Bolt Jaw Tongs from Kens Custom iron

Making your first set of blacksmithing

tongs

using the Rapid

tongs

and Rapid tong blanks sold by Ken's Custom Iron is a great introduction to tong making and sets you up pretty well for success. Now, the first thing I like to do with these blank tongues is clean them. The reins have signs of being cut and the edges are a little sharp and I like them a little better so I'm going to take them out a little to make them a little longer and round out the piece. that I'm going to grab and that really makes it a much more comfortable pair of pliers in foreign foreign use like any other project you want to draw this in a square shape, then octagon, and then round.

I tend to leave the section up next to the boss a bit. a little bit heavier and thicker and don't take everything out to just round off the part where your hand is going to be and of course if you have a treadle hammer or a power hammer, those are good options for doing this. Thank you, foreigners, these with another. pair of pliers and that makes life a lot easier, but what if you don't have another pair of pliers? The ones you are doing are your first game. Well, my recommendation is that you buy more than one set of tongs from Ken's Custom Iron Shop. one of their packages is a better deal anyway, but that way you can assemble one of these temporarily, go ahead and leave the handle as is or slightly remove the edges from the file or a grinder so they're comfortable enough to hold .

This will only be a one time deal at this point, then finish this on the pliers as you normally would to drill the hole, mount them with a

bolt

so you can separate them again and then you will have a pair of pliers simply and temporarily . which you can then use to hold the other's pair of tongs while you do them, have them complete them the way you want to do a good job, then take apart the first pair and finish the job, go ahead and take out the reins. a reverse order like I like to do it, but that doesn't hurt anything, it's just my personal preference and of course another option would be to hold them down with something like a pair of vice grips, it's not so ideal especially if you're working. on a gas striker you have to get your hand very close to the heat to do this but it is completely possible but now it's time to make the second half match the foreign first half which is hotter, it's a little longer than the other, but that's to be expected, as it cools it will shrink and you go ahead and trim them to give them exactly the same length if you want, in fact you can file them down using an angle grinder, a belt grinder, whichever be aware if it has lumps. or points that will be uncomfortable to hold and it is worth taking the time to make them as nice as possible, but it is a good exercise to make them as perfect as possible from the Anvil with the hammer, then you will not have to file or polish as much, this is a great opportunity to thank Ken's Custom Iron for sponsoring today's video.

Ken's Custom Iron is the manufacturer of the original Rapid Tongs in Rapid Tongs like the ones we use today and have been in the blacksmithing business. since 1988. Kids is located here in the US and that raises an important point if you are online looking for quick clamps and you are on Amazon or Ebay, there are many sellers that sell under that. names that are not in the US, they are not Ken's Custom Iron, so if you get something shipped from China, these people really want you to believe that you are dealing with Ken's Custom Iron, even though they don't come out directly. and they use that name, but they use snap tongs and a lot of the pictures you'll see on their websites are stolen from Ken's Custom Iron website, so if you see the tongs assembled you'll see someone working on an anvil, those pictures . on many of these third party websites like Amazon and eBay they steal directly from Ken's

custom

iron

.

When you see Ken's

custom

iron

working on the product, you get the impression that that's who you're buying from and doing business with, but that's not the case when you receive your product and they're not as pretty as what you'd expect from the company. Ken's custom iron. They have a small size rivet. I've heard that some of them even send aluminum rivets with them personally. I would rather support Ken's custom iron and buy from a fellow blacksmith buy a product made here in the USA if that is an option for me and in this case now it is another good way to know if you are dealing with a bad company reputation.

Many of these people are using my videos that talk about Ken's product as instructions for his product, but they are not cans. I made a video on how to assemble Ken's custom iron tongs. They link to my video as an instruction for their tongs, which is just another way they imply that they are Ken's custom iron and that they are legit and on the rise, so if you see a link to my video in one of these sites, you're looking at pictures of Ken's custom iron on one of these. sites you are not dealing with and when you receive a poor quality product in the mail don't call Ken's Custom Iron and complain that you should have bought the original, that's the end of that rant, these need to cool down a bit.

I'm going to do any cleaning I need to do in the rains and then we'll make the jaw out of the V bit. I'll start with a chisel cut right in the center of the jaw. I'm using a little piece of scrap metal. the vise to help support that and should make things go a little smoother. You can make these with a V tip or a round tip, but the square V tip will hold both square and round material and the round tip will only hold round material, so usually go with the deep end, do your best to get it perfectly centered , it's very difficult to fix in the end and very easy, in fact cutting one side of the outside is a good way to start opening this up, but you could use a piece of square.

The bar fighting a nice sharp 90 degree corner on your Anvil or a separate block really helps bring these things closer together, but don't get hung up on it at this point, once they're assembled we'll have to do a lot of adjusting and well. adjustments and we'll make it perfect then, so I'll let this cool and see if I need to file or polish there to clean it up, it's a little off center on the cut, but it's nothing, we can't work with a little time with a grinder or a square file and this should be fine, laughs, now you can certainly do this with a file, but it will take forever to clean.

I think if you're comfortable polishing it, it's probably a better way to do it, and of course if you get it perfect with a chisel, you don't have to do any of this. I want to mark a hole as close to the center of the boss as I can, I can drill it and then use that to mark the second hole just to make sure they line up correctly. You'll also want to countersink them slightly to make sure they don't have any sharp edges. I want the pliers to eventually cut through the rivet before closing it.

I'm going to go ahead and put my touch marker on these. I'm going to start by just heating the rivet in the Forge and if I need more heat. I'll heat that head separately with a blowtorch. The relatives include the proper rivet with the blank tabs, but I lost it quite a while ago as I've had them for a while, but I have rivets on hand so I can make this work. well, as is almost always the case, these are tight now the rivet stays nice and solid, so to get them to work we need to reheat that joint and slowly move the pliers back and forth until the rivet loosens a little bit and the joint starts to adjust itself, this is just a normal part of the operation so we'll just open them and close them and keep working while the joint cools;

There will still be a lot of work to do in the end. to make sure everything lines up vertically, but the first thing I care about is making sure the joint works. Once I'm happy with that, I'll start to close the jaws to make them a little more parallel and then we'll line them up. I'm going to start by using a round bar to rotate them and then return them upright with finger taps from a hammer. Now you just want this to fit your preferred stock size and at this point you just have to do that.

Move it and move it until they work just the way you want. Something I would like to do with these tweezers is put a V notch on them so they can hold the material. Crosswise, to do that, I'm going to square around the bar. I was using to size them so I have a good mark for reference and I'll transfer that mark to the jaws and just file down the notch please the final step will be some beeswax they just need to be hot enough. To melt the wax, the wax helps prevent rust and corrosion as well as lubricate the joint, so I really recommend giving your tools a little finishing.

Now here you have a complete set of tongs, the quick tongs and the quick tongs from Ken's custom iron really do the trick. set you up for success and if you have never made a pair of tongs before this is a great way to do it with your first sets of tongs and really even as an experienced blacksmith I still find this to be a very good way to make tongs though I can make them completely from scratch. I hope you enjoyed the project and I hope you have time in your day to go to your store to do something, but stay safe, wear your safety glasses, see you in the next video