MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Stanley]

Sorry Gloria but no. It's not a cutting tool at all. Look closely, you've seen it before.

[Gloria]

I’m afraid I give up.

[Stanley]

Think about holding difficult shapes in the lathe for cutting........ (Like something with a hole in it?)

[Stanley]

No takers?

[Gloria]

Sorry I don’t know Stanley.

[Gloria]

Last guess, is it a clutch alignment tool?

[Stanley]

You're going to kick yourself when I do the reveal. I'll give it until dinnertime....

[Gloria]

Put us out of our misery please Stanley.

[Stanley]

Yes Gloria.... It's an expanding mandrel. You can mount an object on it that has a cylindrical bore and turn it between centres.

[Gloria]

I’d not have got that in a month of Sundays……..well done, good one.

[Stanley]

I'm surprised Mick didn't get it. I'll go and find another one....



What is it?

[Stanley]

No takers?

[Stanley]

Clue..... essential for coffin boards.

[Stanley]

It gets knocked on the head at dinnertime if there are no takers!

[Stanley]

It's a horizontal wood saw by Tommy Robinsons of Rochdale. Installed in Middlewood near Poynton in about 1910 it was intended for sawing coffin boards from the log. Horizontal reciprocating saws like this are famed for cutting thin planks accurately. However, with the advent of the Great War it was put on to sawing timber for duckboards in trenches and did that for the whole of the war.
I arranged for the Co-op to buy it and have it taken back to Rochdale where it was refurbished by the Rochdale Apprentice School and installed at the new Wheatsheaf Centre. Later it was taken out of there and donated to a woodworking museum.
Now we need another object.

[Gloria]

Interesting one.

[Gloria]

image.jpg

What can you tell me about this?
Sorry it’s a bit blurry, but I don’t seem to be able to add photo from my library any more, I have to photograph it.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[Stanley]

I can't say anything specific Gloria except guess it is on Dartmoor......

[Gloria]

Not on Dartmoor, wrong country.

[Stanley]

They aren't biting Gloria. Perhaps you will have to knock it on the head!

[Big Kev]

Is it in County Clare?

[Wendyf]

I'll guess at Ireland. Is it a dolmen?

[Gloria]

Got to give it to you both, it’s a Poulnabrone…Poll na Bron, a portal tomb, in the Burren co Clare.

[Stanley]

I would never have got that!

[Stanley]

What can you tell me about this image?