I disagree, forging has a very straightforward meaning, heating the metal to red-hot, and hammer away to form it. Items are typically then quenched in oil or wa

I disagree, forging has a very straightforward meaning, heating the metal to red-hot, and hammer away to form it. Items are typically then quenched in oil or water, which cools steels quickly enough that they are quite brittle. Heat-treating them then tempers that, allowing the smith to achieve whatever level of hardness (with brittleness) or flexibility (with loss of hardness and thus sharpness). The Japanese smiths do seem to have gone to great lengths to forge-weld steels of differing hardnesses together in making blades - I was amazed to learn that the curve of the katana results from quenching a blade that is forged basically straight, but has much harder steel along the edge (which can't shrink as much as the more or less iron of the spine, due to carbides).