The quickest way to make blacksmith tongs!

welcome here to the blacksmith how's everybody doing today hey this is like an old school way back kind of video we're going to try to make a tool to make a super fast pair of tongs here's the problem right i haven't had enough time to make a pair of tongs so we've been using every pair of tongs these are all garbage this used to be to hold round bar not anymore the point is these tongs have all been masked because all we do now is make axes pretty much and that requires a very specific type of tong especially when we take the train rail and make it in a billet under the power hammer peritons that hold blocks of steel on the power hammer are they sometimes get mangled up so a while ago i made a video on trying to make a pair of tongs to fight back on that this was the paratones i made in the video to try to be like the mother of all tongues for working the blocks under the power hammer problem with this one is it's like a pair of pliers this distance needs to be way greater so that you can accommodate thin to thick chunks without your hands getting too wide so i have used this pair of tongues basically not at all the other problem is that i just don't have time i just don't have like i'm not a very fast tong maker believe it or not so it takes hour two hours to make a pair of tongs beautiful sculpted and then it just gets destroyed and mangled under the power hammer so today i'm going to try to set on a path to make a jig that's going to make a robust strong functional pair of tongs it's not going to look good but the hope is that i can like literally bang this thing out in a couple minutes and then just have a whole bunch of these so if the tongue gets messed up or something we just throw it away keep going you know this is extremely focusing on utility and functional i'm going to start by redesigning this pair of tongs because i think the jaw function of this is pretty good it's just that it wasn't long enough let's say this was my new pair of tongs [Music] i'm going to take the half pair of tongs and actually squish it into a block of steel and then i'm hoping to take that block of steel and use it as a die to squish steel in comes out with a pair of tongs with some flashing on it grind that off put it together keep going that's planned today we're going to give it a go hopefully it works let's get right to it thanks for being here [Music] i can't tell you why i think this like i've i'm having a hard time rationalizing this myself but i'm actually going to just do stock removal to make this master tong blank [Music] [Music] here's the part rough ground in and um i'm thinking that i'm probably gonna have to taper this in here this is hot can i pick it up it's so thick on the end here and that's an issue if you're working material that's thinner than that because you'll hit your pair of tongs into the power hammer so i'm probably gonna have to taper that in which is fine we can do that i'm gonna go to the belt sander and try to clean it up a little bit it's so wet out here it's crazy hey martin can i use a belt sander margin these are looking awesome oh i wish my hands weren't so grubby i could touch this look at these handles so the sheath isn't done yet carefully move that so you can see the head this is our 1919 hudson bays number 23 this one is they all get the serial number under there this is made from 1919 train rail these are going to be available on my website put the link down below this video and this is actually going to be the last of the hudson bay style acts for the foreseeable future so if you've been on the fence about trying to get one get it now because i don't know if we're coming back to these boy those look good though i also got to show you i don't know in this video if i'm going to get to show you about the wood boxes coming and stuff but we ship them all out now in wood boxes which is a super makes me feel really good when i put it in the mail because i know you're going to get it and it looks really cool anyways if you're interested in one of those take a look on my website but i guess i can't really use the belt sander can i martin that that wouldn't be a problem there a pile of sawdust right that wouldn't light the whole thing up i'll figure something else out i guess you have anything you want to uh tell your biggest fans today martin i don't know anything okay we'll see you in the next one putting you on the spot i always put you on the spot all right well thanks for your great work here we love it [Music] i was actually all set up to start cutting the taper on there you can see how i lined it up the chalk line here but what i'm thinking about is i might just hold off in doing that because i could theoretically push this into a block of steel to make a tone like this and then if that doesn't work out i can trim it and do that and then i can have the taper but i can't go back so i think what we're going to do is just try it like this see what happens and then reevaluate [Music] martin's got the burrito tongs here it's critical that they are able to hold a two and fifteen sixteenths diameter round burrito get that going good all right i'm going to enjoy this and we'll pick it up on the other side [Music] so here's the part push down it's looking pretty good the only thing that happens a little bit is that the edges get sloped and i guess you would have to do some pre-work and then come in with the final tool just at the end and do a light squish if you wanted to eliminate that because of the way we're going with this part i'm hoping that that's really not going to be any issue at the end of the day because we're just going to be grinding that stuff out the other thing i'm not sure about is if i needed to leave room you know if i need to recess this for the flashing because there's going to be material that would come out the edge but we're just going to try it like this see what happens if that doesn't work we'll do some grinding relieving work but uh it's a pretty satisfying thing to squish a piece of steel into a piece of steel [Music] i just threw some pre-shape on this part we'll see if that works [Music] so it actually didn't work good enough i i didn't get enough material right across here so we're gonna have to do a little more pre-shape so this is actually turned out pretty good it's a little bit not touching the die fully in a couple spots but i i honestly think we could make that work so this worked pretty good with the round bar here this is inch and a quarter round bar and just squished it in [Music] [Music] here's the two pieces made up quick and dirty tone guys this isn't something you bring to the party to show your friends let's drill these holes out see how it fits together so i want to show you a couple things that i've done differently on these tongs just to make them stronger and more robust because this is so big in here i went to a 3 8 hole so we're going to put a 3 8 rivet in there just normally i do like quarter inch or 5 16. is this corner in here is not crispy that's intentional because if it's really sharp that can be a fracture point where the tongue will break after enough vibration and then what i did to compensate to make this work is i actually rounded this edge up here it can ride with that radius shoulder because this will ride on that hopefully that makes sense here's the finished pair of tongs i want to show you something i was just playing with that is actually a problem so the shoulder in here i just kind of guessed on that to where to put that angle but look what happens with the pair tongs it opens to this point and then stops typically on a pair of tongs made to hold a specific type of steel that's not an issue the problem with pair of tongs like this that go on a power hammer let's say i'm working this piece of steel here and it's bulging out at the bottom and i'm holding it like that as the pair of material grows thicker it'll hit the end of this pair of tongs right like that's as far as it'll open and if you don't know that you keep squishing it the power of the hammer squishing the steel will either jam the tongue or it could actually start to bend and break it so there's two ways to go around that either make the shoulder here and and actually also it's very limiting that's the range of motion but because you have both hands on this typically or can under the power hammer you you want more motion than that because you might be grabbing a thick to thin piece right so there's two ways to go about it either this shoulder gets opened up a lot more so you have bigger range or the other option would be to go to flat kind of flat bar scenario where they run parallel and there's no shoulder so that would look like cutting this out in here that was something i was thinking about going for in the beginning but i kind of like the thicker part here it gives you some options so for this pair i'm going to take the rivet off i'm going to open that shoulder up quite a bit like considerably and then we're going to try the peritons if it works good i can go back to my master which is right here and i could fix that essentially and then re-push it into a block and then we'd be off to the races so it's tested in tuning here i can't even tell you how that made it so much better it feels so much better when you're not restricted so that that that's the max right there right but i'm okay with that i think at that point i'll just have another pair of tongs that will be able to do the wider sections from there on out that's a good range you know and uh let's uh let's give it a run for the money here and see see how it works this is some of our production work we have on the go so these down here are going to be these hooks looking for a company for lock and mortise it's hard to tell but these are actually bronze right now those have quite a bit of work to be done with them but anyways today this is what i have to do so these are actually candle bases and maybe you've seen these before this is a company in vancouver called barter design and these get upset this is inch and a half round bar and so this is where that pair of tongs is going to be critical i've made probably over a thousand of these things and those pickup tongs are just the sweetest thing for this so let's get the hammer running and try that pair of tongs out [Music] so foreign between that hammer being all tuned up and tight that pair of tongs is the best session i've had on those candle bases that feels so good for all the hard work we've put in to have things come together and actually make a better product the tongs they're actually really good they the handles feel good the control is better than the last pair that i like really like i didn't have such a beast of a employee around here probably make them a little bit lighter it's uh i'm pretty stoked about it we're going to uh i'm going to make a couple more pairs make them for different sets and then maybe make a little bit of a lighter pair for work at the anvil because you don't need that girth up there so anyways i think it's a success i'm going to set down now it'll be i'll just do it off camera because you've seen the whole thing we'll make a couple pairs and set us up good to go thanks for watching i have i think it's about 10 19 19 hudson bay axes like available for immediate shipping and then that's going to be it for the hudson bay so if you've been eyeing one up or thinking about it that you'd like to get one this is your last chance thanks for watching super appreciate let me know if i missed anything obvious with the uh no don't let me know i don't want to know pretty happy with this thanks for watching we'll see in the next one and until then keep the forage latte over and out [Music]

Channel: Timothy Dyck

Views: 76,438

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Id: hU-Rf3P_6OQ

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022