Tongs

The forge isn’t completed yet but it is functional. But I couldn’t wait to try out forging for the first time. First I need to give credit to all blacksmiths that forge with a hammer, I was wiped out after making these which took about 3 hours (per side). This has only made me more impressed with what can be achieved. Definitely need to work on hammer control. I think i wasn't heating the metal enough and i shouldn't have started with 3/4 round bar. Drawing out the reins almost killed me. After watching more videos of smiths being able to do this in much fewer heats than it took me (1 heat to my 12 I need to do) and the metal seemed to moved so much easier than i…

Grafvitnir asked me about the tongs I use for making hammers. I took some pictures of the steps. These are similar to Alfred Habermann's pick up tongs. I started with 2 pieces of 1/2" coil spring 8" long.

I am looking at making my first set of tongs. I have seen some videos of people using flat stock and twisting it to make the bit. I think it is called the Dempsey Twist. Does this make a good set of tongs? See attached photo form Antifire for reference.

Should i buy those tongs i feel like iam cheating a bit, i had made one tongs wich are a litle bit thin and akward. Are those tongs good to start with. I think cheaper for me is to buy those and study them then to try buy big rod and forge it. Last time i didnt find enaugh thick rod to forge out of it. When i asked seller he said they are 100 euros around 120 dollars 4 pieces. For our standard its expensive. One solid anvil is like 200 euros. Well i tough they will be cheaper. I will have to gather some material to forge it then.

Last weekend I forged a pair of crucible lifting tongs for a A6 sized crucible. Starting stock was 20mm square mild steel. I just want to share the result with you here.

Here is my second tongs i build. Mistake was they were too ling around 20 inches

Here they are. Made from 3/4” square stock. These along with the few attempts before this are the first things Ive ever forged. There are alot of issues with them and I am not happy with them but I am happy that I completed them and have some sort of a functional tool. They need to be adjusted and fine tuned, this picture was taken right after i got done with the rivet. I also made the rivet myself too. I will make another set. I certainly learned alot. the other picture are my other attempts.

Howdy everyone. I made a video demonstrating one of the ways I forge bolt jaw tongs. The video is quite long. The first drop tong weld is almost painfully so. I left it in so you can see things don't always go as planned. Fair warning, 39:00-49:30 is almost entirely me fumbling around trying to get my first weld to stick. That being said, I hope the process and discussion will be still be helpful to those who are interested. If I get a chance I'll edit the description with some timestamps of what's being done when. That should make it a little easier to navigate. On to the challenge! I would like you folks to make something out of either 1/2" sq…

Hi, I'm thinking about getting dedicated tongs for railroad spikes. I'm a beginner and wonder what you guys prefer for railroad spikes. I did search and read what some use and suggest. I saw these at on line, xxxxxxxxxxxxx They have an economy one too which have a different jaw. xxxxxxxxx I read about gooseneck tongs here and many say to avoid them. on line has those. xxxxxxxxx I'm planning to use for bottle openers and basic playing with spikes. and don't want to try to make them. Thanks. commercial links removed

In this video I cover welding and filing.. Ran into to much time to complete the tongs.. Most people won't watch for more than 11min.. If you guys can, Patreon donations are encouraged.. I'm going to try this a few more times and really thinking about going private with the videos and creating a website with all the videos listed. For the amount I make on the videos and the time it takes to edit them.. Unless you are doing it yourself, you have no idea.. For the diehard fans I apologize but time is in short supply and I'm simply not feeling inspired to really produce content.. Figured the channel would be better received even with the filming and sound..…

Box Jaw Tongs #2 Video 1

So today i had to make a set of tongs. I have seen a small amount of discussion about them recently and thought i would show my process for this. They are pretty easy and dont matter left or right while making them. 2 measurements is all i do. The rest is by "feel" So i start with a piece of 1" x 1/2" bar. This one is 36" long so no tongs needed to make them. I mark off 1 1/2". Then heat and with half faced blows at the far side of the anvil draw down the material behind the mark to about 1/2" Draw out the material till it is about 1/2" x 1/2" the width of the anvil face. Half faced blows again on the near side to make a nice squar…

Thought I would share some heavy tong blanks made from 1 inch round bar mild steel

So I don’t have stock big enough to build sturdy enough box jaw tongs for straightening out and forging railroad clips(the ones that look like a weird number 3 and are made of 1/2” thick X 1 1/4” wide spring steel flat stock.) So I started searching for a way to use my 5/8” round mild stock to build tongs which will hold up to the heavy hammering it takes to straighten one of these out in a few heats. I was trying to find pictures of a much heavier duty pair of the tongs in the pictures, but couldn’t find any name for them other than blade tongs. Does anyone know if there is another name? Searching for extra heavy duty blade tongs or similar doesn’t yield pictures of…

As background to my question let me say that I am a self taught smith and never had a master or even another smith to guide me until I had been forging for a dozen or more years. When I started I realized that I needed something to hold metal to keep from burning my hand with transferred heat. So, I went to my tool box and got out a pair of vicegrip pliers. They worked fine and in different sizes were my standard hot metal grabbing tool. It wasn't until I had been blacksmithing for some years that I acquired a pair of tongs. They struck me as working OK but I had to keep pressure on the reins to keep from dropping stuff. Now, I use both depending on the project but …

Hello everyone, I was browsing the blueprint section and the majority of the blueprint for tongs are missing the pictures. Anyone know where I can find something for wolf jaw tongs? Would be a great help. Thank you!

The September/October issue of Archaeology has an article: "Land of the Picts" that shows a set of blacksmithing tongs from somewhen in the 4th to 6th centuries AD/CE. Luckily their website has the article as well and the tongs are shown at: https://www.archaeology.org/issues/441-2109/letter-from/9932-scotland-picts#art_page4 The URL is no longer valid. Not in usable shape but I would hazard a guess that complete they would be rather like the ones found in the Mastermyr find.

I'm working on some flat bar tongs from 1/4" x 1" x 24" bar stock. I got the reins on both sides forged out but the shoulders aren't even. I also measured and they aren't quite long enough according to the chart up top here. So I need to create a new shoulder for the boss and draw some more out on each end for the reins, but I have enough material that shouldn't be an issue. But it's going fairly well. I'm happy with my progress considering all I've done before this is a few leaf keychains.

I've seen various designs for tongs which will accommodate a variety of stock sizes. I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring with my own version. This prototype uses a piece of angel iron which clamps against a flat jaw. The angled jaw pivots and is self aligning with the stock. This provides 3 solid points of contact with the stock, as well as preventing lateral movement. I was frankly surprised at how solidly it held a variety of stock, from flat bar to round and square. It will securely hold anything that fits in the jaws. The reins expand too far for the bigger stuff to be practical, but extending the jaws out further from the pivot point would mi…

Currently the only pair of tongs I own are a pair of Picard's Wolf Jaw tongs I purchased off Amazon. They work well for the most part, but have problems holding onto flat stock unless I squeeze the crap out of them (I need to make a pair of tong clips). Is there any modifying I can do to the jaws to give them a better grip? I thought about grinding into them and making the "teeth" more pronounced, but wanted to see if that would work before I go hogging material off of them. Anyone have some ideas and/or happen to own the same pair I do? I REALLY need to make myself more tongs rather than trying to use one pair for everything.

i am mid way through making some tongs and want to make the rivet. can i simply use mild steel? or do commericialy made rivets more then that?

My first set of tongs. Scratch that, this is the first thing I’ve ever made with a hammer, anvil(made it out of railroad track)and heat(newly built ammo can forge as some have seen in the refractories section). I practised by knocking down a 1/4” rivet out of the 1/2” bar that was used to make these. 1/2” round was all that I had so they do feel like they got a bit slim right behind the boss. They’ll be used to make a punch and chisel from this piece of axle shaft and then it’s off to find more stock to smash! J

I'm looking for some ideas on making tongs. I have a lot of 1/2" square stock, so that's what I would like to use. Is there going to be enough material there for a decent boss and jaws? Anyone have any good tong designs they've made from 1/2" and don't mind sharing? I'm trying to make a fairly versatile set, as this will be my first set of tongs. I have some farrier tongs but they aren't very good. I can wing it but figured I'd ask anyway. Thanks!

So I picked up about 6 tongs in a lot the other day. Two of them are very large, almost 4 feet long. Here are the jaws: Any ideas on what these were used for? I’ve not seen any before. Thanks!

Hi. Someone asked me if i knew what this tong is used for and i dont know. It's a very special pair of tongs with three jaws from sweden. The middle jaw is apparently loose and there are many more in sweden in different sizes and shapes. The only thing i can think of is that it is used for forge welding or maybe some farriers work. Can anyone in here help me out?