Those power tongs would "slap" you in the face if you wasn't paying attention to what you were doing!
Lets talk the reality of the drilling platform. Tongs are used to "make and break" the screwed together connection of a length of drill stem. The floor of the drill rig has a segmented tapered collet (imagine a TG100 with a 6" bore). The drill stem is either being lifted out of the hole (or returning back into the hole). The joint is brought to about waist high and a new length of pipe is threaded into the threads, and the tongs are set to hold the loose drill stem against turning while the Driller (the guy operating the draw works) spins the collet to tighten the joint.
The tongs are free to move around quite a bit, but the outside end of them has a large hole through which a 1/2 to 3/4" wire cable is threaded through it with 'U' able clamps. The other end of the cable is secured to some portion of the rig itself.
As long as everything is working properly, the spinning collet runs the threads onto the non-moving drill stem (held by the tongs) and when complete, the tongs are removed, and the drill stem is lowered until the next joint is ready for another length of pipe.
Now, lets let things get a bit sloppy as things wear. The cable starts to fray, and someone puts some tape on it to prevent having the broken ends poking into you. You are running behind time and the Driller is in a hurry. He speeds up and slams into the joint make-up, really jerking the cable again and again.
Remember that the joint face is waist high, and that there are three guys working at the roundtable.
The driller gives one last pulse to the turntable, and the cable breaks!
The tongs are themselves very solid pieces of steel with the arm about 3-4 feet long, and the cable is another 5-10 feet long that has just become a massive weed whacker.
Back in 1953, when I was doing this stupid shit, we were "offsetting" another rig about 1/4 mile away, and we saw the lights flicker on and off repeatedly (a signal for help).
I will never forget the scene that I saw when I got up onto the rig floor. Body parts were everywhere, and the only persons still alive were the Driller and the man up in the draw works. A few days later, I got my leg amputated above the knee, and I decided that the oil field was not for me.
The above scenario was the way things were done back then. I really don't know what they are like nowadays.
Some of this led to OSHA.
Lee (the sawe guy)