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You can't prevent scale.... when forging it's the by product of combustion when the hot steel meets the free oxygen in the atmosphere whenever you take the steel out of the forge to work on it. The best way to reduce it is to have your forge tuned properly.... with a reducing atmosphere. What that means is you have more fuel going into the forge then oxygen. The combustion of the fuel uses all the oxygen inside the forge, leaving no oxygen to cause scale on your steel.
The best evidence of this is the flames coming out the opening(s) of the forge....that is the excess fuel, coming out of the forge, and combusting with the oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere... this is a reducing atmosphere inside a forge.
IF there is a huge amount of scale, it can be "pushed" into the surface of the steel, but it's not "absorbed". The harm is causes is that when it presses into the steels surface, it forces divots/pits, that you have to grind out.
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