Pouring My Art Out

A hot barn full of burning forges and coal smoke… a thick leather apron… and spring in San Diego… oh, boy…

Anyway, back to the blacksmith tongs project… I rounded my handles to make them more comfortable to grab, and then I had to heat the flat, grabbing ends, and pound a metal rod into them to make a nice gripping surface.

That is the perfect color for the metal to be to work on it… any cooler, and it is a waste of time to hit it, any hotter, and you destroy it… it is all about the color.

I can’t really take pictures of myself while I have a hammer in one hand and hot metal in the other… maybe I can ask someone in the class to take some next time, so you can see me in action.

There I have set my gripping indentations… one going one direction, the other going the other…

Then, there was a bunch of other steps… heating, pounding, reheating, bending, heating and flattening the rivet, more reheating, more bending to make the grabbing heads match together…

But it was beginning to look like tongs!!!

And there you have it… six hours of work… but I have an actual set of blacksmith tongs.