MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Steeplejerk]

Ithought it was a pointing trowel,ive had some that look like that in the past!!

[Stanley]

Bit small Tom. I always liked to see bucket-handle pointing. That would make a good mystery......

[Steeplejerk]

Funny you should say that Stanley,i was messing in the shed yesterday and i bent an old 12" nail that i had lying about for years to make a bucket handle (hollow joint)jointer/pointer for 1/4"-3/8" joints.

[Tizer]

I didn't say anything about the spatula because I've spent a large part of my life with several of those, of various shapes and sizes, in my lab coat pocket!

[Marilyn]

The spatula thing you showed is quite large ( as they go in dentistry) and I recall smaller ones with the larger end having curved bottom and being much narrower. Then there were tiny rubber pots ( very flexible) for mixing stuff ( like miniature mortar and pestle arrangements but using those tiny spatulas.)
I will never forget the dreadful smell of whatever was mixed...
I have never been able to cope with going to the dentist as I was tortured as a child.

[Tizer]

What Stanley has photographed is known as Chattaway's spatula after the man who invented it, Frederick Chattaway. There is an interesting brief history of the man and his spatula on this Royal Society of Chemistry web page, written by Andrea Sella who is a mine of information on chemists and chemistry....http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2012/ ... ay-spatula

[Stanley]

See what I mean about OG and expertise?

[Stanley]

This could be a repeat (it's getting harder to find new objects in me collection!) but even so, it's a memory test and some will never have seen it before.

[Gloria]

No idea what this is. The raised bits don't look worn so I suppose it hasn't been used to rock over something, or rather something rocking over it as it looks as though it has a screw hole in the top. Does it mate up with some others to leave a hole in the middle????
As I said---noo idea just guessing.

[chinatyke]

It could be a hole for oil, so my guesses are some sort of shaft support or guide or bearing liner. I know what I mean even when nobody else does!

[Stanley]

Gloria, I like your reasoning and you were getting very close. China is getting there as well. It's so hard I'll give you a clue and see if anyone knows exactly what it is.

[Steeplejerk]

Pattern for a high pressure piston ring??

[chinatyke]

Guess again: Is it some sort of porous or sintered metal that retains oil for the shaft bearing?

[Gloria]

Is it used to centralise some sort of drive shaft?

[Stanley]

You're all getting close but not there yet. Ordinary bronze China. Look at the pic again, and have one more try!

[chinatyke]

A housing for O-rings? Oil seal seat or whatever you engineers call them?

[Gloria]

It leaks oil at various points around the shaft?

[chinatyke]

On second thought, perhaps it isn't an oiler, perhaps it is a tell-tale that shows if the internal O-ring has failed whilst the outer one is still intact. If there were two O-rings and both failed then you would see oil on the shaft. Still guessing and making things up!

[Steeplejerk]

Part of some blow off valve ??

[Pluggy]

What the navy called a plummer block bearing. It absorbed end thrust on the shaft from the propeller. It may have a different name on a mill engine.

[Stanley]

Sorry kids, you have skated all round it but not quite got there. It's a segment of bronze out of the set that made a complete circle and formed one element of what became the Universal Metallic gland, a seal to stop steam escaping from the cylinder round the shaft. The common packing for a shaft was a simple stuffing box, a gland with soft packing inside it that could be tightened to compress the packing round the shaft. The problem with these was always that over time, due to neglect and the packing hardening they became inefficient and if the packing was tightened to stop leakage they wore the shaft. The metallic bearing was a complicated arrangement of at least two banks of the bronze blocks retained by a circular spring and white metal wiper rings, the whole making a labyrinth bearing. That is a bearing that was slack enough to allow steam and condensed water to be released via the packing but due to the complicated passages it had to pass through the leakage itself formed the seal. The thistle oiler you can see in the picture augmented the leakage with a slow supply of oil cutting down on wear and improving the seal. Very effective on sliding rods on steam cylinders but a failure on rods driving condenser pumps or oscillating shafts like vale stems.
Now I have to think of another one!

[Stanley]

[Nolic]

Shadow of the big monument in mid West USA. Don't know its name. Nolic

[PostmanPete]

It's the shadow of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

(Mind you, I cheated a bit because I just read about it in 'Steeplejack's Corner')

[Stanley]

Well done lads, Just testing! Now I'll have to think again......