Hmm ... About (2925). Most arrows that I have seen have three approximately equally spaced feathers (fletching), and this i obviously designed to cut two grooves at 180 degree spacing.
So -- are you *sure* about this one?
Enjoy, DoN.
Actually I'm not sure about this tool, the owner had said it was for arrows, and I had done some searching for similar arrow tools and insulation strippers but found no proof for either. The owner of it is a guy who has been collecting tools for a long time and currently sells tools for a living, so for now I'm going to go with his answer, next time I see him I'll ask where he got it and if he knows more about it. Unfortunately he does not have email.
"DoN. Nichols" fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@Katana.d-and-d.com:
Yeah, Rob. The blades aren't the right shape for fletching, either. This is definitely NOT for cutting slots for fletching. They aren't usually slit, but gouged. Slits would promote cracking.
Rob, once upon a time, I've used a tool very much like that for stripping heavy cables. I can't find any modern tools that look just like that, though.
LLoyd
Yeah, some of them are kind of strange looking, but you should see the ones that are too weird for the site. People have sent in around twenty or thirty items that I considered too odd to post.
Its not an arrow fletcher. I have a number of fletchers going back to the 40s.
Its a cable stripper OR a dowel slitter for cutting lines in dowells to hold the glue before driving them in.
Had an uncle with the very same tool and as a kid I asked him about it and thats what he told me. He was an electrician. I saw him use that tool to strip jacketed multi conductor cable and make dowels
From the length of the knives it looks like it would cut the object in half.
Wicker spread with the Roman Empire. It became very popular in the 19th Century because it was more durable and sanitary than upholstered furniture. It remained popular in the 20th Century. Before synthetics, I suppose a craftsman would cut or buy willow of a certain diameter. Could this have been a tool to split it?
Well, you guys make a good case, I just changed my answer to read:
"This is most likely for cutting the insulation on cable."
I won't see the owner of it again for a few months but will still ask him about it when I do.
Rob
I guess it's possible though I just did a search on it and didn't see any similar ones.
I've found pictures of piles of willow rods, waiting to be sold to craftsmen. Not all willow was split, but I believe it was all peeled by pulling it through a brake. I've found only 3 brakes, all different. If brakes are hard to find these days, a splitter might be impossible.
Splitting at a certain point was a way to make a 90º bend, as in a wicker chair. An amateur might stick his knife through the rod and twist. Somebody who bent hundreds of rods in a day would want a tool. It probably wouldn't be necessary to cut all the way through a rod to get it to bend. Hence the adjustable blades.
This would be similar to the use the owner gave, except that the purpose would have been to make the rod flexible. A machine shop could have sold these tools through the places that sold willow rods. When the cottage chair-weaving industry disappeared, nobody would have known that the tool was for.
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