Received a small box of hobby tools from the widow of an old acquaintance. Included was something I’d never seen before: apparently stainless steel, six inches long…with no helpful markings or part numbers anywhere. It’s shaped rather like a miniature harpoon…only the barbed-shape point is smooth and rounded, obviously never sharpened (or apparently intended to be).
The late gentleman from whom I received it wasn’t a ship modeler…but my best (and only) guess is that it’s some sort of rigging tool.
That’s what I thought at first as well, but the tip is chromed and dull, and seemingly the wrong shape to take an edge or point. It looks almost like a sewing tool for ripping out tack-stitches…but the wrong kind of handle, and no ‘edge’ to cut or rip.
Thanks for the reply.
Greg - in your second photo, the close up, it’s a little hard for me to tell if you have bare metal that resembles brass or if the color I’m seeing is a reflection of some sort, but it looks as if the shaft has been bent around a bit. If this is the case, my best guess is that your mystery tool is a slightly modified dental instrument called a “gum knife”.
When I was learning to carve jeweler’s wax, the instructor would require us to modify dental tools to use on the bench. Carving wax is really a combination of scraping and heating, so very sharp instruments are not all that useful. A gum knife can scrape channels into the wax for setting stones later on and ground to various widths for adding decorative touches. It all depended on what was needed at the moment.
Depending on how this one is ground, it’s application for plastic depends on the modeler. Sculpting, putty application, making weld lines, applying glue - it depends in the situation and your imagination in solving problems. Whatever it is, you’ll find a use for it!
It may be a crochet hook, but it can be used by ship modelers as a rigging tool. Often one needs to pull the free end of a line through the makings of a knot, but the line is inside a maze of other lines.
Personally, I prefer something with a sharper notch- the crochet hooks let the line slip off too easily. I bought a cheap plastic crochet needle and cut away part of the eye, leaving a better hook shape.
That’s kind of the direction I was originally leaning. The nicely-chromed and finished end is blunt enough that it seems specifically intended not to ‘do damage’…but all the other photos of purpose-designed ‘rigging tools’ I found looked like they had a real hook, rather that just a slightly-rounded ‘step.’
It looks to me to a variant of a spring puller. This is a tool that was designed to pull springs in teletype devices. There is another one called a spring pusher where the end is shaped the opposite way, for placing springs in teletype. If you were a teletype repairman (submarine nec 23eh) you carried one of each in your top pocket next to black ink pen and green ink pen for the captain to sign messages. Bob Gregory Ruining one kit at a time
my mom was a hairdresser and had a similar tool she would use when she would highlight someone’s hair. She would put a rubber cap with pre-formed holes on the person’s head and using a tool, like the one in the pic, she would then pick out stands of hair through the pre-formed holes.
By the way, it is easy to make a ship rigging hook from a crochet needle. Take a cheap plastic one and grind away a quarter of the eye- one of the quarters nearest the point. Converts it into a nice hook. I need to do this again, since I lost my last one during a shop cleanup.
