Forging some tongs

A rite of passage for a blacksmith seems to be making your own tongs. So I looked around how to do that and found a great website from an American blacksmith organistation with a lot of educational material (scroll down to the bottom): https://www.abana.org/resources/chf.shtml

After a full afternoon of hard, sweaty and humiliating work, this is the result.

They don't look like much, but they work very well. I had a very hard time drawing down the reins. they should taper gradually down to the end, but they don't really do that at all. And they aren't very uniform either. Oh well, live and learn.

I also acquired a big old post vise for the princely sum of 25 euros. It has been standing on a graveyard for ages, not quite sure what they did with such a vise on a graveyard. With a bit of paint it looks like new again.