kernel and stage3 images

Thank you for your excellent howto.

I note that your procedure uses a kernel image and stage3 downloadable from your site. Is there anything special about these?  Does the usual gentoo kernel build process yield a working kernel for the beagleboard?

My concern is that I don't want to be anchored to somebody else's magic binaries.  I'd like to be able to build my own working kernels and stages.

Thanks,
Dan.