This gadget/tool is from a box of old trinkets, and is apparently a giveaway from an old political campaign. I prefer a definitive identification but will settle for guesses. The object is five inches long. None of us can figure out what it is, but I bragged about the powers of the SDMB. Come on people- don’t let me down. What in the hell is this thing?
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Is the curve about right for a bottle opener?
What’s the text say below the ad?
It looks like a cross between a knife and a fork, perhaps being a less successful relative of the spork. A knork, perhaps, since a fife is a type of flute.
Looks to me like “GRUVER MFG. CO., CHICAGO”. Or possible CRUVER. It looks more like GRUVER to me but I can’t find any references to that company, but I do see that there was a Cruver Mfg. that made campaign buttons and other novelty items, so that’s probably it. Still can’t tell what the item is though. At first I thought shoehorn, but it wouldn’t be asymmetrical like that.
Ice shaver?
Much too small for a shoehorn.
But thank you for the Cruver discovery. My photo isn’t fine enough to show that the name of the gadget is “Oruver”; the lettering is tiny and not sharply defined, but the letters are unambigous, and that first letter is positively an “O”. I think it’s a manufacturing glitch of some sort, since a spelling error seems unlikely. It didn’t occur to me to substitute that “O” with the most similar letter “C” and do a search.
Hm. It might be large enough, but I don’t know if the metal is thick/strong enough. Unfortunately for me, the gizmo is now 400 miles away with its owner so scientific testing (trying to open a bottle) will be a long distance operation.
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Could it be a strainer of some sort? Perhaps to fit in the spout of a pitcher to stop ice or pieces of fruit from going into a glass? Maybe liquor related, to go over the neck of a bottle to strain ? from being poured into a mug?
Ice scraper
I don’t get how that thing would work as a bottle opener?
I also guessed ice scraper or shaver but couldn’t find any images that were that similar.
I think it really might be an ice scraper, one specifically made for the tiny metal freezer compartments in refrigerators made in the 1940s or so. It could have scraped off the ice from the freezer, itself plus have pried a metal ice cube tray stuck onto the freezer. Small freezer compartments would have made a longer scraper awkward, and a narrow scraper would fit between the “ribs” some of those little freezers had…
Also, it would be a funny play on the “coroner” bit, a common promotional gimmick back then.
Almost looks like some kind of wire stripper.
I searched on both images and came up with nothing.
It’s a scraper specifically for de-icing frozen corpses…
I think it’s a handle for a personal flyswatter. The holes held silk threads.WAG
What kinds of tools are used in an autopsy?
I’d think it could be a handle for something, but it’s not symmetrical. Not all handles are symmetrical but I’m catching on to anything using that particular shape.
Here is an advertisement in The Palmyra Spectator, Palmyra, Missouri from 1928 urging the voters in Marion County to elect “Schwartz for Coroner”.