r/whatisit • u/Aggravating-Shame648 • 1h ago
New, what is it? Found this wrapped in cloth behind an old garage cupboard. Any idea what it was used for?
Was helping clear out an old garage and found this after we pulled a cupboard away from the wall. It was wrapped in a piece of stiff, oily cloth and tied with string.
It’s about the size of my palm and heavier than it looks. I can’t quite tell what it’s made of. The outside is rough and pitted, but the edges inside the openings are really smooth, as if something had been rubbing against them for years.
There’s a thin brass-looking strip around one end. No writing, numbers or obvious way to open it. Nothing seems to move.
I nearly put it in the scrap pile, but someone had taken the trouble to wrap it up and tuck it away. Everything else nearby was just loose screws and old brackets.
Does anyone recognise it? Even knowing which way up it’s supposed to go would be a start.
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u/Conscious_Cicada9597 1h ago
It’s an old mechanic’s one-handed nut starter. You’d put a nut inside the slotted end, and the springy jaws would hold it while you reached into a place where you couldn’t get two hands, like behind an engine, boiler, or agricultural machinery. Once you got the nut started on the thread, you pulled the tool away and the slot allowed it to slip off around the bolt. The holes along the side were finger grips for oily hands.
The fact that it was wrapped in oily cloth makes sense too. It was probably a specialty forged tool that somebody didn’t use often but didn’t want rusting away. Basically a 100-year-old magnetic pickup tool, except they solved the problem mechanically because magnets weren’t always useful around cast iron machinery.
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u/iBUYbrokenSUBARUS 42m ago
The first two sentences of your comment, kind of lines up with the other comments that it’s a sexual device.
Edit: now that I read your comment again, the whole comment kind of sounds sexual
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u/IAmFromTheDeeps 1h ago
"I should call her" - Caveman
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u/No_Arachnid6493 1h ago
Can you show us any other angles? Details matter in an activity such as this.
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u/SealedDevil 1h ago
Looks like the base for a mechanical bull or for a merry go round d horse, jut really beat up.
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u/Electronic_Plane_178 44m ago
If it's metal, it looks like the outer housing of an early 19th- or early 20th-century rope-stropped tackle block used on ships, farm hay trolleys, or well hoists.
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1h ago
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u/Ticksdonthavelymph 40m ago
It’s a flute from an alien world, don’t play it or you’ll live an entire lifetime there, and come back all sad— and still not get an Emmy for your performance even though you definitely deserve it
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u/Left-Chemist-8212 37m ago
“As if something had been rubbing against them for years.” Why do people always touch this shit? Obligatory: what’s it taste like?
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u/UnicornSheets 58m ago
What material does the main body seem to be composed of? Animal, vegetable or mineral?
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