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TIL why my tongs kept slipping on round stock - the answer was way simpler than I thought
I've been forging for about 4 years now, and for the longest time I just accepted that round stock would always try to spin in my tongs. I'd tighten them down so hard my hand would cramp up after an hour. Then last month at a hammer-in near Portland, an old smith named Roy watched me struggle for maybe 30 seconds before he walked over. He told me to quit trying to squeeze the life out of the metal and instead just grind a shallow groove across both tong bits. I went home and tried it on a pair of my flat jaw tongs, took maybe 10 minutes with an angle grinder. Now I can hold a 1 inch round bar tight with barely any pressure. No more cramped hand and way fewer twisted pieces. Has anyone else found a small modification that made a big difference in a basic tool like this?
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bettykim3mo ago
Have you ever tried using a piece of rubber (like from an old inner tube) wrapped around the jaws of your tongs? I was making a bunch of hooks out of 1/2 inch round bar a few years ago and kept having the same slipping problem. An older guy at the shop I sometimes use showed me this trick. You just wrap a strip of rubber around each jaw where it grips the metal, it gives you this amazing grip without any slipping. It also means you don't have to grind down your tongs which is nice if you want to switch between different sizes of stock.
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