anvil

Lol, I just cant resist. There are two words in common use that imply a very specific emotion that come from the Blacksmiths craft, upsetting and drawing out. Ted Ewert hit it on the head. " It provides that extra material to correct minor mistakes and still have enough left." I'll add this, that extra material most often allows you to do many variations on your tongs As for drawing out the reins, A drop the tongs forge weld answers that. At Turley Forge,'80, After about 20 hours of a 6 week class, we made our first set of tongs, and learned how to do that weld. Lol, it has a high pucker factor! We did our first forge weld the first day of class. He believed in getting rid of the "boogers and traps" early on. I want to say that my posts are all based on one idea. That is I believe that the one thing everybody who gets into blacksmithing have in common is the mystique of being betwixt hammer and anvil, working hot iron. Simply that. Ive pursued that from the beginning. Having said that, anyway you choose is good for you. And thats what matters And yes, i have a strong bias/predjuce/one sided etc etc belief in maximizing my time betwixt hammer and iron. I get the same satisfaction from making a rivet as I do turning a complex scroll,,, and I still get butterflies in my belly when i forge weld. Have fun

I did my two years of engineering at University of Colorado. We had to take a philosophy class to make us well rounded. I took philosophy for the engineer. It was a whole summer semester "proving" that the point existed. Well, there is no proof that the point exists. You have to believe it and accept it. Sheesh, considering science is based on math, and math is based on "Believing" the point exists,,,,, i gave up flying. I got a bit concerned just what would happen if in flight i suddenly doubted the point existed. Im not sure how much that had with me joining the Navy, but they both happened in the same time frame.

if you are starting out as a blacksmith, your 2# hammer is all you need. By the time you figure out how to use it, you will know what else you will need. So first things first. The first thing you need, after one hammer, a forge and an anvil are fire tools so you can start learning fire management. So make a poker, a rake, and a water can. You dont need tongs for these tools. Then make a hand held hot punch and a hand held hot cut. Make these about 14" long so your hand is well away from your hot iron. Make these from a coil spring about 5/8" or 3/4" diameter. Now, go to either the hardware store or the flea market and pick up a cheap hacksaw. Cut a piece about 24" long off the coil. Measure this 24" length with a piece of 24" long string. You can straighten this hot and now you have a "handling" length. This means you can hand hold it, heat the other end and not get burnt because you are 24" away from the hot end and you dont need tongs. Now make the working end of a hot punch on one end and a hot cut chisel on the other. Oh, wait til the first end cools before starting the second end and dont quench it. let it air cool. When done, again use your hack saw and cut in half. Now you have two new hand made tools that are long enough that you can stick the newly cut ends in the fire and dome them hot with your hammer and not burn your hand! Now you have all the tools you need to make a set of tongs and also enough experience to make them! After you make your tongs, your next tools ought to be a center punch and a cold chisel. These are made from coil spring as well and are ~4" long or so. And, guess what? You now have a set of tongs to hold them when you forge them! You also now have a brand new set of hand made tools and experience that will enable you to make just about any dang'd thing you want By Hammer in Hand. Never forget: Proper setup, Proper Tools, Proper job! As far as power tools, well I'm pretty traditional with my work, so they are pretty low on my list,,, even now. And, if you more or less follow the above pathway, you will prolly have a pretty good idea if blacksmithing is your thang.

One of the best reasons to have a big anvil is that its hard to steal!

a pic or drawing would be nice. Its hard for me to understand what you are doing. What does it bisect every inch? Are the 1/4" rods rivets? Are the 1/4" rods tenons on the end of a bar for legs? Whats the thickness and width of the material you've, I assume, punched and drifted? alas, what are you joining together: the ends of the round part, legs, handle or perhaps "stuff" in the middle? Ive made a few trivets: plane round ones, round ones with "stuff" in the middle, round with legs and even some with handles etc.

I have no knowledge of Kens tongs, or the kits. I learned how to make tongs from 3/4" square stock. So, As far as material for making tongs, The weight of parent stock determines the size of material you can comfortably hold and work before the max force on the reins wont securely hold your work. Long winded explanation. When your work isnt held secure, it flops around and is hard to hit. . I've found that tongs made from 3/4" feel pretty good and secure up to about 1" or a bit bigger. Tongs made of lighter material seem to max out for me at about 3/4". And I have even made them from lighter parent stock for specific tasks. Basically use the stock needed to make the tong for the job. 3/4" square is a good place to start. So is 5/8" if its all ya got.

I had a couple years in engineering and had a fair amount of calculus, but boy howdy i certainly missed that! Thats very cool,not to mention mind blowing.

Beautiful lock. I saw a lot of locks when I was in Prague in '87. It strongly impressed me that the insides were as detailed as the front, even tho, when installed, the detail was hidden.

heres how i did it when i was learning forge welding, and it works for most steels. Im using a coal forge, so modify as needed. bring it up on a slow rising heat. rotate your steel to get an even heat throughout. Flux it at a good orange. Watch it close and when you first see any sparks, give it a little soak and you are there. This pushes the limits because the sparks are bad, but not that bad with a few sparks. its a good enough swop-off to gain the needed experience to easily forge weld A36, or anything.

I think the reason we find so many long rein'd tongs is because back in the day there were far more shops who did industrial related jobs and fewer shops, proportionately, that were dedicated to architectural work. Thus, when the industrial revolution deleted the need for these types of shops, their tools are the most common found cheap at flea markets, auctions, and antique stores. I mean, consider a farm or ranch who actually had very little experience with smithing, certainly went for the cheapest and most available equipment they could find. Necessity is, no doubt, the mother of,,, good enough to get the job done rules. However, as a novice smith,,, the choice is to follow the path of the farmer and rancher,,, or that of an experienced smith "back in the day" making the most efficient tool to get the job done. In fact, if you look at pics of say Yellen's shop, Francis Whitaker's shop and the shops and books put out by the early 20th century European smiths, you will see a preponderance of tongs with 14" reins.

Thomas hits it on the head. Once you learn and understand the concept of parallel closure, the three sizes he mentioned will get you well down the path of your learning. Tapered stock is usually the next problem area. There are a number of solutions for this. Here's the quick and dirty solution. Use a "handling length" of your stock, say 1/4" square. What's a handling length? A length that you can hold in your hand and you don't need tongs. Now, lay out the length of your parent stock. This means knowing how much 1/4" you need for your taper. Mark this for both ends. Draw your taper, then cut it off at your mark(a chalk mark on your anvil or a light center punch on your stock). Now, with your 1/4" parallel closure tongs, grab just above your taper where it's still 1/4" square. Your tongs will be at a wierd angle, but oh well, parallel closure will prevail. Now do your taper on the other end. Easy peasy and no new tooling is needed and you have the perfect work-around for a taper. As for long reins for balance, this is normally not an issue, even for a smith who does gates, railings, lighting and hardware. Why? Because if, as an example, you are making a nuel post out of 36" of 4" square with a tenon on the end and a full champfer, this is a handling length and needs no tongs. Generally, we use tongs to hold the fine details such as tapers, leaf work etc. The industrial revolution has pretty well eliminated industrial type forgings from the architectural or small shop blacksmiths. This is r a hard and fast rule, but is a pretty strong generalization. For the most part, tongs made from 3/4" square with 14" reins will satisfy most of your needs. A lock ring will usuay suffice for the occasional really heavy piece you are forging. Please understand, these are general guidelines, not hard and fast rules(parallel closure excepted!). However, they should work very well for the novice smith to those who are pretty well advanced

To add one thing to JHCC's post above, What makes tongs so effective is called parallel closure. Whats that? Well it means that your jaws are set parallel to each other and they are set for a particular size of material. Set them a half inch apart for half inch material and dont use them for 7/16" or 9/16" stock. Thats why blacksmiths have so many sets of tongs, so you have a proper fit at least for your most used stock. When you are starting out you dont need more than a few sets to keep you working and learning. Even tho a center groove or a cross groove increases their efficiency, for flat stock a groove is not a necessity. For round stock, a groove down the center is important and grooved flat jaws work quite well. so you can use the same ~3/4 x1"x3/8" thick rectangular jaw for round stock. Also A set of tongs with parallel closure takes very little force on the reins to do their job. TWISTEDWILLOW, for most tongs you will need ~14" reins. Anything longer is a waste and anything shorter generally puts your hand too close to your fire. Like most here I got into the cool history of vise grips being made by a blacksmith. However, I never once have read anything that indicates that he invented vice grips to replace tongs. If any of you have seen this, I'd like to see it. Personally I doubt it. I cant imagine a working smith from back in the day comparing tongs vs vice grips and giving up his tongs. Properly set up Tongs have literally zero problems holding hot iron, moving it from forge to anvil, and applying hammer to do your job. That is not the case with vise grips. You cant leave them attached whilst your iron is in the fire because they over heat, It takes time to clamp them tight and more time to unclamp them. Not to mention every time you do this, the tension screw moves and have to be readjusted. How often? once is too many because I Never have that problem with tongs. I could continue in this vein. For what its worth, I've prolly got 20+ pares of vice grips in my shop and more uses than Carter has liver pills,,, but i cant remember ever using them as tongs. Lol, basically its hard to beat centuries of R&D of tong development. And finally, A question to ask yourself: Why, as a new person, are you interested in blacksmithing? Could it possibly be that, like me, still, after 40 years, you are fascinated by the idea of moving a piece of iron betwixt hammer and anvil into some shape for some purpose? Here's something to think about, It takes around 20-30 dedicated hours playing in the flame, going from rank beginner to having the needed skills to make your first set of tongs, perhaps even less. There are so many things you can do those first hours that dont need tongs from basic fire control to basic hammer control. You dont need tongs to make your first poker, rake, and watering can. A pair of tongs is the first complex forging for the novice smith. Your first moving parts, a couple half faced blows and done on the 45, a hinge area to be rounded up and,,, gulp,,, matched to its "better half"! And a set of reins. To paraphrase,,, a small step for mankind,,, a giant step for the novice smith. And amazing of amazing's, after a few sets, it becomes second nature and they are quickly made. Don't lose this experience for any reason,,, it's only your loss in the long run. Back to my question, I suggest that you look for every possible way, as a novice, to get a hot piece of iron between your hammer and anvil and maximize the reason that we are here, instead of finding "time-saving" or jury rigged shortcuts that prevent this. I mean really, You just won't be able to convince me that at this stage of your learning, you have pressing smith work that is more important than building your initial set of tools.

exciting times

Mild steel for my tongs. It is strong enough for any job your tongs may do, and no matter what, high carbon steel/tool steels will become brittle and break off when quenched. If you do make them from hc or tool steels, just don't forget to not quench them, just let them air cool to a normalized state. The obvious problem is when they get too hot to hold, and you want to keep working. Make two pairs or just use mild steel. For what it's worth, hammer eye tongs don't have to be narrow, they just need to fit the width of the eye so make them bigger on the working end.

I built a set similar to that but found a better way for me. With a coal forge and a 3"-4" deep firepot, with fire control and a very low air flow from your blower, you can build and easily control a very narrow fire, say half to an inch wide. Polish your blade so you can see the colors run and place the spine onto the narrow fire. Watch the colors run, and with a rag or cotton balls to apply a little water, you can control the speed the colors run towards the cutting edge. With a bit of practice you can get pretty nearly a dead soft(or whatever you want) spine, a spring temper in the center of your blade, including the transition of the knife to tang, and a nice straw color on the edge. Pay particular attention to not screw up the tip.

Some more info on scrolling tools. You make them I'm sets. There's the wrench that goes in your hand, and there is the matching piece that goes in your vise. They are not a one size fits all kind of tool. The opening should be just a bit larger than the material you are scrolling. This makes it easier to control small sections of your piece. I always taper the ends of my forks like in Frosty's first pic. This makes it far easier to get into tight places to tweak scrolls you have already made to get those peaky little flat spots and to have more control matching multiple scrolls. For what it's worth, I rarely, approaching never, use scrolling tools to do my finials(the scroll ends). I always do them freehand. If I'm doing a bunch of matched scrolls, I then use my forks, as needed, to better match the freehand turned finials ends.

The blacksmith is a toolmaker. Often times we take a tool that no longer has a purpose, and forge it into a new tool with a completely new purpose. You might say our craft was the craft of recycling. Far better than say someone, watching a wagon tire slowly rust into nothing and in fact, be completely worthless for anything whilst in their care.

I don't know your experience level, so say this as a general comment. The thing to notice with these industrial forgings is that the only difference in this and what you can do in your shop is the power and size of the iron. The techniques and tooling used used to achieve the different forgings are no different than what you would use in your shop. The benefit here is with such large iron, and the time frame due to the mass of the billit allows us to see just what techniques and tooling are used.

awesome!

Lol, cant beat a 4 hour shower in a claw foot tub! Dont forget, if the power goes out, the pumps wont work on a boiler system as well. Its on my list for my new place.

Do it flat. To get the texture to show on the scrolled part, you need to texture the other side of the scroll. Its a transition thing. the texture you see on the flat disappears inside the scroll. The scroll surface you see is actually the reverse side of your material. For future reference, 1/4" material looks good. 3?16" looks, in this case a bit thin and wispy.

My experience says different. Besides space saving, A tank-less system is pretty much all copper tubing whilst a hot water tank is cast steel or iron. Copper doesn't rust out. As for cost, replacing a tank with a complete tankless system is more expensive, but the cost difference, both being new, is not that bad. I started with an old small Paloma. I had a customer, from both my horse shoeing and later as a blacksmith, who had a plumbing supply. He gave me a lot of knowledge about on demand systems, and I was already pretty good at sweating copper pipe, so I put together my own first simple system. I learned a bit from him about radiant floor on demand systems then when i built my 3000 sqft log house, I designed, built and installed a complete on demand hot water and radiant floor heat. Lol, its the labor that gets you every time. I also had a friend up the hill that had a plumbing business, so I had good sources for anything plumbing related. As far as monthly bills, there was just no comparison between a conventional boiler system and tankless.

My post above has to do with our early colonies. If you think about it, why in the world would basically a corporation outfit a colony and hire riffraff to be the colonists? I'm pretty sure that each colonist was chosen for his skills to better insure success,,,and some still failed. I know a little about the Spanish land grants. From memory, they had a pretty major fundamental difference between a charter colony. A colonial charter had to do with a group of people financed by a private corporation? chartered by the government. What we call Spanish land grants was a rather large parcel of land basically given by the Crown to an individual, sort of like a Barony. At the end of the Mexican/American war(1847-1849) some of these, if not all, were recognized and legitimized under our system and prior ownership continues on some of these to the day. I'm a little familiar with three. Two of them are in both Colorado and New Mexico. The first is near La Veta pass west of walsenburg, Co and runs into N.M. I was looking into property that bordered this land grant and both the owner and the real estate dude filled me in on its history, past and present and let me know they did not tolerate trespassers, specifically no fire wood, poaching or horseback riding for gringo neighbors. However, locals of Spanish heratage were permitted without question. Not meant as politics, but these Spanish folks were those who were here before 1849, not, at that time, south of the border immigrants of any legality. Altho I don't know for sure, I suspect this holds to the day. Basically these folks in the surrounding small communities worked the grant back in the day to present and were included in whatever agreement was made when they all became US citizens. Their rights/privaleges included hunting and firewood. The second is near where I live now. It runs from well into the San Juan mountains(Colorado) to just north of Farmington, NM. It is still owned by the original family altho it has been divided into two parts owned by the same family. They still run sheep from New Mexico winter grazing up to the San Juan's in the spring.

Nice

I think you underestimate the makeup of groups of colonists. They were under a Charter, and these were pretty specific as to what trades were mandatory before the charter was valid. What struct me back when i came across this was how many blacksmith per persons and even listing specific skills they must have. Sorry, but I got into this long ago. I'm certain google can find this info.