Tool Talk
What's-It Forum => What's-It Forum => Topic started by: johnsironsanctuary on May 12, 2012, 02:07:42 PM
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I think that this is one for Oily's expertise. It's about 18" long and the screw is not threaded far enough to hit bottom in the vee.
(http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb373/johnsironsanctuary/DSCN1723.jpg)
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I *think* it is a broken pipe cutter....
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i'm with rusty bob w
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Looking in my 1931 and 1939 tool distributor catalogs all of the pipe cutters seem to have the cutting wheel in the fixed jaw and rollers in the moving jaw. I suppose you could mount a cutting wheel on a yoke in the moving jaw, but you'd have to grease the fixed jaw and that gets messy.
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I have one of those, and I have always thought it was missing a piece that fit on the screw. Maybe even a fire hydrant wrench.
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I believe its a fire hydrant wrench too. Have seen something similar that had a sliding flat jaw pushed by the screw, to tighten against a five sided pentagon shaped bolt. A bolt cutter wouldn't have had the deep V in the fixed jaw, I don't believe.
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I'm going with a temporary holder for a piece of square/hex stock metal - or a wrench for a square/hex stock shank. It may well be a very large chisel holder. I can also see it working against a fire hydrant if the valve stem is HEX or square stock. I know little of hydrant stems and I recall seeing different kinds. Maybe even a valve stem emergency handle of a general sort - think the valve handle being altogether GONE. I've seen "emergency kits" for the oil industry that included such things as square/round pegs of all shapes, brass shim material, wood limbs, rope, etc. that was used to "plug" or otherwise stop that precious black gold from being lost with a pipe busted, tank sprung a leak, or fitting cracked.
If you study the design (particularly the hook on the end), it is almost exactly the same (but a much larger version) as a Craftsman chisel holder. Their chisel holder design had that "hook" on the end to hold the chisel shank opposite of the tension screw. It reportedly allowed for a cold chisel to be inserted/removed more freely than what the "loop" design chisel holders would allow.
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Iwent through a bazillion images on Google image 'fire hydrant wrench' and did not see it. I did find this pic of what the missing part should like if it is a hydrant wrench.