Tong bag

Carrying the portable blacksmith workhop around is a bit of a struggle. Everything is heavy; the anvil, the tool chest, the material, the bellows, and the charcoal.

Karin created a kind of backpack for carrying the bellows, and the tool chest works well although it get really heavy for one person to carry.

The obvious solution is to move a few of the heavier things over to another carrying vessel. In this case a carrying bag for tongs were the solution.

Creation process

Material

We had already received a lot of fabric for the bellow backpack made prevously. When the fabric arrived it was 1.5 m more than we bought. This excess fabric came in handy for this tong bag.

Considerations

The tongs themselves are not all that heavy, but they are made of iron and could be rough to the fabric. The meaning with the bag is to be able to carry the tongs without much care so the bag should be tough.
This means reinforced edges to the fabric to make it sturdy - and a carrying strap of some sturdiness as well.

Measurements

The length of the tongs were the most important aspect for picking the measurements for the bag.

Eventually we opted for 28 cm compartment fold, 38 cm tong length, and a flap of 15 cm.
The width of the pattern was 60 cm to be able to include a range of other stuff than just the current tongs.

Sewing

Reinforcements everywhere due to the fabric being tightly woven but with very thin threads.

The bag design took no inspiration from manuscripts or extant bags, but from more modern tool bags.

For the closing of the bag we had no string of appropriate thickness, but twining a few thinner strings together made a good enough closing mechanism.
Given the varying content in the bag, the closing mechanism has to be adjustable.

Lessons learned

• The closing mechanism should have been moved to the edges of the tube and included fastening around the carrying strap base.
• You always buy more tools. It's good to have a few spare slots in a bag like this.