any blacksmiths on the line?
So, If I get you right, you personally have made all of your tools to work on cars and never looked at a service manual or gotten any advice or tips from friends or the internet...
Then why are you here?
And for that matter, how did you get to where you are in life without help of some kind?
My car is not my "creative outlet".
My creative outlet is my job, where I have turned my creative abilities into, literally, your ability to buy food to eat. I design and create food packaging and production equipment and yes, that includes the special tools required to manufacturer and service said equipment. I make things that didn't exist before, and those things are conceived and built in my mind.
I am able to do that job better than most because I understand the metallurgy, the manufacturing, the standards, the history and most importantly, the customer. My background in foundries, machine shops, sheet metal shops and even cleaning toilets gives me an edge.
Everybody wants to change the world. Nobody wants to change the toilet paper roll.
And I interview candidates for hire every day who tell me that their creative outlets are knife making, painting, blacksmithing, "stem", design, etc. etc, and 98% start out with "I saw this thing online...." And they have the creative abilities of a brick. They don't understand the fundamentals because they don't have to; they're not making anything truly new and unique, they're just copying.
To relate it to the op buying a propane forge, most people that I interview that call themselves blacksmiths don't know how to start a fire. They don't know where steel comes from. They don't understand alloying, heat treatment, case hardening, carburizing, etc. But they're blacksmiths, by God.
They're simply watching YouTube and following along, thinking that they're doing something.
I'm trying to steer the child in question into monkey think, not just monkey do. Blacksmithing is a worthy start. You can blacksmith with a ball peen hammer, some charcoal briquettes, some scrap steel, and some lungs. (and some safety glasses).
But, nah, break out the credit card and copy what you saw on tv.
Ignore my input if you don't like it. It's no more complicated than that.