimped a bit into the scales to provide much better hold on them.
Some of the equipment for raising a flange. For me, both hammers proved necessary: The cross-peen hammer's narrow face gets into concave curves that the claw hammer is useless against, but the cross-peen hammer's round face has nasty concentric circles that transfer onto the medium, so the claw hammer's smooth face is necessary for all straight and convex edges. Another useful tool is a table clamp for holding the blade while hammering on the top of the pommel area, since bracing the blade's thin point against anything would risk damaging it.
I finished up with the usual combination of various grades of sandpaper ending with the Dremel's carbon steel brush. The initial sanding also included a round file about 1/4 inch thick for roughing out the narrowest curves.
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