Tool Talk
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: gibsontool on January 12, 2016, 12:18:22 PM
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I was at the big flea market in Quartzite Arizona the other day and I picked up an unusual pair of Kraeuter 38 pliers that appear to made of copper. I tried out some fine emery paper on a few areas and they sure look like copper to me , including the pivot pin and nut.They are magnetic so it is most likely an alloy. The vendor agreed that they looked like copper but didn't recall anything more about them. I checked Alloy artifacts but they don't seem to show any pliers with a 2 digit number and they make no mention of any being made of a copper alloy. These guys are 7 3/4" long and have a diamond pattern on the handles but do not have the bigger raised diamond in the middle of the pattern which was typical for most of the pliers of this era. Has any body come across any of these before ? or can any one suggest another place to look for info, any help would be appreciated. If and when I find my camera i'll try for a few pics.
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Nice find, and I hope you get some info on them.
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How the heck do you travel and go to flea markets without a camera? At least a phone camera? :huh:
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OK OK I'll go look for the camera,it's here somewhere.
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Aren't there copper-colored alloys that are non-sparking? If you were in mining country, they could have been used as part of a blasting toolkit.
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OK I found the camera so hopefully I can get the pics posted.First one is the pliers, No 2 is a close up of the name and number,No 3 is the diamond pattern on the handles and No 4 shows one area I cleaned that shows the copper color.
I followed up on Bills idea of non sparking tools and ruled out Beryllium because it' non magnetic but there is one alloy called Monel metal which is copper and nickel so this could well be what it's made of as nickel is highly magnetic. I'll keep looking to see if can find any other possibilities.
The handle pattern is similar to a pair shown on the Alloy artifacts site which dates them to the 1930s, but all of the Alloy site examples of Kraeuter pliers show the numbers as 3 numbers or more so I don't know what I have here. Any further help would be good.
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I found them in a couple of pdf pages of a 1942 catalog I have. It was plated so I would guess they may have in been a fire and have lost the plating exposing the copper layer of the process.
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I found them in a couple of pdf pages of a 1942 catalog I have. It was plated so I would guess they may have in been a fire and have lost the plating exposing the copper layer of the process.
Makes sense.
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Good thinking!
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Bill300d. Thanks for the research, that's them for sure. Not sure if it's just me but your pair seems to have a different shape to the top arm and maybe a screwdriver tip. Your idea of a fire makes sense to me and their color adds to the idea that they could been thru a fire.
Is there some way for me to access that pdf ?
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here you go
http://toolarchives.com/ (http://toolarchives.com/)