MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Stanley]

From the mechanics of the lever action, for pressing into something soft and expelling a square cake or biscuit? Similar to P's suggestion really. (We think on the same lines....)

[Tizer]

You're getting close with your references to food products...

[chinatyke]

Is it for placing something, or taking something from the rear of an oven? I'm thinking it extends rather than turns when you move the lever.

[Stanley]

I think we need putting out of our misery Tiz.......

[Wendyf]

Is it for making pills?

[Tizer]

Not pills Wendy. China, think cold, not hot.

[StoneRoad]

Biscuit cutter ?

[Big Kev]

Is it an ice cream scoop for cutting 'squares' to put between 2 wafers?

[chinatyke]

Is it an ice cream scoop for cutting 'squares' to put between 2 wafers?

I think you're right, Kev. That jogs a memory from my dim and distant past! Funny how you forget things like that.

[Big Kev]

Is it an ice cream scoop for cutting 'squares' to put between 2 wafers?

I think you're right, Kev. That jogs a memory from my dim and distant past! Funny how you forget things like that.

It was the 'think cold' clue that got my cogs turning.

[Tizer]

Kev, you're bang on target with that answer. Sorry I've been slow to reply but we've had an intensive bout of decorating and no time to go online!
Next please...

[Stanley]

Ignore the scaffolding pole. Can anyone tell me what this is?

[Tizer]

A workbench under large windows to provide good light, and it seems to have a trough, or gutter, along the front. But what for?...If that's a tree branch leaning on the scaffold pipe perhaps you put the branch in the `gutter' then ran a plane along the top of it?

[Gloria]

A workbench under large windows to provide good light, and it seems to have a trough, or gutter, along the front. But what for?...If that's a tree branch leaning on the scaffold pipe perhaps you put the branch in the `gutter' then ran a plane along the top of it?

And, maybe the narrow bridge at the far end was for wedging said branch underneath to stop it springing up??

[Stanley]

I should have said that the tree branch is nothing to do with the original function. Not a workbench as such, much more specialised than that. Observation about windows is good, natural light was essential for safe operation, not least on the grounds that open flames were dangerous.....

[Tizer]

A firework factory?

[Gloria]

Open flames....surely not with wooden floors?? What would health and safety have to say about that??

[Stanley]

Candles and oil lamps would have been dangerous. Not fireworks, think wood and the textile industry......

[Steeplejerk]

Tacklers bench in a weaving shed.

[Stanley]

You're in the right ball park Tom, but it's not in a weaving shed and while it is a place of work it's not a bench. More specialised than that.... Think of an ancillary industry, wood and an artefact that might not be complete. What could sit on those two beams?

[Tizer]

When you wrote `think wood and the textile industry' I immediately though of my Lancashire grandfather who was a shuttlemaker but I can't recall ever seeing inside a shuttlemakers' workshop or an image of one. I suppose the two beams wouldn't be part of such a process?

[Steeplejerk]

Looking at the construction of the timber thingymajig it looks like its been made to take something heavy,rollers maybe

[Stanley]

Or hold something in line? Imagine it is made of metal, free-standing and in a machine shop..... (If they don't get it now I shall have to come clean.....)

[chinatyke]

I was going to say something to do with machining or quenching shafting but you put me off with your wood and textile industry clue. Anyway, something in a foundry?

[Stanley]

I can see I am going to have to kill this one but it was difficult.
It's a lathe bed in Stott Park Bobbin Mill. These lathes were like brass-finisher's lathes, a long bed with multiple head and tail stocks, in effect several lathes in one. Each 'lathe' was set up for a different operation on a bobbin and it was an early form of production line. The part was passed hand to hand from one end to the other.
Next one?