Since I have discovered that I would much rather make mail than make riveted mail tools, I have decided to share with you all the exquisite details of how they are made, so that you might make your own! :)
Don't worry, I will be selling them too.
First, a word of safety. You will be playing with fire, powerful tools, and metallic dust, to say the least. You MUST wear safety goggles and a respirator. Do NOT wear loose clothing around a bench grinder. You can get caught in it and it will wind you up and pull you in. Grinders are very easy to feel safe around - don't fall for it! They are one of the most dangerous tools in the shop. Be careful!
Punch Tongs
First, the punch tongs. To start with, I use the cheapest tile nippers you can find at Home Depot. These cost around $12. Any sort of tong will do, but the trick is finding one that has enough meat in the jaws that you can machine them to hold the punch and punch bit, and it has to be machineable. These tongs fit the bill:
The first thing you will want to do is remove the nice rubber/plastic grips, to save them. If you leave them on, they will melt and burn during the annealing/teeth removal process. Trust me, I (and my smoke alarm) know. To remove the grips, peel back the opening a little bit and work some soapy water into/under the grips. They will them slip right off with a little persuasion:
The next step is to remove the tungsten-carbide teeth that have been brazed into the tile nippers. These teeth are great for nipping tile, but they are right in the way for our purposes. Plus, heating them to orange heat to melt the solder also has the side affect of annealing the tong jaws, which softens them so that we can drill and tap them later.
To heat the tongs, I use MAPP gas:
MAPP burns hotter than standard propane. You cannot use standard propane torch tips with MAPP, so be forewarned. I actually already have a propane torch, so I bring both the MAPP and propane torch to bear on the jaws simultaneously, to speed the process. Remember! Fire is hot! Be careful! I recommend doing this job outside. I do it over my kitchen sink. When the red-hot tungsten-carbide teeth fall out (when the solder melts) they will fall to whatever is under them. A sink is a good place for them to fall.
When the teeth fall out, let the tongs cool slowly. Don't plunge them into water - you'll harden them up again!
Instead, set them somewhere to air-cool. If you really want to make them soft you can bury them in vermiculite so that they cool even more slowly.
The next step is to grind the jaws into shape. Basically you will remove the step where the teeth were brazed in. I also grind a flat spot on the backside of each jaw. This gives you nice flat surfaces to work with when drilling.
