I was cleaning out my grandfather’s shop this weekend in preparation to move them to a ‘managed care facility’ and I found this among a collection of old tools that he had hanging on the wall. He says it was my great-grandfather’s (a carpenter/ homebuilder in IA) and he did not know what it is. So help, what is it? It says M.Klein & Sons on the side, is made of brass and iron and looks like it is for pulling something.
Day
Replies
Western Union Telegraph is my guess.
Uses as a wire puller.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Good guess.
"What's an Arkansas flush?......It's a small revolver and any five cards."
restorationday,
It is a wire rope or cable puller.
I own a couple of them although mine are not brass nor old.
The version I have as is used as a puller for single strand fence wire and barb wire.
I guess I am answering my own question here but I screwed around on Klein's website and found that they look a lot like Haven's Grips.
Thanks for the help
Day
I've got one similar, not a klein though, nor brass. Haven's grip, like you said, is the name. Mine has an imprint of wire rope on the inside of the jaws, to improve grip.zak
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone." --John Ruskin
"so it goes"
yep this one has grip imprinted into the swing part as well
grips similar to yours were the first tools made be Mathias Klein when he started his tool business . and were for pulling bare wire between telegraph poles, they were also used by lineman as a safety hook when they were at the top of a pole working, they used two of them to "lock" themselves in place by extending either arm and then leaning before clamping the grip onto a wire.
there was also a foundry in Downers Grove Ill. that made grips, it was the Dicke Foundry IIRC .
there was simply a gentlemens agreement between the two men that Dicke would stop making the grips because Klein was building his business and wanted the whole market....so Dicke started to make .....linemans tools and among those were a type of pliers that were soon to become know as Kleins, since the foundry eventually became a supplier to Klein..
I did some work in that little foundry, which was still operating into the early 80s .....
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, wer ist jetzt der Idiot ?
Chicken catchers.....I don't know where it came from but that's what all my lineman buddies call em.A medium to large guy named Alan, not an ambiguous female....
NOT that there is anything wrong with that.
LOL, ......macho, macho maaan....safety belt? SAFETY BELT ?...we don't need no safety belt....I don't gotta show you no stinking safety belt !!.
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., wer ist jetzt der Idiot ?