Evaluation

Well I asked myself the question can I make tong reins better in anyway shape or form? The answer to that question that I have found out very quickly is no I cannot through my ideas anyway, I think with the research and the testing I did I have a good lead towards maybe a breakthrough but in this short period I didn’t.

I started the project by looking into tongs in general, I started off pretty weak looking around holme lacy and after the halfway point and some feedback with Ambrose I got myself out there talking to different people and on the forums about their ideas. I enjoyed the research I just think that I didn’t look into it deep enough, I feel I sort of neglected going into books and magazine. I really should have gone into the library or some of my own forging books to get some good extracts from them about tongs. 

One side of this project I really dived into was interviews, I spoke to some really renowned smiths, Adrian Legge, David Fields, George Lewis, Glen Stollmeyer. I got comments and their opinions on tongs as well as their experiences. This was by far my favourite part of this project, I am a big fan of listening to anyone’s stories.

As of making for this project, I did the same pieces as everyone else for Steve which aren’t my finest work but they work and they are to mostly to spec so I can live with it. I made up a few samples and some tongs with unique reins, didn’t really enjoy the making as part of this project because I am a bit of techy when it comes down to the classic stuff like tong making, I was writing my own rule book on this one so they came out looking rough as hell. Didn’t even set the nib right because holding them was so difficult while I was making them up.

Overall this project had its up and downs, I can’t see myself getting a high mark for this because I’ve got to admit at the start it was at the back of my mind so I lost a lot of time on it. That is what I need to work on with this having a few projects going at the same time, I put the one I enjoy the most to the fore front of my mind and when I find to work I work on it and projects like this one slip through the cracks so to speak.