This is sort of diy, I hope. I was given this gadget today by a dear friend. It has been in her family for many a year but they've never been able to work out what is was for or what it was a part of. I think I have seen something similar before but can't remember when or why. Gut feeling is that it's nautical
My thanks, Nick
One of the "handles" appears to be threaded as does the inside of that elephants trunk part.. I have no idea but could it be for bending something?
Thanks, but I don't think so. Both handles bear the remnants of threading. These may once have had wooden handles given the rusting to the steel. The threading in the elephants trunk (thanks, good description) is not plainly visible; I only saw it after taking the pics. The body is very well crafted, constructed and finished. The whole is of very substantial construction. There is a pawl-like arrangement beneath the hinge that will hold the gadget in 1 of 3 positions. The handles or legs are ferrous and much corroded. The working end is non-ferrous, heavy and obviously strong. Possibly brass, gunmetal or bronze with a plated finish. I think it may nautical but, I also, still have no idea. Thanks again, Nick.
The lever & notches suggest a rachet of some kind.
Loading shotgun cartridges?
Maybe some kind of cunning rope-tightening lever thang?
My thoughts when opening the first jpg were "grabbing a cable?"
The thing to do with the photos is to mail them to "rhvp65(at-sign)gmail.com", who puts odd tools up on .
Lots of folks will look and guess, and some might know.
Site's worth a browse.
Thomas Prufer
It looks like and old version of a tool that we use for tightening sheep wire before nailing it to posts,
Its an old pipe bender for the cast iron gas pipes,the type that were threaded.
You screw the pipe into the head of that tool and and bend it to 90 degrees,the hook is the stopper guide.
Care to explain how one would use the tool as there doesn't seem to be any former (as found on any other pipe bender), also wouldn't cast iron pipe just snap?
Sounds possible, but how strong would you have to be to bend cast iron pipe? Can it be bent cold?
IMHO, cast iron can't be bent easily if at all. So called iron barrel pipes are actually steel. And to bend those you use something like a normal copper pipe bender only much larger due to the effort needed.
Sounds rubbish to me, a cursory look at the tool and some thought about steel/cast pipes shows this couldn't work. I felt it might (like another poster has suggested) been a fence wire stretcher but that's only a guess.
well mechanically it would appear to be something that forces the tubed bit down against the handle, with a ratchet to ensure it doesn't pop back..so in nothing is missing, its an odd thing to do, since one of the handles needs to be located with respect to the workpiece..to do anything at all.
It looks like it might have been designed to push something in rather than pull it or bend it.
What's bugging me is that the ratchet is clearly designed to stop the handles being pushed back together which suggests that force was needed to pull them apart when it was in use. It might also suggest that whatever was being worked on was held captive by the device and it wasn't just for transiently compressing or bending something (neither of which functions would require a ratchet).
The trouble is, there's nothing for the "elephants trunk" jaw to work against which makes me think that perhaps one handle had to be secured in a workbench or something. To be honest, mechanically it just looks all wrong but no doubt there was some specialised task it was designed for.
I'll be fascinated to know what it actually is for!
Tim
I agree. Perhaps the threaded 'elephant trunk' part was a mounting point. Might there have been something on the 'handles' to hold something stretched between them?
I'd guess one leg was attached to a fixed point and the pawl leg adjusted to clamp something. Or perhaps a die in the screw thread bit to punch a hole. It certainly seems to be a tool for applying continuous pressure
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Nick" saying something like:
Something screws into the end of the head and is tensioned by the setting of the pawl - the head of the tool is held against something else, like a bench or workpiece while the handles are squeezed. In short, it looks like a tensioning or straightening tool for wire or something similar.
Nope, don't think so. The pawl is set up to hold the handles apart, not together.
- the head of the tool is held against something
Without the pawl, I'd agree it could be used for tensioning with the tool resting on a solid surface but the pawl is just the wrong way round for tensioning anything.
Tim
Well noted, Tim. The pawl is there to hold it open, not aid in getting it closed.
I'm intrigued that it is asymmetrical: one side of the hinge is flat, the other has a boss.
If it has to have wooden handles then I can't work out why one side is flat, unless whatever it works on is smaller than the distance from the hinge to the wooden handle.
The screw thread means something is added - an adapter of some sort, and the tool is used to hold something relatively small open temporarily against a fairly powerful force.
If it has the screw thread for an adapter, then it tells us it is used for more than one task (and that at least one bit is missing)
Perhaps part of a maintenance tool kit for a piece of agricultural machinery? Or possibly a specialised tool used in the manufacture of something?
Sid
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