Copper Tongs: a simple beginner project

For those of you metalsmiths reading this, have you noticed how the quality of copper tongs seems to have degraded in the past decade or so. They used to be of good quality with reasonably thick metal. Now, to me anyway, they all seem like flimsy, cheap things made of such thin copper stock. I’ve wondered for a while why we would purchase such things? I mean, aren’t we metalsmiths? Wouldn’t making our own pair be a very basic project, a project suitable for suitable for a beginning student on the first day of class? I’ve never purchased any for my own studio, rather I made a hefty set back when I was in college from some scrap plate copper I had. I actually made a second pair for the university’s studio, which somebody stole rather quickly! I guess that’s one indication they were considered good, probably also a reason why school studios only have crappy ones!

Anyway, for a while now I’ve been wanting to make another longer pair for when my pickle is deep and I need to reach way in to fetch out my piece. I also wanted to try out putting together a basic tutorial with this new web format. Finally, related to the last post about a new emerging format of education, Paul Wheaton over on Permies.com is initiating a new project he’s calling PEP (permaculture experience according to Paul) which is to be a more formal approach to learning homesteading and permaculture. In this he is essentially trying to build exactly what I was talking about in the previous post, a place that currates educational information from the web to focus on an extended course of study with a method of individual accreditation all in a system that can be done for free or very cheap! (Seeing exactly what I had been envisioning being developed was a big conformation I might just be accurately tracking a developing trend.) Anyway, one of the “badges” to be developed is in metalworking and I thought I’d put this tutorial together and offer it up as a beginner project. I don’t know if it will be of use to that PEP project since copper tongs really are more useful in the jewelry world, and they are likely looking more at metal work from a blacksmithing angle, but hey, it’s another excuse to get me to do this. If anyone is interesting is learning more about what they are doing with this over at Permies here is a link to a forum thread attempting to explain what PEP is about and how it works.

So with the thought that the audience for this post might well be those with no background in metalsmithing and lacking many of our specialized tools I decided to try and go about this with limited tooling that is more commonly available. The educational advantage here is that it introduces a student to very basic forging, the concepts of work hardening, and cold connecting with rivets. Enough verbal set-up. Let’s jump in!

I’m starting with a heavy gauge copper wire, in this case it’s 6 gauge bare copper wire commonly sold as ground wire at the big box home improvement stores. (I actually bought this roll on clearance from one that went out of business years ago!) For my tongs I cut off two pieces each 12 inches long. As I noted earlier, I specifically wanted a longer pair. My regular set is 10 inches long. If my memory serves me right, normal purchased tongs are about 8 inches long. For most people I’d suggest 8 to 10 inches.

We’re going to want to forge this wire from its round state to something more flattened. To do this you’ll need a hammer and something to hammer on. I’m going to use my anvil, mostly because I don’t often get to use it in my normal daily work. Jewelers might have a steel bench block which could work. Another commonly available option would be the “anvil” plate on a heavy duty vise.

Next we’ll be needing some hammers to forge with. Generally I’d select some type of cross peen hammer to allow me to better direct the movement of the metal, along with some sort of planishing hammer to smooth out the surface marks from the cross peen. In this case, in deference to those who don’t have dozens of different hammers already I’ll go pretty basic and do the bulk of the work with a standard claw hammer.

One other bit of equipment you will find VERY nice to have is some sort of hearing protection. This sort of metal on metal hammering can get loud. If you were doing this on a regular basis and don’t use hearing protection you can pretty much expect to have hearing loss issues!

As a general rule when you start forging something you want the metal to be in an annealed state. That’s fancy jargon for “soft metal state”. Different metals are annealed differently. For copper you would want to heat it up until it’s glowing a dull red. Then I generally let it cool a bit until it’s no longer glowing, but still hot, and quench it in water. Then it would be tossed into the pickle (more jargon, this time meaning mild acid bath) to clean off the surface oxidation. One thing about the standard jewelers pickle is that you do NOT want to use steel tongs in it. That would set up a reaction which copper plates everything in it. Those who have silver pieces in the pickle at the time would be highly upset at you if you did that! Hence, we use copper tongs instead of steel ones.

For this project, however, we don’t really need to anneal the metal. This is another reason why I feel it’s a good project for true beginners. It’s quicker to jump right into. Generally the copper wire will come already annealed or half hard. Even if it’s fairly hard to start it should work fine for the tongs. Annealed metal bends easily, with little spring to it. Work hardened metal is more rigid and springy. For tongs we want to finish with nicely work hardened metal to get that rigidity and spring. Since we aren’t really working the metal all that much the state it starts out at doesn’t matter too much. Now if we were seriously reshaping the copper, like I do with my normal work where I start with a flat sheet and hammer it into a detailed vessel, you would need to anneal multiple times through the process or else the metal would become so work hardened and brittle it would break.

I should note too, that with copper you don’t need to forge it hot like you would with steel. So I grabbed one of my lengths of heavy gauge wire and basically just hammered it from a round form to a more flattened state using the claw hammer. That shape of hammer head is mostly going to pack down the metal and move it more or less equally in all directions. A more rectangular cross peen hammer would be directing the movement more in two directions. We don’t really need to move the metal much so the flat, round face of the claw hammer worked fine.

As you hammer on the metal notice how when you hammer more on one side it bends towards the other side. This is a way to direct the shape of the metal. For now try to essentially just hammer it down the middle and work it into a straight, flat rod. This would probably be better shown with a short video, but while such things may be in the future, I’m not set up to do them right now. Just start hammering and watch what happens based on how hard and exactly where you are hammering. A tip to help you understand how the metal moves is to think of it as really stiff clay.

I hammered a little bit more on each end of my rods to give a slightly wider, flatter section. I like this for the side that will be used to pick up work, and for the side that I will need to later drill holes for my rivets to go through. I should also note that I used the auto body hammer you see in the photo a bit to planish, or smooth out my hammer marks. It wasn’t really needed, but was handy.

You could make simple straight tongs. Those are plenty useful. I, however, tend to like a bit of a curve to the ends of mine. This does add complexity to the process of making them, but you might want to try it. To do this I simply hammered more on one side. This extra hammering was thinning and stretching the metal out more. Forging is neither an additive nor subtractive process, meaning I’m not adding or removing any metal. So when I thin and stretch out one side the metal has to go somewhere. In this case it makes one side a bit longer, forcing a curve into it. The trick for these tongs will be to get a similar curve formed in each side.

Next, I’m going to want to clean up the curved ends a bit. This will be the working side of the tongs when they are finished. I want the ends to meet nicely together, making it easier to pick pieces up with them. I could do this simply with forging if I was really good and patient. I could also do it all with files. In this case I’m just going to use my large belt sander to sand the ends down.

My next step is to drill the initial holes for the riveted end. I’m going to put two rivets in these, but I’m only going to drill the holes for the first rivet initially. The trick here is finding ways to easily line everything up. If you drilled holes for both rivets to start with then your drilling would need to be very precise. Otherwise once the first rivet was in you might find the second set of holes don’t line up with each other! If you start with just one hole though, and get that first rivet in, then the pieces are held in place for the next set of holes to be drilled straight through. When I’m doing pieces with 3 or more rivets I first do the one. Then drill holes for the second and do that rivet. At that point the parts are held firmly at two points and thus shouldn’t be able to shift, slide, or rotate around. From there it’s easy to drill all the remaining holes knowing they will stay in alignment with each other.

For this set of tongs I thought I’d try something new for me. I’m still going to drill just the first set of holes, but I wanted to try and make sure the curved “working” ends of the tongs stayed roughly aligned so I’d have less fussy clean up work later. To do this I simply put them together as I want them to meet and wrapped a piece of tape around them. It’s not super strong, but it seems to hold them in place well enough.

Since I have a vise handy I thought I’d use it to hold the piece while I drill the first set of holes. Initially I used a center punch to hammer in a small dot depression where I want the drill bit to start and bite in.

You will notice too that I decided to wrap a bit of tape around the other end to assist in holding the pieces together as I drilled. I don’t know that this was necessary but it was helpful to keep things aligned. I should note here that I chose my drill bit size to be just slightly larger than the wire I’m going to use for the rivets. If it’s a snug fit to begin with then it’s easier to get the rivet set.

I wanted to use a proportionately hefty gauge wire to make my rivets from, both for strength and visual appearance. This wire could be copper or brass, but since I happen to have a bunch of short scrap pieces of silver wire left over from the spools of it I use in making rims for my normal vessel work I decided to make my rivets from silver. Plus it makes my tongs niftier than any sort of mass market ones you could buy. 🙂 I decided that 10 gauge wire looked good. Should you not have a nice scrap pile to pick from like I do you can also find similar gauge solid copper wire at most big box home improvement stores in the same section where you find the 6 gauge bare copper grounding wire. In this case though you might have to strip off some plastic insulation. I’ve also found some braided wire that used individual wires around this gauge for the braiding strands.

A big key to making a rivet job go easy is to get the riveting wire cut to a good length. If it’s too short you don’t have enough material to mushroom over and hold the rivet in place. If it’s too long then you MUST hit the rivet dead on every time or it will simply bend over rather than squish out and thicken. The rule of thumb is that you are looking for the wire to extend out from both sides roughly half the thickness of the wire. What you see in this photo was about right for this rivet. In hindsight it could have been a tiny bit longer if I was being really critical.

I got out my special riveting hammer to actually set the rivet. This is a smaller, more lightweight hammer designed just for this purpose. It allows more control when hammering on the wire head. The small face of the hammer lets you see what you’re doing better, and the lighter weight allows more control in forming the ends of the wire. This could be done with a normal sort of claw or ball peen hammer, using the flat faced side of the hammer, but you would probably want to use the smallest of this sort of hammer you have.

There is also a bit of a trick to the initial hammering of the rivet. You can’t just plop the piece down onto the metal backing plate and hammer away on the top end. You need to keep the other side of the rivet protruding from the back side. Put another way, you need to hold the piece up slightly from the surface so that just the end of the rivet is sitting on the anvil. Again try to think of this as being a short rod of really stiff clay. What we are trying to do is hammer on the two ends to squish them down and mushroom them out so they completely fill the drilled holes and the ends essentially form into nail heads on each side. I may be making it sound harder than it is. Just make sure you have the material to make those nail heads protruding from each side as you hammer so you don’t end up with a rivet head on one side only. A one headed rivet doesn’t hold anything!

As far as the hammering goes you are basically looking to hammer straight down onto the end of the wire. It’s not uncommon after the initial hammering to work around toward the top edges a bit to push the sides down more, forming a more rounded mushroom head.

Once that initial rivet is made you set the piece back up to drill the second set of holes. Again I utilized my handy vise to hold the piece. Then I used the center punch to establish where I wanted the center of my hole and drilled away.

After the new set of holes are drilled I inserted my rivet wire and cut it to length. I should probably note a couple points I haven’t mentioned yet. (Hopefully any true beginners are reading through all this before starting!) Usually the drill bit leaves a bur around the edges of the hole. I generally clean this up with a file before trying to set the rivet. Also, it is handy if the wire being used for the rivets is in a softened, annealed state. In my experience, on rivets of this size I’ve always been able to just use the wire in whatever state it happens to be. However, if it is soft to start then it will squish and mushroom out MUCH easier. A work hardened wire will require more hammering to form.

If you are working with copper wire and want to anneal it then heat it with a torch until it’s glowing at least dull red, let it cool so it’s not glowing (which should happen very quickly with a wire), and quench it in water. You probably don’t need to worry about pickling for this project. If you have a brass wire for your rivets you would again heat until glowing a dull red, but this time you should let it completely air cool. Do not quench it as that would start to harden the brass. With silver I would heat it like the copper and quench when it’s no longer glowing. A special note about heating the wires, take care not to over heat them. Wire ends tend to melt fairly quickly and ball up. This ball could be used for one end of your rivet if you wanted though.

In the photo above you can see my new tongs after I finished the second rivet. They do look like tongs right now, but they aren’t quite right yet. I want to tweak the shape a bit so they spread out more down by the riveted end, thus also opening up the working end more. Having some extra space between the two sides will give some room for them to spring open and closed. I’m just going to bend them open a bit more with my hands, but I’m going to take care when I do that to not put direct stress on the rivets. I feel like that’s a bit confusing of an explanation. Let’s try this, I am not going pull the sides apart like it was the wishbone from a Thanksgiving turkey. (Ok, that probably doesn’t make sense to my non-United States readers either.) If I just grab both sides and pull them apart I could rip the rivets out. That’s what I don’t want to do. So when I’m pulling the sides apart I don’t let the force go down to the rivets. Rather I hold it firmly a bit above them and bend at that point.

I’m also going to tweak the two sides of the tongs a bit to get the working ends to meet together flat and relatively flush. This involved grabbing one of the sides with two pair of pliers and making minor twists to get things to align. To fix up the very end I generally just go at it with a file to so some final shaping. If you can get the ends to meet flush and flat they will function better to pick up parts.

In the above photo you can see my new finished set of copper tongs. Your’s will probably look a bit different since I deliberately made mine long. They should have a nice spring to them from the work hardened metal you created by the forging work. They could be made with even greater care and craftsmanship to be true works of art. What I have here is a simple, quick, durable, functional set that is superior to anything I could readily buy, yet they cost me next to nothing to make (even with the fancy silver rivets).

If you are new to metalworking realize this is just a tiny taste of what’s possible with any of these techniques. Forging can get way more complicated and beautiful. There are also many more types of rivets designed to be more decorative or even nearly invisible. Personally I find it empowering to be able to make my own tools. Hopefully this can give you a taste of what it’s like to do so as well.

Normally I would finish off a post with a Studio Snippet. In this case though the Studio Snippet essentially took over the whole post so I’m going to skip it. So with that I’m signing off for now. Happy hammering!

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.