[Crex]

Lot of decent advice here. Biggest is changing your insulation/refractory methodology and torch angle.
Coffee can forges can be made to work fairly well, but a two brick forge will out perform them and are much simpler to build using soft fire brick. Have actually welded some san mai (three layer) in one. Flux ate the whole bottom out, so not recommended. Biggest problem was controlling the lower end of heat for heat treating as there is still the issue of "point of aim" hot spots even with an improved angle-in positioning. Also hard to turn the torch down enough and still maintain full chamber temps for accurate heat control - a must with good heat treating.

Pretty much, the time and effort you put into making the mini-forge work right - you can build a larger freon tank size that will give you much more versatility and better heat control. Lots of research on the front end will save you more than you can imagine in effort and wasted time.

I got to watch part of Ray's video (at a buddy's shop). Lots of good stuff/info provided in there, looks to be well worth it. Wish it'd been around when I first got started.....well, wouldn't have been anything to play it on and 8 track wouldn't do video...