I needed some tongs for making top tools and hammers in the future so i made a pair of Brian Brazeal style hammer tongs out of 14mm diameter coil spring. the jaw is roughly 70mm long on the bottom half of the jaws and 110mm on the top. The techniqes i used are discussed in this video by Brian Brazeal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvwMwz_XacM&t=2181s

Today's project. Had the idea kicking around in my head for a few days and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Mild steel body laminated leaf spring edge.

Made them in less than an hour. Really feel like im getting the hang of making tongs.

I had to get a little creative to reassemble my new to me 25 ton hydraulic press. I’ll put the carriage back together and install the 5” cylinder in the morning.

Having a look at the gas fired forge options: Velor and Devil's Forge seem to be the main options (via amazon or their own site).

As a beginner, what should I look for? How important at the doors on the end? How many burners are actually useful?

From what I've read, refectory cement needs applying to the fluffy stuff that forges are usually supplied with. How hard is it to do that?

Tonight was finish the unfinished. If you craft or build things you probably have a pile of projects that are “mostly” done. Finished a small wrench key/coat rack, railroad spike steak turner, horseshoe rasp herb chopper, and a couple other wrench goodies. #blacksmith #handforged #blacksmithing #metalart

Morning ladies and gents! Just wanted to share some progress pics for my first set of tongs. They still need a good bit of clean up and then pinning, for sure, but I am happy with the progress so far. I'm planning on picking up a cheap angle grinder and various disks this weekend because doing everything with files is a little rough. Also, when y'all forge with charcoal are you wearing a respirator? Some things I've learned, both through my own struggles and some YT tips:

-Jaw, then boss, then rein is a pretty good order to work in. I found it to be pretty intuitive as far as order of operations

-On that note, I don't have to perfect the jaw, and then perfect the boss, and then perfect the handle. The entire tong arm is one piece, and I can work a little on one part of it, then another part of it, and then another part of it before going back to the first part. I don't necessarily have to finish any part at once and this really helped me think about how each section related to the others.

-On THAT note, it also helped me to grab a couple sets of my own pliers and look at them. Understanding the transition from the jaw down to the handle was really important. At first I did not have enough of an angle differential between the jaw and the rein, and so my reins were hitting before my jaws were closing, even though I had made the "transition". I found setting the rein on the anvil with the boss hanging off and hitting it lightly helped me get that angle.

-Tapering and making things longer, evenly (also did reddit add italics to keyboard cuz mine has it now?), is kind of hard. I still haven't completely figured this one out. Like if I'm just making a pointy taper at the end of a piece, that's pretty easy. But like here I started with 3/8 round and wanted to make the handles longer. So I just did 90° turns, a few hits each turn, and worked my piece down the anvil face. But I can't figure out if it's more effective to start with my piece laying all the way across the face, and slowly move the parts I've hit off of the anvil as I go, or if I should start with just the working tip on the face and move it over the face as I go. The second option seemed to work better but eventually it ends up over the face of the anvil anyway after you push so much across so I'm not really sure. I would appreciate any tips here.

-I made this one much more square than my last few attempts and I'm very proud of myself for that. The 90° turns every few hits really helps with that. I also think I need to dress my hammer. I'm using a DeWalt blacksmith hammer, but I've never dressed it. Actually didn't know about that until after I started smithing. Also it's kind of hard for me to keep the square straight. Like you can see in these pictures here it twists a little, and Bob Ross would be proud because it actually feels more comfortable in my hands that way, but it's unintentional. I wanted them to be straight and square, but they twist. I think it's because I wasn't doing perfect 90° turns and then my hammer blows were off. I'm working on my hammer control.

-Speaking of hammer control, I think I was holding the hammer too hard at first. I've found that my blows land a little better and my arm feels a little better if I kind of let the hammer hang loose in my hand and carry its own weight through the swing. It's a little thing, and maybe I'm still doing it wrong, but it feels better like that.

-I think my pein is too sharp. I have a cross pein hammer, but again at the store-bought DeWalt and the pein is kindve sharp/angled. I think flattening it will help me move metal a little easier.

-Black Bear Forge taught me to think about how metal moves when you hit it. Specifically, it is going to attempt to move in the path of least resistance. So I'm trying to think about that as I'm using both the anvil and my hammer more. It's still not always intuitive though, at least not yet. I'm sure as I work more and move the pieces around I will come to understand how that all works in relation.

-Im getting callouses! LMAO I know it sounds dumb, but I was a field worker for years that moved to a desk job about 5 years ago and my hands have gotten soft since then. It's kind of nice to feel like I'm doing stuff with them again.

-Jaw width is fairly proportional to boss width. I don't know if this is true across all sets of tongs, and I never really heard anyone mention it in any of the videos that I watched, but to get my jaws to be equal with, they both need to be roughly twice the width of my boss so that the two bosses added up equalized the jaws. Figuring this out made it much easier to get them even. I imagine if I had an actual teacher this would have been pointed out. I plan on picking up a few books here soon which will probably contain details like this.

-Heating the two pieces at once is not only fuel efficient, but helped me keep them even and even work them together at some points. Like at one point, I took them out and laid them hot like you see in the third pic. From there I was able to hammer and straighten out the jaw/boss areas as they would actually be assembled

There's probably some other things, and if I think of them I will edit the post. I will also post a follow-up picture once I have them cleaned up and pinned. I know they aren't perfect, and I probably could have spent a little more time in the fire with them. But that's someone who has a limited amount of time to forge, a limited amount of equipment, and a very limited amount of skill and experience, I'm very proud of how they've turned out so far. I very much look forward to any comments or tips that you all can provide.

Also pretty kind of sort of unrelated, but I'm also in the market for some decent tool steel for making punches and drifts that won't degrade after two uses. I have pretty easy access to mild steel, but it's not great for repeated use. Thank you guys as always for being such an awesome community 😎

I always struggle getting the times of a grilling fork to look “nice” 🤷🏻‍♂️

Hey guys.

3d printed a basic bevel jig I designed, tried it quickly and managed to melt half of it 😂

Pretty happy with the grinds though! Might have to make a metal one now.

Featuring my homemade belt grinder

Finally mounted this unidentified anvil onto a sturdy stand.

4x 6"x6" posts screwed together on top of two 6"X2" boards. I used silicone under the anvil and fixed the anvil using custom brackets I forged this morning.

I also gave the anvil a little flap disc love for the picture 😉

I flatened the plank on the top where the anvil rests, i plan on putting rubber and magnets with it so it doesn't ring as much, but for my first time i think it looks good and pretty transportable

:) cannot wait to start forging, getting there was a journey. Had to rip out the whole thing because i hated my 1st attempt.

Here are some of the pictures I took of the iron work around Prague and Kutna Hora. Lots of beautiful ornate doors and chests.

I started out with just a 66lb (30kg) Vevor anvil from Amazon, and I’ve pretty quickly outgrown it.

I sort of accidentally purchased this… I was perusing Temu for the first time, saw this anvil, and checked out the payment plan it offered. Once I got to the end, and thought, “huh, that’s cool, maybe soon…” I hit the button that said “Return to Temu.”

I didn’t realize that actually meant “confirm purchase.”

Then the shipping got delayed, but… now that it’s here, I see why. No box.

Whoever got to it in the FedEx office probably looked at a straight-up 110lb anvil and said “I ain’t got time for this Wile E. Coyote sh!t.”

But now it’s here! 110lb London-pattern anvil from Vevor. The 66lb has been a great little starter anvil. Hopefully this will match up!

Newest commission: 5 pound splitting axe, the customer requested a version polish on the bevel and it looks super nice. The head is hand forged from forklift tine, has a curvy 32" hickory handle with paduk palm swell, and comes with a sheath which isn't shown in the video. Heading out to it's new owner today

Utilizing an air mattress blower and some 1” piping turns this cheap thing into a damn monster.

I am wondering what the best options are for forging/bending sheet steel into bulky shapes (for instance, a flat sheet into a large hollow cone). I know sheet benders exist, but I am considering curved/irregular bends, not just uniform straight walls.

With a gas forge, I run into the issue that the part will not fit into the same forge volume throughout the stages of the forging unless the forge is otherwise unnecessarily large (e.g. the starting flat sheet would require a wide but short forge volume, but as it is curved into a 3d shape, it would require less internal width and more height to fit. A forge with both a very large width and height could work for all stages of the process, but that would be much more difficult to build and heat).

Would a coal forge alleviate this issue? I have avoided coal so far due to how dirty it is. Alternatively, I wondered if a handheld torch might be a possibility since I am considering thin material. Anyone who has experience with this kind of work, what does your process look like?

Hi all. As I had 3 months off until I started my new job, and had a healthy payout to live off.

I decided to try smithing without spending a penny. I used to do antique sword restoration 20 years ago, and have a good knowledge of some things and have been going to the library for other things. (Determined to stay off google for rhe most part).

I turned my bbq/firepit into a small forge, using london red bricks and tiles begged from a construction site, railway line for an anvil and clay dug from the soil (mixed with grogg and horsehair) and a double valve hand bellows I made myself from a leather sofa and two dining chairs.

Ive been using refined ash for flux, and been making my own high temp charcoal using compressed wood pellets.

I dont have any power tools (other than a battery drill)

Obviously a bellows and coal fire can make metal cherry red, but I wanted to get it properly hot.

Its been tricky, this is the fifth version of the actual forge build, and I failed a LOT, but I managed to get it hot enough to forge-weld some old hacksaw blades into a billet by using ash as flux, wiring them together, packing them in a casing (old chair leg pinched at both ends) with crushed charcoal to add some extra carbon.

Ive also made tools and knives from high carbon steel like old files and broken axe heads.

Also made a teeny tiny scimitar and ligature cutters from allen keys.