I had sent an email to the Australian supplier of the gas equipment for my forge asking about the setting as I didn't seem to be getting the heat at the same rate or the intensity that he showed on his 'how to' video. He rang yesterday (from Aus) so we had a good yarn with the advice being to drill out the jet from .7mm to 1mm. Because of the slightly different gas between AU and NZ I could get the gas flow with less pressure. When I did that it was night and day different so I had a crack at forging a couple things I needed. The first thing was a slag hammer as I had been given a stick welder on permanent loan, so used part of a small jackhammer chisel, cut the top off, forged the chisel end out flatter and made a point on the other end. Some of the videos I saw had them drift a hole through the chisel and taper the handle then rivet it on the other side of the head but that was more than I decided was necessary so I simply welded the handle on. Not too shabby for a first effort I thought.

I had a bit of trouble holding the chisel when I was hammering on it as while my extended handle pliers would open up wide enough, the handles were miles apart and not able to be held in one hand so vice grips sufficed even though I had to double handle everything to get it out of the forge and then take a grip wth the vicegrips to take it to the anvil so the next thing I really needed was a set of tongs that would hold something larger than flat stock. I had picked up some 1/2 in round rods so cut a couple of pieces and went to it. Again it was difficult to hold but eventually a rudimentary set of tongs emerged so I was reasonably happy. Will try a different tack next time as the full tong from 1/2 stock makes them quite heavy so will try to do the jaws from the full size then forge the reins down through 3/8 square to 1/4 in round at the hand grip.
At least these will help to get the next set underway.

Having done that I put the head of the pliers in the forge and when they got to heat I simply closed up the handles till they would hold the knife blades with a single hand grip. Really leased with them and will continue to use them for placing knives into and retrieving them from the forge.