Ben Christy

It sounds like you are doing what most people, including myself, have done when first trying to make tongs. That is, forging the shoulder down too far before you have developed the other parts of your tongs. If you do this and you still have more work to do in other areas, the material will always bend at the weakest point and will develop stress fractures which can eventually break.

I first started out wit plain hot rolled 1/2 round mild steel. The last two times I attempted with railroad spikes as I felt the the 1/2 was to small for the tongs.

I have been trying to forge a pair of bolt head tongs using the champion method as described by Bill Epps and I have a problem. Every time I form the shoulders for the boss where the rivet goes cracks begin to appear in the radius of the shoulder. As I continue to draw out the jaw the cracks get worse, to the point it looks like the metal is crumbling almost like the crumb of bread. I have tried changing my materials around to no avail. My other thought was that the metal was bending at the shoulder while bellow the forging temperature of the metal because it is thin there. Yesterday I was very careful about both forging temperature and keeping the shoulder/boss from bending and I had the same problem. I am at a complete loss I have tried 6 times now to make on and each time the same thing happens. I will admit I took about a year off from blacksmithing and Im just getting back into it so maybe there is something I am forgetting?