Add kitchen tongs to your list of simple woodworking projects. George Vondriska walks you step-by-step through the planning and building process for making a pair of kitchen tongs that you can give as a gift for a friend or loved one or use in your own home. George teaches you the simple woodworking tips and techniques you’ll need to cut the angle and width of the spacer and epoxy, sand, shape and finish the tongs.
Spacers were made by crosscutting 1 1/4″ slices off an 8″ wide board. The wide board was used to get as many spacers as possible safely as each 8″ slice then has to be cut into 1 1/8″ sections with a miter saw. Since I do not have any wide boards, I was wondering if it matters structurally if I rip the 1 1/4″ slice off the board longnitudally instead of crosscutting? This will give me one long piece to make the short spacers, instead of getting several short pieces from crosscutting the board. Thank you.
Hello Carolyn,
Thank you for contacting us.
I think that would be fine. Be aware that you are gluing an end grain joint rather than a long grain. So, if you are using epoxy, that shouldn’t be a problem. If you are using regular PVA wood glue, then apply the glue to the end grain first, then dab a bit onto each tong piece. Let that sit for a minute, then return to the end grain and dab on a bit more glue. That should allow the end grain to soak up some glue, and be allow the next dab to stay at the surface.
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Sincerely,
Sarah
Woodworkers Guild of America Video Membership
Great project.
Why use epoxy instead of wood glue. I am horrible at mixing epoxy and my tongs fell apart after about 4 uses. Can I use wood glue instead, or is there a reason not to use it.
Hi Paul. Epoxy was just for extra precaution on this design. I use Titebond 3 on these. I’ve made dozens of them over the past 5-6 years and have never had a joint fail.
Thanks
Paul-WWGOA
You said you used 3/4″ thickness for the spacers but you never say how long they should be. I guess I could figure it out if I knew how thick your stop block is since you say you measure 1 1/4″ from the fence. From the looks of the picture it looks like the length is bigger than the width. So is it 1″ for the length of the spacer?
I use 1-1/8″ for the length of spacer.
Paul
Nice for gifts. Great idea. Question, How you get the tongs. Are they pre cut or you cut them from a piece of wood?
What did you use on the belt sander to clean in between sanding?
Can you tell me what the material is that is used to clean the sander?
Really nice tongs
Nice Project