Johnnie C.

I tempered them at 450 for an hour and a half. They were cool to the touch when I put them in the oven.

I had the oppertunity to go watch the Guntner's at a demo in Pery, OK last month. Chad Guntner was holding his punch with a set of tongs, I was talking to him about why he did it that way, and he said that you can keep your hands away from the work and it saves room on tooling. I liked the idea and took it and ran with it. Now I'm having trouble, I'm using 01 tool steel and I think I heat treated everything right. I heated to around 1600 degrees, then quinched it oil. Then I bake it in the oven at 450 degrees, until the steel turned a straw color. I was pretty excited to use them today. When I started to use them is when I ran into trouble, they broke in the troat. How might I prevent this from happening again? I have put the rest aside until I can come up with a solution, or before I hurt myself. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I have made a few of my tongs, but usualy I'm too busy filling order or making other tools. Its easier for me to buy them. My experience is I spend more time and money trying to make them, its easier to buy them.

My experience is that what I see and what the customer sees is completely different. The inperfection that I beat myself over, 9 times out of 10 nobody will even notice.

Saturday I had to work at my job. Today I finished cleaning a blower and work on a rivet forge that was given to me.

I'm a union pipe welder and I do a lot of tig welding. I run my argon between 30-35 cfm.

very nice work. I might try something like that some day.

I attached the hat with a few squirts from my mig gun.

I saw civilwarblacksmith's cowboy hat in the gallery, and the blacksmith group I'm a member of has a monthly meeting that is next weekend and the trade item is a bar-b-que utensil so this is what I came up with. Its made from a piece of 1/2 in square stock, and the hat is a piece of sheet metal.

I've learned that everyday you fire up your forge you learn something new. It may be a better way to do some something or modifing a pair of plier to help keep from burning your hands (which is a good idea, thats on my list of things to make now). Just don't let fustration overcome you and keep on hammering.

I made a gun rack for my dad for fathers day that are cat tails with two ducks that hang from it, and my wife a set of pansys out of copper and brass for our aniversary. Each year that we are married just gets a new flower in her arrangement.

5x7 Picture Frame with a Copper and Brass Rose. The frame is made from 1inx1/4in flat bar, the stem is 3/8in round stock, the leaves are 3/8in sq stock, and the center border is 3/32 twisted tig wire.