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[DrKissinger1]

So I'm coming back to DF after a long hiatus, and I was pleased to learn that magma is available on pretty much every map. I was saddened to learn, however, that this magma is usually about 100 layers down in the earth, too far from my fortress sites to be of much use. Climbing up and down 100 z levels takes a lot of time for any dwarf.

I saw the "pistoning" method for raising magma on the wiki, but I'm not very familiar with cave-in mechanics and don't trust my skills to handle a project of that size without collapsing the whole thing halfway through. Also, I'm not certain how I'm supposed to "catch" the magma once it's pushed upwards by the collapsing piston. The only alternative I can think of is to pump the magma up, but I would probably need to cover the surface with windmills to get enough power. Are there any other methods to make magma workable again?

[ShinWalks]

If you're just not sure how to produce enough mechanical power, there's always perpetual motion:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Waterwheel#Perpetual_motion

[celem]

Also while the magma could be as far as 100 z down it wont always be.  Sometimes it can be as shallow as 25 or so, I imagine this is controllable through worldgen but i dont fiddle those numbers and still see considerable range.

Provided its not ridiculously far i usually put my forges deep and they just gotta live with the walk.  I usually have a vertical stair from surface to maybe z-30/z-50 so paths still remain fairly short and equivilant to a hike across 1 z level

[Sutremaine]

Also, I'm not certain how I'm supposed to "catch" the magma once it's pushed upwards by the collapsing piston.

I've done it semi-accidently with water. The design calls for hatches or something, but dropping a chunk of rock tall enough to plug the hole it goes through will keep the upchucked fluid where it is. What I caught would not enough to power a magma forge, but that was due to the design and not the physics.