What is it? LXXX

Regards from Glenrothes, Scotland

Michael Amateur Woodworker and Part Time Fly Fisherman!

Yes, it is a expander. For rubber tubes. Insert it in the tube, expand it, and it's much easier to put the tube on some fitting.

Nick

Correct, this is the answer that I was looking for.

Rob

It does look similar to a marrow spoon but according to the seller it was used for a different purpose.

Rob

It could be used for rubber tubes but the tool collector who sold it said it was for lead pipes, though I'm still trying to confirm this.

Rob

Gold dust caster. Used by prospectors to cast gold dust into ingots.

Nope, that's not it.

Rob

Is the first one a carpet tack countersink?

--rm

Surely that's a piscevomitoscope, or something ? "Marrow spoon" originally just meant a spoon for digging marrow out of cooked long bones and this could well be one.

It's not a carpet countersink but there is a tack involved.

Rob

This tool was supposedly used for a different purpose than marrow digging.

Rob

Used to tack carpet into the corners of stair treads?

It's really quite a rare tool, because it's only used for joining narrow lead pipes onto large ones - such as a bathroom basin outfall onto a large-diameter toilet waste stack. They're used to expand a small radial hole in a large pipe and their function is to make a flange, rather than particularly to make the hole bigger. Those large vertical pipes have generally been cast-iron rather than lead since before the war (in the UK anyway) so this really is going back a bit!

These ones might be a Stanley #19 and are illustrated in older Stanley catalogues.

The usual joint in lead pipe is a straight butt joint between pipes of equal diameter. One of these pipes needs to be expanded too, so as to fit over the other, but you do this using a greased fixed conical expander, usually turned of boxwood and called a "turnpin", "button" or "acorn". If you try to use this plier-style expander, the pipe will split.

Thanks for the info.

Rob

It could be used for that but I think it's meant to used for something other than carpet.

Rob

Hide stretcher?

Upholstery tool?

Tom

Correct, a tack is inserted in the hole, the fabric is stretched and the rod is hit with a mallet, allowing a single person to do what would otherwise take two.

Rob