Nippers to tongs?

[Matt in NY]

I have a couple sets of horse shoe nail nippers that I want to turn into tongs. My concern is too the hardness of the nippers. Would I need to anneal these first?

[highlander]

i tried this once. you have to get them extremely hot in order to straighten the nipper jaws. once it starts cooling, stop and reheat and straighten more. work fast and reheat often, or you will crack it like i did. as per hardness of the nippers, im no expert but i would think that if the metal is hot enough you shouldnt have too many troubles/

[Rob Browne]

As they are tool steel I would anneal them by getting them nice and read and then burying them in hot ashes and letting cool SLOWLY. You can then work them as normal BUT remember when they are used as tongs to keep them cool or to let them cool slowly not to dunk them into water as this will make them hard and brittle.

[ThomasPowers]

You do not need to anneal then *before* forging them. However normalizing them or annealing them *after* would be suggested---I normalize and have not had any problems with them yet.

As was mentioned don't let them get glowing hot in use and quench them.

One of my favorite tools was made from an ancient hand made set of pincers, real wrought iron, large bow on it. I straightened it out and it was large enough to make a set of "hot firebrick" tongs *very* *handy* to have around.

[larrynjr]

I worked the pair I had too cold and they snapped at the rivet.

[Max Mulholland - Tetnum]

drill out the rivet or cut it off this will make re working them easer they are tipicaly a plain carbon steel like 1065 to 1095 depending on who made themnewer ones can be made of exotics

[keykeeper]

I quenched a pair of nippers I had made into tongs for 1/4" round inadvertently when cooling a rat tail on an s-hook I was making. Next time I used them, I tapped them gently on the side of the anvil to knock a large runner of scale off the hook, jaw snapped right off. I never realized I had gotten them that hot.

Next pair will be normalized as Thomas suggested.

Live and learn, it's part of the game.

[divermike]

After having my first hold down explode into pieces on me after quenching, I have made a decision to never quench unless absolutely necessary, I have noticed most of the forgemasters I have worked with, simply toss stuff to the floor to cool, only spot quenching for effect, or workability. No more exploding tools for me.

[Sam Thompson]

I use a pair of nippers with a small groove in the centre of each jaw for holding things like flowers where I need to protect the decorated part while I heat the other end of the stem. The wider parts of the jaws protect the work from the fire.