Forge

A hearth built to heat metal, or the smithy where that hearth stands, bringing metal to the temperature at which a smith can shape it by hammering. A smith lifts the heated workpiece from the forge with tongs, carries it to the anvil to be worked with a hammer, and may quench it afterward in a slack tub, a container of water used to cool and, for steel, harden the piece. A traditional coal, coke or charcoal forge controls the fire's heat through the volume of air fed to it, the amount of fuel and the fire's own shape, built around a tuyere, or air pipe, and a bellows or blower; a gas forge, fired by propane or natural gas inside a refractory-lined chamber, is simpler to run and burns cleaner but is less adaptable to reshaping the fire around an odd-shaped piece. A finery forge is a different kind of forge again, a water-powered mill that refines pig iron into wrought iron. The forge is the essential companion of the anvil and tongs at the heart of blacksmithing.