I’m Nate welcome back to the workshop in
the past when using our backyard forge
we’ve been using these stainless steel
tongs to pull things out and they are
stainless steel which means that they
don’t melt in the furnace but they do
get red-hot and very soft to the point
that trying to pick up the crucible just
makes them Bend and I’m pretty sure
these things were originally designed to
be used on salad so you can see we
haven’t been using these for quite what
they were designed for so today we’re
gonna see if we can build ourselves some
more industrial tongs that can really
take the heat of our Forge we’ve got
some mild steel bars that we picked up
at Home Depot along with some steel
hardware and we’re gonna try and form
two pairs of tongs one pair that’s
designed to reach down inside the top of
the forge and lift our crucible out and
a second pair that’s designed to grab
our crucible from the side so we can
easily pour it out to be building these
tongs we’ll use a drill a hacksaw we’ll
probably end up using the bench vise and
a pair of channellocks as well first
let’s just sort of get a measurement
idea for how long we want these tongs to
be I’m not trying to make tongs that I
can operate up here just something about
that long for the most part these will
work just like a pair of scissors we’ll
have a hinge point in the middle and
then somewhere around here we’ll try and
get them to twist 90 degrees so that we
have the flat face pointing at the
crucible we’ll then take another piece
of steel and bolt that on to the end in
sort of a claw shape so we can really
grab onto the crucible we just take some
more of the steel bar beyond where my
hand is and double that over
that’ll give a nice handle that’s easy
to hold on to I will still be using the
furnace gloves while I’m using these
tongs so I do want something that’s easy
to operate and doesn’t require a ton of
manual dexterity because they’re pretty
thick this is all very much an eye
balled sort of experiment if you want
longer tongs you just use maybe the
whole bar if you want shorter tongs then
you’re gonna burn your hands but just
let’s see how long it takes me to cut
through this 1/8 inch thickness 3/4 inch
wide mild steel bar using a standard
hacksaw I wasn’t too bad I actually got
through that in like 30 seconds
pretty good try the next one we’ve now
got the two shorter bars that will be
the main body of the first set of tongs
and we have the two pieces that we cut
off of those and we’re going to be using
these for something as well we can cut
two shorter pieces out of one side of
this bar and those will become the two
curved claws that will actually hold on
to our crucible it looks like to get a
good curved claw shape we aren’t gonna
have to cut this whole bar right in half
that would be a little bit too big but
just something I don’t know 5 or 6
inches long should be pretty good claw I
think we actually want to make sure that
our claws don’t wrap all the way around
our crucible because then the two halves
would just hit each other and they
wouldn’t actually grab the crucible at
all so we want them shorter than that so
it just grabs onto the sides again I’m
now let’s cut these two pieces off of
our short bar got a magnet attached to
our bench vise here and it’s really
picking up quite a bit of steel filings
from this I think we want to put our
scissor hinge pretty much in the middle
here there are advantages to having it
higher or lower if it’s lower down
nearer to the crucible then it’s easier
to hold pressure on it that lets us lift
the crucible up out of the Forge but if
it’s higher up then we have more space
to fit around a crucible and maybe even
a larger crucible than this one so I
think just putting it right in the
middle will be a good middle ground it
should be fairly easy enough to hold
pressure to lift our crucible up and out
but we should also have enough space
that we can fit around the mouth of even
our taller and bigger crucibles the
hardware we have is one-quarter inch
bolts so I have a 1/4 inch drill bit but
I don’t have a punch to get my hole
started so I’m gonna be switching out
using a smaller drill bit just to put a
little bit of a divot into the steel and
then I’ll switch back to my 1/4 inch bit
that should work I don’t have any sort
of special drill bit this is a normal
drill bit that I’m gonna be using to get
through this mild steel and if you use
it correctly it should work pretty well
there’s a couple of things that you want
to remember when you’re drilling into
metal though one is you don’t want to
use a high speed that will create a lot
of friction which will heat up the tip
of the drill bit and that can make it
get soft if you keep a low speed you
should be able to get through the metal
no problem the other thing to remember
is that it’s always good to use some
kind of oil when you’re cutting through
metal I don’t have any machine oil
around but I do have this cooking oil
which while not perfect should still do
steel hardware fits beautifully through
that little hole with just a tiny tiny
effects err space almost none but it
fits through nice and easily just what
just got a little bit of a burr on the
bottom of our steel so let’s take some
sandpaper and just get rid of that you
know it’s a quick test if we fit our
bolts through both of those we’ve got
ourselves with a hinges pair of tongs or
scissors are really they’re neither of
those yet it’s just two pieces of metal
on a hinge but making good progress
let’s see if we can’t bend the ends of
our steel 90 degrees so that the flat
like that that’s pretty good alignment
it looks like right there
so now we need to add little claws on to
both ends first of course we need to add
a little bit of curves into this parts
straight right now which is not going to
be good for grabbing a crucible you’re
just putting it in the vise bending it
in one spot gonna have to move on to
using tools after this because my hands
I think that will work great now we need
to attach one of the curve pieces to
each of these handles and of course that
means more drilling holes
as a final step before we assemble
everything using our hardware let’s take
our extra bits of Steel and fold those
over to create our handles alright
that’s looking like it should work let’s
it’s pretty good not too shaky these
pieces are going to be assembled largely
the same way but they don’t need to have
any play to them these aren’t supposed
to move so we’re just going to tighten
it seems to be working but I think we
could make it a little bit easier to use
if the claw pieces were a little bit
more in line with the shape of the
crucible in this case that actually
means bending the bars a little bit more
inward that way they should be lined up
with the direction the crucible sits
there we go that is perfect look at that
it just goes nicely down our little
claws are perpendicular to the walls of
the crucible easy to grab these things
are working pretty well so far of course
it’s going to be a little bit more of a
long-term test than that when we start
using them in the furnace we’ll see if
the hardware holds up nicely or if the
change from getting hot to cooling down
over and over ends up weakening them
somehow it’s possible that we’ll have to
come back later and weld some of these
pieces in place we have tongs that are
really good for picking up our crucible
from the top but if we want to go and
pour it these aren’t gonna do too much
for us so what we need to do now is
build a second set of tongs that has
these claws facing the other direction
so that we can come in at it from the
side all of our pieces are cut our holes
are drilled let’s just bend some handles
into this and then do our final assembly
wait that’s not right
[Music]
now these ones will attach mostly the
same way but instead of attaching them
with the claws perpendicular to the
posts we’re going to go parallel let’s
give that a test so with our sideways
Tong we should be able to just come in
grab it tip you can even hold it upside
down and pour out all of the dust that’s
ha yeah and now I can be farther away
from the metal as it’s pouring and our
tongs aren’t going to get destroyed like
our salad tongs kept doing guys thanks
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