Tong Reins

This is a sort of coming soon then talking about things i made today, i am going to put alot more work into this blog to make it top dollar. I have an interview with Richard Lewis, renowned british tool maker to write up and get on here, aswell as several american smiths i am talking to. Just need to write it down and get it up here, aswell as that i am going to hit the liabary aswell as my own books for anything on tongs.

I am back with a vengance for this project.

Now onto what i did today.

Over the hoildays i had that moment when i knew what i wanted to make and look into within the field of tongs, i was working on some large dog bars straighting them out under the power hammer and i needed to hold onto a section that was getting too hot for gloves, so i went through the racks finding tong after tong that does the job slightly but nothing that really did it so i went into the bin got an old pair i had made years ago and shaped them just to the bar. I wasnt fussed with setting them right so i just hit the reins over as you can see in the picture above. They worked an real dream, these useless ugly tongs were my faveriote pair for the entire job and have a spot in my tool box for life but it was while discussing these with Andrew in the pub later he turned to me and said and i quote 'You this pissed about your doing at school looking at tongs why not look at reins, find out why we have em straight instead of bent, makes more sense to have a bend to put more pressure on with less strength.

So it talked it over with a few different smiths thinking about this different reins and i got some really good ideas so today i went into the forge and made up a few of what Richard would call blanks, basically a rein with a lump of metal on the end ready to be made into whatever he needs on the job.

This is the first blank i made up, ignore the terrible fire weld. The idea behind it is on a large tong like for istance a 30mm hollow bits to apply the pressure a small bend along the bar would allow you to put most distance in the points applying more force for more leverage.

 

The second tong is the same idea, a bend to further the distance so you can apply more leverage for more pressure.

I am planning on forging up a full set of large hollow bits in the style to really give them a test, i am thinking of making up 2 or 3 sets of unique tongs then seeing how a few different smiths get on with them. Maybe even give them to the big bad beast himself to play with.

 

I really enjoyed making these up, reminded of older days when i used to work for a living got to admit.