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What the others said. I assume a propane forge?
Here's my experience. My wife had a little wooden end table she was eventually going to refinish. I used it first time with my homemade propane forge. I put a piece of slate under the front of the forge. The heat from the opening cracked the slate and the wood underneath started scorching. Oops...
I have a post and base and table from an old drill press. I though that will make a great forge table with a sack of birdshot on the base to stabilize it. It's only about waist high & so a little low. So I added a little wooden box on top to raise the propane forge. Having learned my lesson with slate I put fire brick underneath, the stuff that is about 4"x9"x about 3/4 or 1" thick. Okay worked great...for about 30-45 minutes and then started smelling wood burning and looked around. Oh, it's under the fire bricks.
Okay, on to the next plan. Next I put a layer of KOA wool underneath. Okay that worked....for about an hour and didn't realize the wood was converting to charcoal underneath until smoke started seeping out. When I realized it I had to pour water on it to keep it from flaming.
And so, now the forge sits on the cast iron drill table, albeit a little too low, and even then with firebricks underneath, as I'm afraid given enough time, the cast iron will melt. Forges by necessity, burn very hot. They can melt steel and so what I have learned is there is no really safe way to put one on wood and adequately insulate the wood.
Only way is to raise it high enough above the wood surface, maybe with a layer of sand AND refractory wool, and to do that it still would not be advisable for indoor use. Just simpler and makes more sense to, as mentioned above, build something dedicated to the forge alone from steel or masonry, or use something like the metal cart listed.
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