Wife occasionally buys me antique tools for my novice collection. This item has me (and my friends) stumped. Can anybody on the campfire identify it?

That's a cast metal thing on the end, magnet won't stick to it. "VOSS" is stamped on back.

a poorly designed ice cream scoop?

Come on, really?? Everyone knows that is yer common thing-a-ma-jig. What else ya got?

something to beat kids with

The metal item reminds me of the bracket for a clothes closet pole, but I can't think of an application that would require a handled tool.

Picking up the end of a pipe or tube? Handle is varnished wood that doesn't appear to have been immersed in water.

cream skimmer?

Nope. It's a douchenozzle cleaner.

seems that search reveals bits and pieces about safely loading your wringer washer??


the innanet search engines as of late suck ass, they've changed the algore-rythms; good luck finding much of anything beyond miley cyrus and DWTS

Yeah, Voss made a lot of old washer/clothes wringers.

I thought maybe it was the lever for operating the reverse gear on the chain driven models, because it wouldn't take a lot of torque and wouldn't have to be all metal, but it doesn't match up.

besides, the string on the end indicates it doesn't need to remain in place of use, and given the curved radius, and the angled face, I figured it was a handle to activate some sort of locking mechanism on an object, i.e. insert to cavity, turn a quarter, than remove and hang on the wall.

What I know about metallurgy could be placed in a thimble, but I believe the metal might be cast pewter?

I can pretty easily shave off some of the cast flashing.

The metal thing is pewter. Let's look at it from a design standpoint. It's obviously a scoop of some sort, but the holes tell us it isn't supposed to retain anything that can leak through. Since Voss is known for vintage wringer washers, it has to be a tool used to dig down into the tub to retrieve clothes and help to feed them into the wringer while keeping fingers etc away from them. Maybe this will help.

Scroll down the page. This search took me 7 minutes.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/68379862/vintage-safety-wringer-clothes-feeder-by

http://www.google.com/patents/US1654712

It's a specialty tool to change a muffler bearing.



Clyde

ahhh, so it was designed to keep your tit from getting too close to the wringer?

Precisely! And it has nothing to do with mufflers.

Thank you, Dan!

Vintage Safety Wringer Clothes Feeder by W. H. VOSS.