My forge can melt steel, but I don’t like it to. So I don’t crank it to full unless I’m using my burners for metal casting.
You want to get steel hot enough to glow, then it’s easier to smash into shape with a hammer and anvil. If it melts on you, well the piece is now fucked, especially if you wanted to make something hardenable like a knife.
There’s entire sections of metallurgy dedicated to this kind of thing. It’s pretty neat.
Mine can, a little bit.
The trickier question is “can blacksmith forges coopt disaster for massive government overreach and restricting of privacy” but that’s way less catchy for the conspiracy theorists.