Make, form, shape, fashion, fabricate, manufacture, forge can all mean to cause something to come into being or existence.
This is the underlying meaning of make, the most general and the most widely applicable of these terms. Make may imply the operation either of an intelligent agent or of a blind agency, and either material or immaterial existence.
Form adds to make the implication that the thing brought into being has a definite outline, design, or structure.
Shape, though often interchangeable with form, is much more restricted in its application because it characteristically connotes an external agent that physically or figuratively impresses a particular form upon something (as by molding, beating, carving, or cutting).
Fashion means to form, but it implies an intelligent and sometimes a purposeful agency and more or less inventive power or ingenuity.
Fabricate stresses a making that unites many parts or materials into a whole and it usually connotes either a making according to a standardized pattern or skillfulness in construction. Very commonly fabricate implies an imaginative making or inventing of something false.
Manufacture emphasizes the making of something by labor, originally by hand but now more often by machinery. The term is applied to a making in which raw materials are used and a definite process or series of processes is followed. In extended use manufacture often is preferred to the preceding words when laboriousness or the knowledge of the mechanics of a process, rather than skill or ingenuity, is connoted.
Forge basically suggests the operation of a smith who heats metal and beats or hammers it into shape.
In its extended sense it carries a strong implication of devising or concocting by physical or mental effort so as to give the appearance of truth or reality. In specific use, both legal and ordinary, forge implies the making of a counterfeit, especially by imitating the handwriting of an original or of a supposed maker; thus, one forges a document, such as a will, deed, or check, by making or signing it in imitation of another’s handwriting or by making alterations in a genuine document by the same means.