Strike While the Iron is Hot

Many of us have heard the phase "Strike while the iron is hot," but what about "Strike Where the Iron is hot?"

Both should be logically, no-brainers, right? You can probably tell where this is going....

Let look at both of these for a moment.

What do you consider hot. To me anything that my brain says "Dont touch".. is hot. Yes, a black heat is hot. This all begs the question what is a good temperature or color to start forging at? To me that's as hot as i can get it without burning it, because i want to spend my time forging not heating. The hotter it is when I pull it out of the fire the more i can do before i have to reheat. Obviously some of this is dependent on the type of material.