I work at an old house museum and we have a variety of old tools in our collection. We do school programs for third graders where we take old gadgets and tools and have the kids guess what the tool was used for back in that scary time before electricity and plastic.
We get donations of items to use in this program and we recently got an item that put us in the place of the school children. We have no idea what the item is or what it is used for. In the spirit of the situation we all tried to guess what it was used for. The paperwork that came with it claims that it is a andiron (it is one of two). That seems unlikely to us because of the wood handle (among other things). I thought that maybe one of the dopers might be able to tell us what it really is.
Could you post photos of the other side and an oblique view?
What are the approximate dimensions?
What type of metal is it made from (is it ferrous or not)?
Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of it an I won’t be at work again until Tuesday.
I can tell you that the other side looks the same as that side and there are no markings or missing pieces on either side. The piece is about 6 inches long. The strip of metal on the top is about 3/4 in. wide and the entire top piece is about 2 inches.
I don’t know what type of metal it is, but it feels pretty light weight.
That is one of the thoughts we had, but it has no obvious joints or points of attachment and the wear pattern is mostly on the top of the humps in the metal and not really anywhere else.
I have no basis for my assumtion, but something about it makes me think it’s for leather working. Like maybe you could wrap a place a peice of leather over a horn and use that to work the leather into that shape.
Probably not.
Can anyone think of a seam which could use the smooting of it? The curvature suggest the work was expected to be higher ahead, and lower behind - if it were pushed, as opposed to pulled over the work
Of course, if you can’t figure it out, that’s a good learning opportunity for the kids, too: It’s good for them to know that others know things, but it’s also good for them to know that there are some things even the experts don’t know.