Plyerman: Your guess is as good as mine, since I'm not an electrician from the post WWII era. The antique store owner said he thought they were used to rotate hard copper pipe into whatever w/o damaging the pipe where a pipe wrench would. , but I don't know. I fell asleep before I got the pictures posted for the "bigger" items. Here they are:
The Chief L4 vise doesn't look all that heavy duty, but it still has some of that art deco look to it like the Shop King I had a month or so ago.
The New Britain lead body file/rasp is cool looking with its wooden know/handle, but pales in comparison to the SnapOn/ Blue Point I have that has the turnbuckle at the top to adjust the arch to the tool.
The big Armstrong DOE looks like a blacksmith made it. It has part of the old "flexed bicep" logo left on it. It has "HARDENED" stamped on one end, "372-A" on the other, and the 1 1/16" and 1 1/4" denominations on the reverse side. Better do the photos in two replies and keep Papaw happy......
DM&FS