Thursday 4 February 2016

More useful gadgets ~

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11 comments:

  1. (1) Don't know what the tool is for (three legged dividers ???) but it appears to have been made in the late 17th/very early 18th century. North/West Europe (?)

    (2) Foot operated leatherworker's clamp. Early 19th century. North Europe.

    (7) Four mangling boards. The one nearest the camera appears to be from Fiesland. The other three are Scandinavian, probably Norwegian. All are of 17th/18th century date.

    (10) A brass automatic fleam for bleeding animals. 18th/early early nineteenth century date. Unusually - engraved. Probably Swedish.

    (12) Folding sporting pocket knife. 19th/20th century. Probably Swedish.

    (13) Woodworking tools. Probably Swedish. All for making treen items.
    ________________________

    P.s. Over to you, Rog.

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  2. I'll wait and see if Rog can arrow in on number 1, it's an item I haven't come across before purporting to have been made about 1500.
    2. is foot operated as you say, and patented June 14th 1853 by Fergus Purden of Baltimore ~ but not a leatherworker's clamp.
    7. Excellent response, Mike, 12 out of 10. They were all lumped together as Norwegian but the nearest one is much more likely to be Dutch as you say, possibly from Leeuwarden in Frisia.
    10. Catalogued as a spring-lancet this fleam has a leech engraved on its side.
    12. Segerstrom Swedish burl-wood barrel sloyd knife with 3" blade, the folded knife was kept in the barrel/hilt by a spring-clip, pulled out, opened and reinserted into the handle. Sloyd or slöjd in the 19th century could perhaps have been translated as handcraft but mostly applies to woodwork unlike hemslöjd which refers to wide ranging domestic crafts. In practice it would have been used in many outdoor sporting and hunting situations.
    13. What you say is correct; and while I believe their basic design came from Scandinavia with the Vikings, they had become commonplace in every town across Europe and most of the countries colonised by Europeans well before these were made. Butt this is a fairly representative set of tools for one specific trade.
    Have a crack at it anyway.

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  3. (13) Shipright ? or should that be shipwrite ?

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    1. I think a shipright is some-one who straightens up fallen ships, some life-boats are self-righting; and a shipwrite would be a maritime cleric or author perhaps. I suspect the word you want derives from the word wrought ~ Hence shipwright ~ but while ships' carpenters have barrels of tools aboard, these belong to a different trade.

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  4. Number 8 is obviously Palmer's Patent Washer Cutting Brace (improved!) ca 1879

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    1. Great stuff Rog, the patent was granted 3rd Dec 1878.

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  5. Number One is an Arrow Remover. They are still employed on the M1 but have a low life expectancy.
    The only way to remove an arrow cleanly was normally to tie a piece of cloth soaked in water to the end of it and push it through the victim's wound and out the other side — this was apparently extremely painful. There were specialised tools such as this used in the medieval period to extract arrows from places where bone prevented the arrow being pushed through. Royal Physician John Bradmore (d 1412) invented one but I don't think this is it.

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    1. Thanks Rog, entertaining and very informative, you definitely get a gold star for that response. I vaguely recall the first century Roman physician Dioscorides used a complex arrow extractor.

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  6. (13) A set of Coopers' (or barrel makers') tools, then?

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    1. You have it Mike. I'm sure the fact that I insinuated the words butt and barrel into my previous replies has nothing to do with the answer.

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  7. 2. is a foot powered mortising tool for making the holes for tenons to fit into.
    3. are 'golden mean' dividers or calipers.
    4. is a Lancashire pattern mitre plane.
    5. is an alternate use for the thread-winder in a previous blog. In foreign parts it is known as a lucet and enables a variety of flat braids to be made.
    6. is a Millers Falls corner ratchet hand-drill (No. 140).
    9. is a stair saw by A. Mason of greenock
    11. is a Snadusky patented grasshopper plane (so-called from its appearance rather than the material which it planes).

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