tools with memories

Yes, I reckon there could be something in that. Something like the observer effect or nonlocality in quantum physics perhaps?

I love old tools from garage sales etc too. Even without knowing the previous owner, some have obviously been lovingly looked after, others obviously been worked hard and long (especially diesel mechanic's tools, I've found. Those big trucks and tractors and dozers take some graft to get apart!) but probably equally cherished for the work they did. I've got a box of 3/4" drive sockets, extensions, ratchets etc that the local farmers and diesel mechanics of yore bent, beat, twisted, pounded and generally hammered with all they had, then left them to rust in the mud covering they were last put away with. Whenever I have to use one to remove a motorbike clutch hub nut or similar I always have to think of some old boy fighting to pull a sugar cane harvester apart in the field in the monsoon mud and thank my lucky stars I get to putz around in the comfort of my shed.

Edited By Hopper on 27/08/2016 10:06:58

This hammer is a bit of a family mystery. It was inherited from my father's uncle who worked in Devonport Dockyard so it's probably a ship-building tool. It came with an empty wooden tool chest and an iron bound mallet.

The oddly shaped head weighs about 3kg and the wooden handle is rather slimmer than that of a sledge-hammer. It's punch marked 'G' on one side and 'A' on the other: the initials don't correspond to anyone in the family.

I've used it a couple of times to seat fence posts. In action it feels quite different from a sledge-hammer. The combination of balance and spring in the handle allows a steady rhythm of moderate blows to be delivered.

I'm not sure what needed that kind of action and have no idea what the blunted spike end was used for. I would have guessed rivetting except I've seen film of rivetters in the 1930's who weren't using this type of hammer.

Does anyone know what the tool is called and how exactly the two head ends were used?

Thanks,

Dave

Looks like an old riveting hammer from the 19th Century, or early 20C before they went to guns. The spike end could probably have been used as a podgy bar to line up the rivet holes in two plates before inserting the hot rivet, or by putting it in the next hole and jiggling the plates into position while dropping the hot rivet into its hole when it lined up.

It would be a light hammer so that the end of the rivet could be peened over in a dome without being squashed flat and weakened. Would be a hard day's work swinging that baby, not to mention catching airborne hot rivets in a tin funnel along the way.

Edited By Hopper on 27/08/2016 11:42:48

Thanks Hopper, that makes sense. The owner started work in the dockyard before WW1.

The film I saw included a man catching red-hot rivets with a pair of tongs and popping them straight in the hole. I wonder if that was common practice or just done for the camera.

"Podgy Bar" was new to me too. I wrongly guessed it was a pub for cuddly people. Now I'm doubly educated.

Cheers,

Dave

Could be a coal pick of some kind, not for mining but reducing blocks of coal to usable size.

Neil

Ancient caulking mallet? Forerunner of the modern mallet & caulking chisel.