Skyrim Blacksmith Forges Guide

Use Blacksmith Forges to craft new weapons and armor. Your smithing perks determine which materials you can use to forge new items.

Forging weapons and armor requires components, like leather or metal ingots. The components required to create an item appear below it on the right side of the screen. If you have a component it is displayed in white; If not, it is displayed in Grey.

The following races get a +5 bonus to their starting smithing skill: Nords, Redguards

Perks you might want to look at if your character will be doing lots of smithing include Steel Smithing which lets you create steel armor and steel weapons in forges and improve them twice as much,  Dwarven Smithing which unlocks Dwarven armor and weapons at the forges,  Orcish Smithing for deadly Orcish weapons and armor, Ebony Smithing for very powerful Ebony weapons and armor,  Arcane Blacksmith that lets you improve magicla armor and weapons,  Elven Smithing to create elven weapons and armor,  Advanced Armors allowing your character to create Scaled and plate armors,  Glass Smithing which unlocks Glass Armor at the forges,  Dragon Armor which lets you create highly powerful dragon armor,  and Daedric Smithing letting you create and improve Daedric Armors and weapons.