A few months ago my dad picked up this set of tongs and a swap meet in Texas, one of the reins had been broken and welded back together. I dropped it once and the weld broke. I think if I see welds on tools from now on I will either pass them by or cut the weld and do it over so it's my fault if I get hurt. Luckily I wasn't holding something hot when these failed.

A weld on a tool says LOW counter offer to my Scotts inner voice. Have you welded them back up yet? If not give this a try. Fire up the forge and scarf the joints to about 45* or a LITTLE more accute then grind them clean in prep for welding. Welding straight across a piece that's going to bend under load concentrates all the stress in one line across the piece. This acts just like a cold shut alternately known as a "stress riser". By shaping the joint to cross the rein at an angle the flexing forces are distributed lengthwise and so don't produce a stress riser.

Frosty The Lucky.

I got the put back together already, just ground about a 45 or so bevel around both sides and stuck it back together, I've had pretty good luck doing that on other projects. If it fails again then I will try the scarf.

Lots of old tools were made from whatever scrap was handy in the depression and I have run into things where high carbon steel and real wrought iron of almost no carbon content have been mixed.  Modern welding can really mess things up if you expect it was low C but it was instead high C.  pulling a temper on a weld area will sometimes help if the crack isn't already there.

lots of tongs have welded reins, the way to avoid this is to make your own and draw out the reins rather than welding them on

16 hours ago, the iron dwarf said:

lots of tongs have welded reins, the way to avoid this is to make your own and draw out the reins rather than welding them on

True but no reason to not use these just because someone didn't get any penetration. Other than the bad weld in that one spot these are a better set of tongs than I've been able to make so far