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Thread: Tool #2 ID Help Please

  1. #1
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    Tool #2 ID Help Please

    This is a curious tool I can only make wild incorrect guesses at what it's for.

    It's widest at the tip with four flutes almost like a reamer except the taper. Looks like it's hammered from the back end and it's a little bit bent up.

    Can't imagine any value to a collector or a woodworker for this one.

    IMG_20210405_122301953.jpgIMG_20210405_122318546.jpg

  2. #2
    It is a old style masonry and stone drilling bit. Designed to be hit with a handle sledge.
    Dave Anderson

    Chester, NH

  3. #3
    Looks like an old star chisel for making holes in stone, concrete, etc. Basically you would beat the beat up end with a hammer while slightly rotating the chisel with your other hand. It makes you appreciate hammer drills very quickly

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Anderson NH View Post
    It is a old style masonry and stone drilling bit. Designed to be hit with a handle sledge.
    Intended to rotate while being struck like a hammer drill?

  5. #5
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    My great grandpa called those stone drills. The trusting assitant holds the bit upright on the stone and rotates it between sledge strikes while praying to not be maimed by whoever is swinging the sledge.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Winners View Post
    My great grandpa called those stone drills. The trusting assitant holds the bit upright on the stone and rotates it between sledge strikes while praying to not be maimed by whoever is swinging the sledge.
    IOW long before the OSHA days... I'll use a battery powered hammer drill thanyouverymuch...

  7. #7
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    John,

    That is a small one man version of what they used in hard rock mining long ago, a star drill. That size, as mentioned above, would be used for drilling concrete or rock. I have seen them at garage sales and pawn shops, etc. That size and similar sizes, were used in the building and construction trades for drilling holes for bolt and screw anchors, etc. I think I may even have one somewhere.

    One safety practice with those is to keep the mushrooming at the head ground down so that a piece of steel does not fly off of the mushroomed head when it is hit with a big hammer.

    An old time miner, who was a tour guide at a mine in Colorado, told us about using one, as he had actually used one on occasions when he was still an active hard rock miner. As mentioned above, one man would run the sledge hammer and one would run the drill bit. The one I saw for mining was about 2 to 3 feet long and maybe an inch in diameter. The bit had to be large enough that sticks of dynamite could be placed in the resulting hole. The sledge man would hit the end of the bit, and then the bit man would turn the drill bit some so as to ready the bit for the next whack.

    That was one source of the expression said by the drill bit man: "when I nod my head you hit it."

    Regards,

    Stew
    Last edited by Stew Denton; 04-05-2021 at 4:12 PM.

  8. #8
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    Used one of those as a youngster to drill thru a poured concrete wall in the house I grew up in. Made it easy to appreciate a hammer drill when I got a chance to use one
    Ron

  9. #9
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    Aug 2012
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    Brought back some memories.?standard stuff in the 1960s. Went to work for a plumber at 14 back then. A 120 lb Charles Atlas weakling. Star drills, cold chisels, cast iron, lead joints, hand threaded screw pipe by the mile, and it was indeed an easy day when you worked copper. Good thing was in 2 years I was a 180 lb very powerful young man. They make tongs for the larger sizes of star drills. They did have some safety then.

  10. #10
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    That star drill would be familiar to rock climbers, especially slab climbers, used to drill shallow holes in solid rock to attach anchor points. Their version was smaller, with the drill, holder, and hammer tethered together. Most inconvenient to lose your climbing protective gear a couple of hundred feet or more up the cliff.

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