Hand carved pulley

[harborrat]

I'm afraid we will never really know for sure.
  But since you are finding them frequently and always light construction like this?

 I would propose a WAG, for bringing your tools up.
  Looks like it would hold a toolbox big enough it would be a pain to haul up the ladder.
 I wouldn't leave my tools laying around a job after a day.  Now, but especially in 1850! Tools are expensive now, but must have been a real pain to get at any price in 1850, in rural America. 
 And yet tomorrow I would need them back on the second level until the job was finished.
    So a quickly made disposable pulley for that, makes sense to me anyway.
  yours Scott

Well, when I worked for the weatherization company (I was in the rafters of all of them) I found one and only one of these in each house.  Up in the rafters as if it was discarded.  They were not removed by me, I just left them there.  This house is mine, and so the pulley is now mine.  The common denominator in all of these pulley finds was that the house was an early house for the area, before modern construction methods and supplies became available here.  The houses were all timber frame construction, with hand hewn beams. 

[harborrat]

Is there any more detail you can provide on exactly where they're being found.  Pictures of them as found?  I'm understanding you're finding them unexposed (behind some sheathing/wall)?  Is there any pattern with the number of floors/stories in the structure?

Are you finding any rope, line, twine, or wire?  Are you finding one per house/structure, or many?

Why would one leave them behind if it's some tool to assist in construction ONLY?  I've built and then burned drawing/plan tables on the job......but they are very simple to make, big/bulky to carry around and store, and I never really know when I'll need it again.

Curious as if you need to haul something from the ground, a pulley is not necessary, unless the person doing the hauling is on the ground. The small axle size will limit the load to a couple of pounds max - OK for a lunch box or a flask of something to drink???

agreed that pulley is not necessary, but lends a helpful hand if you're trying to lift something as to clear the side of the structure you're lifting from .........e.g. mounted extending out past the structure like so |---o     maybe off the end a ridge board.

Never found any rope line or wire.  I think that if I had looked hard enough I might have.  Maybe twine would be the most likely thing, in looking at this.  These houses were all one or two rooms down with an upstairs.  The pulleys that I found were just above the upstairs living area, in the roof area.  Invariably covered in dust.  When I blew insulation in up there I usually put the pulley up on the ledge of one of the outer crossbeams.  I am fairly certain they were made and used by the carpenter during construction.  None of them (as is the case with this one) were finely finished.  They were all carved by hand, but in an expeditious manner.  This leads me to believe they served a utilitarian purpose but must have been needed by the carpenters when putting the house together.  When you think of all of the work that went into cutting and hand hewing the beams, and then hand sawing and carving mortises at the joints and then hand carving the pegs to drive into the holes in the joints (which had to be hand drilled), this little bit of carving work was probably just a minor but tedious chore. 

[harborrat]

I spoke to an old carpenter once about them and he told me that in those days carpentry was an altogether different kind of work than what it is today.  He said that all sorts of wood joints and mortising and carving all had to be done by hand, even the individual sashes in the windows had to be made from scratch and so on.  He told me that he was not too familiar with timber framing and hand hewing timbers and all of that, but his guess was that it was a signature of sorts.  He claimed that all of the carpenters in that era had to prove that they were competent, and if you could hand-carve a working pulley from a piece of wood then it was proof that you were capable.  He said that it may have been the mark of a certain guild to make a working pulley.  Another guild or union or whatever may make something else. 

I think he was full of it.  This was obviously used for something because it was nailed to something.  More that once.  And then to be left up in the rafters as if it was discarded means to me that it was actually meant to be used up there.  For drawing something up and down.  And it was not needed after the construction was finished.  So it has to be specific to this type of framing or some other type of work that was going on up there. 

[scottg]

  I suspect the wheel itself was brought in.
Hand carving a pulley wheel would take 50 times longer than making it on a lathe. Especially since you can gang up as many shieves as will fit between your lathe centers, and turn them all at once.
   It kind of looks this way as the side sticks and axles are quickly slapped together but the wheel itself appears pretty round.

 Doors and window sash was usually a separate occupation.  Going back to the dark ages.
 Building carpenters had enough to do.
 In the cities they made them to order, and in the country they usually ordered in advance and had them shipped in. 
 Hanging the doors and windows in their specialized trim were on site jobs, and often local specialists were called in just for this job too. 
 
 In Europe different jobs were segregated into strict guilds and it was illegal to take on a job you didn't have the credentials for.
   In America it was looser. You could take on any job you could convince the client you could do.
 But if a guy took 5 times as long to make window sash he didn't get a lot of work.
  The guy who made them fast and accurate, because it was his only job, got the contract.
    yours Scott

 PS Showing your tools was often a way to get work. This is partly why you see such beautiful tools still around. 
   
 
 

[harborrat]

The pulley wheel iteself is definitely hand carved.  You can see the carving marks all over it.  The detail does not show up well in my photo.  The spacers on either side are the only things that are debatable.  These may have been made of round stock and were obviously drilled through for the spindle.  But even those I suspect were carved and perhaps smoothed with an abrasive. 

[john k]

After more thought on this, back then a few guys worked on their own, but with the beams there was likely a crew to lift and set.   Then there was a *boy* a helper,  gofer sometimes called, this sounds small enough  the gofer on the ground could hoist up another box of nails or pegs via a cord thru the pulley.   Or a water jug.   How about the outside circumference, any marks?   Was thinking in those days before tape measures or even many rulers, the pulley could have  been used like a Wheelwrights travelers, as a measuring tool.  Could be so if there are marks, or even a single mark, roll it along and count the turns. 

[harborrat]

I was told that building one of these early Western Reserve homes was definitely the work of a whole crew. Some jobs were specialized and some were not.  If nothing else, you definitely needed a lot of muscle. 

My grandfather was a carpenter who emigrated from Sweden in the 1890s and I used to have his old hand made tool chest and wagon. He built them after arriving here so as to carry on his trade. I was told that to be called a "carpenter" you were to be familiar with all of the basic techniques used in the making of these necessary items.  A lot of carpenters' chests are still around, but most of the wagons used to haul them around with did not survive.  I have photo of these items, and may post them. Standard hardware was used on the wagon. By the 1890's the houses around here were all of modern construction and all hardware and milled lumber were available in this area by then.  I worked in a lot of these later houses too.  Never found one of these pulleys in one of them.

 

[geneg]

How about hoisting up an oil lamp or lantern?  Would need to lower it for lighting & fuel several times, not a great amount of weight.  Just questioning why you would leave it behind.

[Branson]

Curious as if you need to haul something from the ground, a pulley is not necessary, unless the person doing the hauling is on the ground. The small axle size will limit the load to a couple of pounds max - OK for a lunch box or a flask of something to drink???

I still have no idea about the pulley, but "a flask of something to drink" reminded me of an archeological tid-bit I ran across a number of years ago.  Working on an Elizabethan timber frame building, they found a series of blackened rings on the tops of the old, oak beams.  What were these? 

Digging the trash pits, a number of broken steins were found.  The bottoms of the steins were a match for the rings on the beams.  So the original carpenters were bringing up steins of beer to drink while they worked.

Wish I could remember where I found the article.

[scottg]

"a flask of something to drink" reminded me of an archeological tid-bit I ran across a number of years ago.

 2 or 3 years ago some people in Maryland (or Jersey maybe) were working on their old fireplace.
The house was from the 1820's   
 Inside the wall next to it, they found a flask. It wasn't broken, or chipped or stained
 Norm Heckler sold that flask at auction a few months later. $86,000
that's eighty six t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d dollars!   

  A very rare flask in a previously unknown color.
 
 Color makes --all-- the difference in antique bottles. Age and rarity will only take you so far. Color throws it into a whole 'nother category altogether.
  yours Scott

[pritch]

It looks too big, but maybe a sash weight pulley that never got installed for some reason.

[johnsironsanctuary]

H Rat, Do your windows have sash weights?  That is the best WAG I have heard so far. If not by weights, how do your windows stay open?

[john k]

In our old farm house, from the 1870s, the sash had two steel pins with springs that would fit into pre-drilled holes in the sash frame to hold it up.   Another thought on this pulley is, could it have been used to protect the string on a snap-line?   Or used in conjunction with a plumb bob?

[Branson]

In our old farm house, from the 1870s, the sash had two steel pins with springs that would fit into pre-drilled holes in the sash frame to hold it up.   Another thought on this pulley is, could it have been used to protect the string on a snap-line?   Or used in conjunction with a plumb bob?

That sounds like a spring balance.

http://woodwindowssashbalance.com/

I wouldn't think those were original to an 1870's house.   I hate them.  They're a pain to install, and they don't work as well as the old pulley systems.

[Aunt Phil]

Lantern or oil lamp pulley.

If it was above the door it was for a lantern, man came in from work carrying his lantern, turne it down, hooked it up and hoisted it.

There was less chance of the lantern tipping & burning the house.