I love working wood, but I also like the challenges of metalworking. I come from a family that was made in the forge: my grandfather was a metal-smith, my father and my oldest uncle were machinists (dad later became a chief engineer in the Israeli merchant fleet) and two of my cousins are blacksmiths. Yours truly went to a vocational high-school and learned how to cut, file, weld and turn metals. One of my high-school metalworking projects was to make an insulation wire stripper. We formed the arms with hand tools; We turned the thumb screw on a lathe, than we gun-blue the tool. The only parts we did not make were the spring and the chain. I don’t remember if we did the hardening of the cutting teeth, or whether it was done by our teacher?
Placing the rivet-hinge was the most difficult task. The rivet had to be hammered in – loose enough to allow an easy opening of the jaws, but not too loose – or the arms would have wobbled.
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