Mystery engineer made tool or widget

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

Hello all

Over the years I have acquired a number of retired engineers toolboxes. Most of the contents are run of the mill tools, as you would expect, but more often than not there are one or more of these little widgets that I'm not sure of what they are and would have been used for. The fact that I have found them from different sources suggest that they are a universal tool rather than a job specific item. The only thing that I could think of was a means of holding a tap for quickly spinning in a hole to clean a thread but that's a total stab in the dark and I could be way off the mark.

Does anybody know what they are and used for?

Thanks, Craig

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

[Alexander Smith 1Participant @alexandersmith1]

Pure guess but could it be a home made lathe dog. Bar in the nut, grip it with the screw and drive with the wing?

sandy

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Pure guess

I would guess, after being on the forum for about 5 years, it was less of a pure guess, more like ‘quite clearly’.🙂

Made by someone with a bit of down-to-earth practical flair, I expect. Likely cost a few d, so even cheap back before 1971, and just as cheap since (in p’s).🙂

Last (only) one I made was a hefty lump of scrap drilled to size, slit and bolted to grip the work and a bolt through t’other end for the drive pin. Long gone in the scrap bin after using the one time.

I now have a drive plate so only need to use something like a nut-splitter (without the anvil, of course, or a heavy duty lifting eye). Seen both of those used by a friend…

[Craig BrownParticipant @craigbrown60096]

That's a good shout Sandy, something I cant believe I overlooked to be honest.

To give a sense of scale the nut is about 21mm across flats with a 13mm ish hole through.

The wing does have some clamping marks both sides if that's indicative of anything

I wish I could drop my hand on some more, but this is the only one I can find at the moment, I'm sure there were some varieties on the theme so wanted to check if drive dog would fit the bill for them all…

Edited By Craig Brown 2 on 17/05/2020 19:49:19

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