General Purpose Tongs

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I’m Caleb Nolen. I’m a blacksmith here at Heritage Forge, and a teacher at Ploughshare. Today we’re going to take you through the procedures of making a simple pair of blacksmithing tongs. Tongs are a pair of tools that every blacksmith needs. You pretty much need one for every size of stock you’re going to be working with, every shape.

At some point in your work, you’re going to find yourself having to hold on to 2,000 degree steel, and that’s where tongs come in. So tongs today. Tongs are a tool that blacksmiths can’t have too many of. Tongs are a lot of different shapes and sizes. You pretty much need a pair of tongs for every size of steel and shape that you’re going to be working.

Stock sizes we’re using today is 1/4 by 3/4. This’ll make some nice, light duty tongs. It’s a little thinner, so it’ll be a little easier to work. If you want to use 3/16 by 3/4. That’d make a little heavier duty pair. I’ll start with marking here. Mark and inch and a quarter from the end, and then another inch from there. The first inch and a quarter will be the jaws of the tongs, and then the inch will be the boss.

We’re going to mark these on both sides. One mark on one side, one on the other, and that will be an offset. Jaws will be this here. We’re going to make a step here and a step here, so we’ll be working opposite sides of the bar to make that. Tongs are made out of three pieces of metal. We have the right and left sides, and the rivet that’ll be the pivot point for the tongs. So there’ll be a scissor motion.

There’s basically three parts to the tongs. We’ve got the jaw, the boss, which is the pivot point, and the reins. And both sides of the tongs are identical. You don’t have a right and a left. They’re identical, so when they go together, they fit. The tongs we’re making today will be flat jaws for square or flat stock. They could easily be modified in the jaw, though, to hold round bar or any other size.

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When we heat the steel, we won’t be able to see the soap stone mark, so we’ll center punch that mark we’ll be able to see when the steel’s hot. Make sure you get a good punch mark there that you’ll be able to see through all the mill scale.

2,850 degrees will melt steel, but we want to be pretty close to that. 2,500, about right. See the center punch mark right there. We’re going to align it, that mark, right on the corner of the anvil. Half face hammer blow. Hammer’s half in the anvil, half off. Flip it over, see the mark there. Around that one, do the same thing. You want to tip it up pretty good so you’re getting almost 45 degrees on the anvil.

I’m going to go to drawing the reins now. You can see to draw out, we’re using the corner of the hammer and the corner of the anvil together to pinch the steel down. We’re penetrating the steel much deeper that way, so we’re going to be pushing the metal much faster. We’ll come back, bring the steel back into its original dimension and thickness.

You want to keep the steel hot. You don’t want to work the steel once it gets below it a dull red color. You’re just not going to be able to work the steel much after that point. You can see we’re going for a long taper. Taper from the boss all the way down. So you’re have to gauge as you’re drawing, the amount of taper you’ll be putting on each section.

You break the corners just to take away the sharp edge, get a nice feel in your hand. And planishing is just smoothing steel, moving the big hammer marks. I’m leaving a little piece on the end there. This is going to be a little ball at the end of the tongs, be something for your hand to go up against to give you a little more grip so you don’t drop the tongs. We’ll hammer this little end in the device, it’ll be a lot easier to get these corners.

You start with your jaws to your vice close to the size you need. You don’t have to spend so much time trying to get ready once your steel’s hot. Just finishing up rounding that. And again, we’ll break all the corners and planish.

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So we’ve got them both drawn out now. Just want to make sure they’re same to this point. This one here’s a little short, so I’m going to draw this rein out just a little more. Make sure the same now. Now we’ll punch the eye of the boss. Punch the hole for the rivet. We’ll use the center punch to mark the center.

The slitter has a slight angle, the point. And will orient that right in our center punch mark with the slitter going the length of the tongs. We’ll drive that through, and then we’ll put the drift, which is round, so that we’ve got our slot going this way. When we drive the drift, it’s going to be expanding the eye this way. So we’ll have an even amount of metal all the way around the eye of the boss.

Start with the slitter lining up right in that center punch mark I made there. Orient it so that the slitter’s going the length of the tongs, so when we drive the drift through, it’s going to open that up. I don’t want to go all the way through, because the anvil is hard and it’ll dull my slitter. So when I get ready to go through, I’ll use this piece of brass, and it’s soft and it won’t dull.

So I went almost all the way through the first time. Now I can see on the backside a little shiny spot. I’ll orient my slit right in the middle of that. Go to the brass and go through. I can feel when that goes through, Turn it over, go through the other way. Got my slot. Next heat, I’ll drift it.

You want to make sure the drift is going to go all the way through and not get stuck before we start with that. I’ll go most of the way through on this side. Just move that around to the hardy hole– or the pritchel hole, rather– so I don’t get one side pushed down more than the other. Once it cools down, knock it out and I’ll drive it through the other side.

I’ll finish driving the drift all the way through. And we’ve got the finished hole. Now I’ll twist the jaw. Make sure you’re right at the top of the boss. Very important that you twist both jaws the same way. These will be identical.

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So now we just want to smooth that twist out. What we’re looking for is for this side to be straight all the way along the offset of that side.

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OK, so we’ve got both pieces done individually. You can see they’re identical, so we don’t have a left and a right. They’ll go together, and now we’ll river them. Now I’m patting down the coal so the rivet doesn’t fall down in and we lose it. Let’s put them together. Make sure you get them together right. Oh, not that way. I like to finish out my rivets with some nice hammer blows there.

So if you did right, they should be stuck tight together. And now we’ll heat them up and get everything lined up and free them. Plant these in the vice. That’ll line up the reins. And then we’ll just make sure everything lines up and it’s straight and is adjusting. We’ll loosen them up now.

Then we want to adjust them for the size of material we’re using. This is quarter inch here. Plant that in the vice. We want the range to be about an inch and half apart, whatever is comfortable to your hands. You don’t want it too wide or to close. Cool it off. We want to work as we’re cooling, otherwise it’ll get stuck again. There you go. That’s it. You’re done.

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