Mystery toy of the day...

[Dan Mages]

Good morning

I have this old hammer/mallet that was found in the family hardware store many years back when we shut the place down. Does anyone know what it is used for? The calipers were another find during the archeological expedition.


Thanks!!

Dan

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v647/DanMages/100_2461.jpg

[Sam Hatfield]

I believe that it was used for opening wooden crates?

Sam

[Randy Klein]

Curiosity killed Schrodinger's cat, even though it is still alive.

I like that.

[Bill Houghton]

I concur that the hammer looking thing is probably a shipping and receiving department's crate opener. Time was, "shipping crate" meant a wooden box (in fact, I've seen old "Shopnotes" articles on the best way to build a re-usable shipping crate). I've seen a variety of these unkillable hammer-and-pry tools over the years.

The dividers are nice - this tool can be quite helpful, for a range of uses - stepping off measurements is one common use. Recently - although we're wandering into carpentry here, rather than shop woodworking - I had occasional to cut half-circles in some wood siding to wrap around the waste line from our house plumbing where it exits the crawl space. The existing siding had rotted, something that came to light when our son remodeled the bathroom right above that spot, and cut through in reworking the waste line. My first half-circle (fortunately below the pipe) had a lot of chip-out on the surface from the saw cut, after I used a compass to draw the shape. For the second one, I used the sharp point* on some dividers to scribe a half-circle fairly deeply. No chip-out on the visible (upper) side of the cut!

*In my experience, many dividers wind up with one slightly dull point, and one sharp one. When you're scribing a circle, best to use the dull one as the pivot point.

Re Schrodinger's cat: yes, great line. It reminds me of the bumper sticker I saw years back: "Heisenberg may have slept here."

[Mike Cutler]

Box Hammer, and everyone is correct about it's intended function.
97673

The image is from a Catalog that has been copied onto the Rose Antique Tools website. An excellent antique tool website, by the way.

[Don Pierson]

Dead or alive Schrodinger's cat had its tail all in an entangle !

[Randy Klein]

Dead or alive Schrodinger's cat had its tail all in an entangle !

How would you know that unless you looked in the box?:D

[Shawn Buonarosa]

Yep, crate opener indeed, have one just like it from another manufacturer. Mine says crate opener right on it.

[Dan Mages]

Awesome! That explains it all!! :D

Dan

[Jim Koepke]

I have heard them called box hammers.

When I was a train tech at BART, I would use one to pop train doors back onto the rails that were pulled off the rails by a passenger who tried to stop the doors from closing.

This was some of the best excitement one could get on the job. It was usually done while the train was moving. Best done while laying on the floor so as to not get sucked out of the car if the train went by an air evacuation vent.

jim

[Don Pierson]

I think the box hammer/crate opener was used by Albert to open Schrodinger's box to see it the cat's tail was in-a-tangle rather than checking to see if the cat was alive or dead. I bet they sent the results to Neils!

He who knows enough to know what he does not know, and knows enough to show it, will be listened to for what he does know.