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Guess What? August 2004

Guess What Article for August 2004 The Journal of Antiques & Collectibles
By Bob Cahn, “The Primitive Man”

With this month’s Guess What, we’ll try a slightly different approach – a change of pace, if you will. How about a game of location? It’s your mission to figure out WHERE it would more apt be used – after a brief description of what it does.

It’s a vertical (or horizontal) triple post adjustable gravity vise clamp – with the gripping pressure increasing in proportion to the size of the item being worked on. It fits in your hand.

Was it used by a pharmacist to cork a bottle, or a jeweler for repairing charm bracelets? How about an auto mechanic to restore a faulty windshield wiper arm? Or a carpenter mending a broken dowel? A seamstress might utilize it to repair a cantankerous zipper, a shoemaker to reinforce a deteriorating shoelace eyelet, the secretarial pool as a back up pencil sharpener vise when the electric one failed.

Any locations we’ve left out? Maybe – the correct one. Push-over month – we’ll even give you that one: “the pool hall,” but you still have to figure its reason for existing. Revelation next month.

Till then!

Answer to July 2004 ‘Guess What?’

The object in last month’s GUESS WHAT is obsolete in today’s scheme of things – though it was extremely useful in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s – before agricultural geneticists and laboratory hybridizers went to work on the lowly grapefruit; in fact, they got to the “core” of the matter by eliminating the pesky pits – creating a citrus mutation.

Before this, one needed a special corer to remove the center seed clump. This device accomplished it in two actions: 1) circling and zeroing in, isolating the seed mass 2) clamping it with the perforated nose cone – grasping and extracting, having drainage capabilities. This was used by hotels and restaurants for quantity preparation. Home use was simpler, but more laborious – by hand!*

* Available for acquisition

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