Burned 3 hours on a scrolling twist I should've caught in 10 minutes

Had a commission for a fireplace poker last month and decided to try a basket twist in the handle. I'd never done one before, so I figured maybe an hour of fiddling and I'd have it. Three hours later I had four failed attempts, two of which snapped right at the weld seam because I was twisting cold steel way past where it wanted to go. Turns out my problem was I kept trying to get the whole thing hot in one pass instead of working it in sections, and I was turning the wrench too fast once it started moving. A guy named Pete at the Sacramento forge meetup showed me to slow way down and keep the heat even, and the fifth try came out clean in about 15 minutes. Now I won't touch a twist until the whole bar is a uniform orange. Any of you run into a twist that just would not cooperate no matter what you tried?