some weird tools

[JHCC]

1 minute ago, ThomasPowers said:

you mean the button hook and boot puller center of the bottom?   Guess you never wore button up shoes, me neither, but I have pulled a bunch of boots on!

So, you're thinking combo tool, like a Swiss Army knife, eh? Reasonable. I was thinking something where the larger hooked into a strap and the smaller one pulled it tighter (like an early version of a cinch tightener for a saddle), but your idea probably makes more sense.

[ThomasPowers]

or you could search on button hook boot puller and go to images and see other examples very close to that one...

My mother had to wear button up orthopedic shoes when she was a child and hated them as they were NOT stylish 

even back then.  Boy I grew up with a lot of shoes...

[Alan Evans]

I have always known the little vices as hand vices. 

The pliers I was told were upholsterers pliers but I guess any trade working with fabric/leather and needing to tension and tack it...I found them to be the perfect tool for removing the plastic trim rivets in my old Discovery.

The cutters seem to have such a wide range of angles. I wondered if some of the steeper ones were for cork bungs in wooden casks. But the shallow ones are too shallow even to be a countersink. Maybe a clue to ascertain how hard the material and how acute a cutting edge they have as to what they were designed to do. Maybe they are not even all from one set...just similar toothed wheels wired together?

The pipe wrench / thread chaser tool does not seem to have enough difference end to end for different pipes...neither does the adjustable spanner come to that...curious.

What shape do the spring tool (top right)  jaws form when they are closed? Can you take a photo from the jaw end looking at the jaws? is it a lead seal crimping device?

Bottom right I know as a tinsmiths/sheetmetalworker rolled joint setting punch, as Ian described.

Middle right, can't see but is the broad end of the Z shaped piece a chisel? The bruising from the hammer blows makes me think of a glaziers putty removing knife. It is used like a miniature froe. BIGGUNDOCTOR's farriers tool sounds convincing. I thought the farriers I have watched twisted the excess nail bits of with their claw hammers and then filed them flush.

Alan

[Gorō]

On 29/01/2016 at 7:18 PM, ausfire said:

A whole truck load of old tools appeared at our place recently. I have sorted them into various boxes depending on their use - mostly spanners, chisels, solder irons, and a few neat blacksmith punches and drifts. But there are some I have no idea what they are. I took a photo of some of the ones I don't know, along with an interesting one or two.

I have never seen a shifting spanner with the business end at both ends! Also the pliers at the left with the curved beak - something for leather work perhaps? Interesting alligator wrench with dies (?) in the middle.The steel cone and the plumb bob might make handy tools in the hardie for rounding bottle openers. and what use are those little vices with no way of mounting them? The others are a mystery. Any ideas?

Nice collection there!

Ive never seen a shifter like that as well. I wonder why it was designed that way.