Blacksmithing tips please.

Has anyone here maxed out metalworking, tailoring and welding yet? Can you help a brother out with tips on how to grind smart? Because building the forge and furnace is such tedious work and I'm struggling to forge my first anvil. And i cut up my scrap iron into iron pieces because the wiki said you can make workable iron with it using a primitive forge but then you build one and the option doesn't even show up on the menu.