Well my last two attempts have been sucessful welds in the forge. they are just a couple chain links, but man is it nice for it to work finally. I think I was not heating enough of the metal so it was trying to spring back some, and also i might have been hitting it too hard trying to smash it together in one heat and make it stick instead of letting it stick on its own over a few heats.
Anyways just wanted to share the sucess so far, hopefully it keeps going in that direction!