I was speaking in the general, as specific instances are not period indicative.
Yes and no used open coal fire in a brick pit with commercial bucket for annealing and tempering. used both steel and stone hammer for the forging on a rough granite anvil.
Over forty years ago so no pictures but was making picture frames and hardware for custom furniture and best way I could get the hammered look was with a stone hammer and yes it had a conventional premade handle and I used a stone drill and modern epoxy to attach.
By the way I totally respect and admire your dedication and adherence to reproducing under almost original conditions vs. my deferring to the statement of the possibility of doing something and until we enter into the history of the late 20th century all my posts and defenses will for the most part be theoretical so I will likely never argue with you about how long or how practical something is or long it takes only that it Is possible in the era and since it is possible having a way to do it gives the game diversity.
Coming late to read the end message in this thread. Interesting discussion for sure, thank to both or you.
Everybody knowing me probably knows my heart is with @lotus253 and my head with @jrpjim on that 
To be honest, jrpjim, Iād not worry too much on the possibilities of having such options in game, quite early after the release.
Iām not in the devsā heads, but I guess as they want a historical approach they probably will work prioritarily on having everything working fine, to avoid weird situations. But we may perfectly imagine a set of options being implemented in game after that, not even needing a full-fledge DLC. Iām not speaking of mods here, as thatās a common use for this, but thatās also not as appealing as a simple tick in game options.
But, basically, what I think would be totally possible would be a first āstepā being for instance:
- an āUnbelievable but trueā option in-game: having 4,000 people in your town if you reach later tech stages, like in Neolithic Eastern Europe; or a machine to make 40/50-cm-long flint blades like in Eastern Europe (those blades were only a prestige thing, as they were very frail, could not be used for anything and virtually impossible to trade safely with the means of the time on long distance); or discovering how to forge native metals to make a few things with them, as you suggested. A good part of that would need only toying with a few flags and writing bit of scripts, no more, so this probably would not be a very big deal regarding the feasibility.
- there may also be possibilities for pure fantazy DLCs or additions: either a full-fledge DLC, or for instance a ritualistic goody added in game every 1st of April, like a priest able to make the earth shake in case of an attack, orā¦ Well, some strange cattle. However, there is also to think about the tech work needed for such cases: if you compare with this boar as shown by the devs, I guess you may imagine this may need some bits of work to have them introduced in game, so probably this would wait a bit
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