My cousin was digging through the old barn on her property and found this item. It is made of cast iron and I am unsure of size (waiting on her to verify this for me). Any help would be appreciated.
If I wasn’t widely feared and hated I would ask to create and mod a what is it board.
But your question, as it stands, is what some of us in the history/antiques/treasure hunting/ relics community would call a What Is This Thing In My Hand question. A common mistake.
Whatever it is is decorative–note the hearts. If size isn’t known it is good to photograph with an object such as a dollar bill or a coin to show relative size. One could guess something from the dead grass but like I said–too small. And also take pics of both sides.
Does it have threads? Was anything else found nearby? Was it in the soil or sitting in the barn? What State is the barn in. How old is the building. Is the edge flat or grooved. Stuff like that.
Judging by the grass, I’m going to guess it’s 6 inches across or so and probably weighs at least 10 pounds. My first guess was a pulley for something that was meant to look a bit decorative/domestic. A washing machine or clothes press drying thing.
Is the outer edge grooved to accomodate a rope or cable?
It looks like a bracket near the center and a socket into which an axle could fit for mounting it.
The heart may not be there for the purpose of making hearts. They may be inadvertant after putting something between the spokes for a hand to better grab onto. or maybe they did choose hearts over similar designs just because it looks neater and serves the same purpose of making it easier to hold.
Compare the size to the grass in the picture. That’s some pretty big cookies.
They’d be normal (or somewhat big) size cookies, but no homeowner would be punching out six at a time like that. If it were for cookies, it would be an industrial die from a factory.
If you take the “.th” out of the “.th.jpg” filename, you can see a larger version of the photos.
I don’t think it’s a pulley. It looks nothing like the one linked to. That one in the link isn’t even round because it melds into the base. The one in the OP’s photo doesn’t have any kind of groove around the outside of it like you’d need if you were going to feed a rope around it.
The bracket is for attaching the wheel under something like this. It’s only on one side and there’s no hole for a rod or axle to pass through, so the bracket would support all the weight. It would be too asymmetrical for a pulley but might be the wheel of a decorative cart.