Any info on this?

A rummage in the "It'll come in handy one day" pile, produced the item in the piccies below. Ingenious, well made, probably one-off - anyone recognise it or similar?

TIA

rgds

Bill

Is it made of Tuffnell ?

I wonder if it is a wire tentioner for supporting chain link fencing.I have used one many years ago and it has some similarity ,but that one had a lever instead of handle.

Frank

Hi Bill, my guess it's a hand held wench, attach the hook that's fix to the frame to a post or a trailer for example and the other hook to whatever you what to move and then just wind in.

Regards Nick.

Kind of neat idea. I wonder if it was the one sample made for marketing or patent application. Has teh look of something sold by small ads in car magazines in the fifties.

Nick

The notion of winding in a hand held wench intrigues me no end.

Sorry, not normally pedantic but I couldn't resist.

Jim

BT ENGINEERINGused similar devices not with chain but wire rope and had portable tripods from which it was centrally hung. I think it was for large carriageway/ footway cover lifting

I think we had one of these (or very similar) at an old workplace for lifting large manhole covers in a hangar floor.

It looks like a small bomb hoist. Used for loading munitions into aircraft. fixed hook goes in loop on aircraft, chain to lug on bomb. Extended neck is needed to cler the body of the munition
Newer ones tend to be cable with within a tubular neck.

Robert G8rRPI

Hi Jim, yes I suppose a hand held wench would intrigue you no end, sadly it should say winch, so I'm sorry your dreams won't be coming true just yet.

Regards Nick.

Robert is spot on, I would think.

Thank you to all for the replies. Yes, the body is Tufnol and very well made. Somewhat oddly, the inboard end of the chain has a bit of wire twisted on itself to bunch up the last three or four links but not secured to the body. I fitted a 3mm screw through the last link and fixed it inside.

The small bomb hoist sounds very plausible

Thanks again

rgds

Bill

Only “plausible”? Check out how its done even nowadays! Plenty of examples on the net showing armaments being fitted to war planes.

Yes indeed, there,s nothing wrong with having a lusty wench around the workshop !

It is unfortunate there is confusion between wench and winch. One is associated with pleasure and the other with work.

Hi John, but you can get a workout with both of them, i.e. you could have a wench as a running partner on your daily jog.

Regards Nick.

I wondered if it's for pulling a telephone line or power cable up to the crossbar on top of a pole. Possibly, with the long chain attached to the cable in the ground, the linesman braced the squared edge of the winch against the crossbar and hauled the heavy cable up. The ratchet allows him to gather breath!

If a lineman's tool, it dates back to men doing everything with ladders. The chaps repairing overhead power cables in the village recently used a cherry picker.

Dave

NDIY - only "plausible" because of the construction method.

Most Service equipment I used or came into contact with was either of exceptional quality or built like the proverbial outhouse ! This is well made, but not of the highest quality - the output feed roller and the internal chain termination, for example.

From memory, the 'real thing' was metal and the extension was tubular.

rgds

Bill

This looks very similar to a gadget that our platoon WO2 invented in the sixties.

A major problem back then was that the Centurion tank engine needed to be tilted before it could be lifted out by one of our gibbed half track recovery vehicles. Until then the job involved a lot of time, crow bars, brute force, sweat, bad language and more than a degree of luck.

Jim's tilting solution saved all that but more importantly, the engine change was done much quicker. He deserved the award the army gave him.

Rik

Just a thought, as I've never seen anything like it: If used in the conventional way, held in the left hand and cranked with the right, the chain comes out at the top so the device would rise with whatever it was lifting; the opposite to any conventional winch I've seen. Could it have been used to pull something down?