Pig Sticker?

Tapered Reamer?

Paul M in San Diego

>My guess is to ream out a tapered hole. Is the handle tanged so that it can handle rotary forces? It looks like it isn't socketed, as there is no taper to the end of the handle.

A buddy of mine is interested in making old period woodwind instruments, and needs something like this that is about 24" long to taper the bore. He's doing it with several long drill bits to create a stepped bore, and then he's sanding away the steps to make it tapered. It looks like your find is less than 24" long, so I can't say that I could help you find a new home for it.

Shop Bayonet?

Jorge Castañeda~East Penobscot Bay

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Re: Tapered Reamer?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Yeah, that would be my guess, too; but who's this royal "we?"

Pam

Re: Tapered Reamer?

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>There's nothing mysterious about the "we" in this case. It just means the tool belongs to a friend of a friend, and we have a collective curiousity, so I volunteered to pose the question to a wider audience.

Re: Tapered Reamer?

William Duffield on the Cohansey

>There is no indication that force was ever intended to be applied to the handle with anything but the hand.

Usefulness as a reamer, especially for any precision operation, is also in doubt, as surface of the outer edges of the flutes appear to retain sand casting granularity. Only the flutes have been machined.

It's less than 24" long. More like 15 or 16". Also, there is a subtle bend at the tip, which would pose additional accuracy problems.

Engineer's scraper?

Andrewf in Australia

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Hummmmm...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>Looks like somethin to keep the Dump Devil away!

Lighting Rod Tip

Todd Hughes

>This is the brass tip off of a lightning Rod that sombody for some reason attached to a handle. This tip would screw onto shaft,[which I bet in this case is put into the handle] that held a glass ball and then the shaft that is about 4 feet tall was mounted on the roof. This type of "spear" tip is by far the most common and I see lots of them all the time.I sort of collect unusual lightening rod ends myself esp. older hand made ones or ones that are figural and they do make a nice display.

Why sombody would put one on a handle like this I don't know. Brass would be pretty soft for a reamer, my guess is sombody figured they would make something more sellable out of a couple pieces of different objects........Todd

Re: Lighting Rod Tip

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Thanks, Todd. That's the first reasonable explanation we have gotten on this one.

Our theory of the adaptation is that someone may have added the handle to make it into a BBQ implement, perhaps to hold a roast while carving it. Thus, the tongue-in-cheek "pig sticker" title. If I were still living in Florida, with the proper setup, we could perhaps use it to manage to cook a meal even more quickly than in a microwave oven :^)