I have a friend who is working on a book of what is basically smith porn. Beautiful photos of big power hammers and presses in action and some stories of the men that have used them. These have been gathered on his "vacations" and at work over 40 years or so.
On the topic of forged turbine blades, the oriented strength of the resultant blade _is_ the advantage of using forging over conventional casting for a polycrystalline blade. Since the load on a turbine blade is mostly axial it makes no sense to not have favorable grain orientation to maximize strength in the axial direction. As a result, turbine blades are forged such that the grain orientation and size is elongated and coarse. This minimizes grain boundary area perpendicular to the load direction and thus minimizes creep at the high operating temperatures of a gas turbine.
Blacksmiths are always having hammer-ins (hackfest/demo day analog). If you can get to Brooks, AB, CA in June there is a forged knife hammer-in. Email me (in my profile) and I'll get you details. Abana.org is also a great place to find smiths.
The cool thing about hammer-ins is that newbies or people with only a casual interest often get to play with the toys (with careful instruction).
That is one hot and noisy job.
Also, there is a power hammer workshop in a week or so, in Loomis, near Sacramento, CA. These power hammers are very small compared to the 50, but still incredibly impressive in person.
It's a great hobby, with a great group of people, and I'd recommend checking it out if you're at all interested.
If you ever want to see a true craftsman in action, it's a master blacksmith in charge of a steam hammer. He can go from literally cracking an egg to delivering a blow whose resonance nearly brings the building down. Combined with with the way he manipulates the workpiece, it is poetry in motion.