Can we talk about the time my quench tank turned my tongs into bananas

So I'm at my little forge behind the garage in Mesa last Tuesday, going for a simple 1080 knife and I grab the wrong tongs for the quench, thin little flat jaw pair. Dunk the blade in the oil, all good, but the tongs are still hot and I set them on the edge of the tank and they warp like a wet noodle, jaws splayed out maybe 40 degrees, useless. I tried to bend them back cold and snapped one jaw clean off at the rivet, so now I gotta re-rivet the whole thing or just build a new pair. Anyone got a favorite quick tweak for keeping tongs from flopping after a dunk, or do I just need to stop being lazy and use the right pair?

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josephl6710d ago

Learned that lesson the same way, hot metal always finds the weakest spot and bends it, same as how a cheap shelf bracket always fails right when you load it up. Tongs are just like that, they only hold up if you treat them as part of the job and not some scrap you toss aside. Grab the right pair next time and keep the flats for the forge, that flop is the metal telling you it was never meant for that heat.

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