What is it????

[Richard Wolgemuth]

My brother cleans out estates and occasionally send old tools my way. He sent me this for Christmas. He was under the impression it was a leather working tool, but it's marked "Wood Lab" suggesting it came from a school's wood lab/shop??? Not sure what it s or what it's application is. The brass is stamped "Made in West Germany". What looks looks a blade is not sharp at all, no edge. Thanks for any insights.
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[Jim Koepke]

Looks like it could be a reamer for making tapered holes on things like a Windsor chair.

jtk

[Richard Wolgemuth]

I could see that, but there is nowhere for a handle. Not sure how you would leverage it . Also, the 'blade' sits pretty proud. And it has clearly never been honed/polish/sharpened to cut/ream anything.

[Rob Lee]

Hi -

It's a sharpener for cork boring tools.

It puts an edge on thin tubes...

Cheers -

Rob

[Stew Denton]

Hi All,

Rob is exactly correct, it is in fact a sharpener for cork borer bits. We have a couple in our lab...really old school, in fact I think that I am the only one who has used either of our cork borers in the last 20 years or so. I still use the cork borers, and we have two. However, I do not use the regular cork borer bit sharpeners, like the one pictured above. I like fine files better for sharpening the bits, and also think they do a much better job of sharpening bits. The bits are thin wall tubing, with a special head that will fit the chuck on the cork boring machine.

The type Jim mentioned above are hand held/hand powered, and I have used that type, but the machine held work much better.

Stew

[Jim Koepke]

Interesting, my brother used to have a set of cork borers. Not sure if he still has them, he tends to sell a lot of things on ebay. There were about 10-12 of them that all slipped one inside the other.

jtk

[Richard Wolgemuth]

Mystery solved. Thanks! I don't have any cork borers. :) But if I did, they would be sharp.

[Stew Denton]

Hi Jim,

The hand powered, hand/held ones slip inside each other. When I was in college, the chemistry department had an electrically powered cork borer, and it worked like a drill press, and kind of looked like a simplified drill press. In our lab, the two we have are kind of like the simplest hand powered drill presses.

The hand powered drill press type and electrically driven drill press type cork borers use a type of bit that has a head that allows them to be put in the special chuck on the actual boring unit, and the head is different from the hand held/hand powered ones.

I use ours mostly to cut holes in rubber stoppers now, instead of corks, but in truth, ground glass joint glassware has replaced most of rubber stopper type equipment in a lot of labs.

However, the cork borers in our lab do work well for cutting corks and foam from flip flops to make popping bug bodies for warm water fly fishing....wonder how I know that?

Stew

[Stew Denton]

Richard,

If you go to that auction site, and type in "cork borer" several will come up, but mostly the hand held/hand powered ones that Jim was talking about. There is currently one cork boring machine on that site, if you type in "machine" with cork borer, it will come up. Bits for either of our cork boring machines are virtually impossible to get, short of buying the hand powered type, and having a machinist make the end that fits in the chuck. I believe that the two we have were made in the 1940s, probably the early 1940s.

Stew