That you all were able to endlessly mindlessly hammer a cold blade by spamming a shortcut key while watching a movie without even looking at the game was a long-standing bug. That wasn't the intent, but you just got used to it being that way. If you check shield crafting, you can't hammer anything cold there either, and couldn't do so in any recent past that I'm aware of.
There will be regular updates to crafting, and I'll recheck the bulk reheating of dull blades, as you -are- supposed to be able to do that, then hammer each one. You can also keep both the forge window and your model inventory window open and move directly from the equip slot to the forge slots. You should be able to hammer a dull blade, toss it back in the forge, and while that's heating up, equip and hammer another one. I'd expect an efficient smith could get 3 going around this way.
It also wasn't the intent for everyone to become an overnight master weapons crafter. To reach the highest levels should take a protracted commitment of time and effort, otherwise it's pointless entirely and we'd have just made perfect weapons available from NPC's made to order, priced accordingly, payable in platinum ore.
Have some patience over the next few weeks - some fun stuff is coming
