Making Salad Tongs

A friend has a set of salad tongs that are simple, never get separated and use very little wood. The two piece hinged wood pieces fold flat or open into a tweezer-style salad grabber that easily picks up lettuce. It's difficult, though, to pick up tomatoes, carrots, olives and other more solid items that tend to pop out.

Bottom: Original Design; Top: Maple Blanks

First Set of Tongs Out of Cherry with Scoops Carved at the Ends

Each half of the tongs is split into three parts and are hinged together with a slender brass rod through the outer parts of one side through the center part of the other. The features that spring the salad tongs open are the two warped outer slivers on the left in the photo above and the warped center part on the right. 

Four Halves of the Salad Tongs Fit in a Half Gallon Mason Jar: A Wood Sliver Is Inserted Between Each of the Three Parts And Boiling Water Poured to the Top to  Warp Them. After an Hour they are Dried Using the Microwave.

Another method to warp the springy parts also works: boiling them in a pan on the wood stove but it takes much longer to dry them than the ones done in a mason jar.

A Batch of Salad Tong Halves in a Pan Showing the Wood Slivers that Warp the Three Ends

The first batch of salad tongs I made using cherry and milled blocks to make "bowls" for the ends. These functioned okay but required more work than the second set of ten that I made out of maple. Salad tongs don't really need bowls to pick up stuff when shallower scoops also work. Simply adding short pieces of wood with the grain running across the tong handles function well. One inch holes down a similar piece of maple made five pair of scoop ends after sawing them apart.

Layout of the Scoop End

The Scoop Pieces Are Glued on the End of the Tongs After the Hinge Pin Is Inserted to Insure Proper Alignment for Gluing, Forming and Finishing

This Figure Shows the Different Stages From Blanks to Finished Salad Tongs

A Back Saw Was Used to Split Each Half into Three Parts

A Small Camping Saw Was Used to Complete the Cut

Ten Completed Salad Tongs: Maple and Cherry

One daughter requested that her set have a hole for hanging them so I added that feature to the maple set.

A Photo that Shows Different Amounts of "Springiness" Between the Handles

By the End: Once the Patterns Are Made, It Takes About Two Hours to Make a Set, Including Three Coats of Tung Oil