PSA: the forge at the folk school in Brasstown only had one left handed tong rack and it drives me nuts
I popped into the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown last month for their open forge night and counted 9 right handed tong racks and exactly 1 left handed one shoved in the corner. I get that most smiths are right handed, but 10 percent is not enough when a whole class shows up and 3 of us are grabbing the same rack all night. Here's the thing nobody admits: tong racks are cheap to build and you can weld one in an afternoon, so there is zero excuse for a teaching shop to make lefties fight over scrap. If you run a shop or a class, count your racks and tell me the ratio, I bet half of you are worse than 9 to 1.