Johnnie C.

John B, My opinion is holding the tongs is no different from holding the hammer in your hand. You don't have to have death grip on the tongs, thats part of the reason for the collar.

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.