A chronicle of my attempts to create an early clock using only traditional techniques.
Quick update...
New set of box tongs are done... I received some RR spikes but most of them were so corroded I couldn't use them for tools. I annealed the ones that weren't too far gone. On Sunday I made a new hot set (type of chisel ) It needs to be hardened and tempered yet but will get to that during the week.
Trying to get better...
Last Friday, I decided to take a break from house work and head out to the forge. My goal was a pair of box tongs. I have one pair of box tongs sized for the hardie hole of my smaller anvil. I need a pair of box tongs to fit the hardie hole of my larger anvil. The smaller anvil is about 7/8" while the larger is 1 1/4". Just as a reminder, a hardie hole is a square hole on the anvil face designed to hold tools.
In the past, whenever I made handles for the tongs they were simply the same stock metal used for the head of the tongs. In other words, I didn't have to attach the handles to the "business end" of the tongs. Well, for these tongs I wanted a lot more metal so I decided to use 3/4" stock for the tong heads and 1/2 round for the handles. Now, I've tried forge welding the handles to the heads of the tongs but it is fairly difficult when working by yourself. So, this time I cheated. I pulled out the oxy/actelyne and welded the tong heads to the handles that way. After some clean up work on the anvil, you can't tell that they were ever two seperate pieces.
I made one half of the box tongs. Usually when you make tongs, you make both halves at the same time. The reason is just because the half to be essentially duplicates of each other. But, I wanted to really concentrate on techinique this time so I just worked on one half. It came out pretty good(after a few bad tries...)
While I was typing this entry, I realized what I may have been doing wrong with my previous attempts at forge welding the handles to the head. I think the day I tried it, I had already formed the tong head which would have made it difficult to have it sit even on the anvil... Hmmm... will try again at a later date. By the way, the techinque used to forge the handle to the head is called "Drop tongs". The reason for this is part of the welding process actually involves droping a pair of tongs in order to pick up a hammer.
All day fun...
Spent this past Saturday doing a demo all day. I started at about 10 in the morning and went until Sundown with only a few breaks. I managed to make a few more chain parts. Then, moved onto making more stuff for the camp. I made a spiral viking iron and a large meat fork. I also spent some time making a nail header which did not turn out as nicely as I had hoped but not too bad for first effort. In addition, I was given a larger (about 12") grinding wheel. I'm going to build a foot pedaled stand for it so I can do grinding at demos without using power tools. I was able to smith all day with my arm only getting weak in the last half hour or so. In most cases, I'm able to do what I want with the smithing so I've made a lot of progress considering its just been over a year since I got my first real forge.
