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.
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