What is it.... the game! Post unknown objects to ID... and to stump others!

So... there are things it could be used for🍺... but since I did a quick test on suspicious looking solder and found lead. I believe it will be a nice conversation piece🏺...😎

Very wise, Glenn!

Pearl *did* ask:

... a fire and water resistant place to keep important papers/photos?

... is is solid enough to be a pedestal for a glass table? One would have to design something that would sit on top to hold the glass. It seems a bit big for a lamp base.

... a little lead wouldn't scare me if what you stored inside was in glass, so storage in glass jars of things like dried fruit/seeds/nuts that attract bugs/mice?

Luke Marion, the guy who runs MIgarderner, found this at an antique shop. Can anyone identify it?

Cool Ryan - Luke's got himself a berry picker. They're used for things like huckleberries where you slide it up the branch and most of the branchlettes and leaves stay on the plant, but the berries come off into the picker.

Here's a Lee Valley Tools modern version: https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/garden-care/harvesting-tools/57086-berry-scoop?item=BL302

A lot of other people on Luke's Facebook post also guessed the item is a berry picker. After a bit of searching, it turns out they're right.

I walked into a new little shop in town yesterday, and it was full of pretty things like china and glassware. I saw this, asked the lady how much it was. She had no clue how much she wanted to sell it for. She can't find out anything about it, has no guess if it's worth much or not. She's asked some people, no one can find out anything, I figured I'd toss it past the wonderful minds here.

What I'd love to know is: Where did it come from? How old is it? Can you find a selling price for it?

What I know: She bought it a swap meet, it was filthy, she cleaned it up. Brass, inside is not polished (I wouldn't use it for tea) no markings of any sort. Approx 8-9 inch center bowl part, the base is a ring of metal that holds the bottom up off the floor, about 1 inch high, so it wouldn't sit flat on a woodstove for steam. Decorative rather than functional.  

My guess is this area has a lot of veterans, I think it is middle eastern tourist stuff, probably brought home from the Gulf War for someone's mom or something like that.

I thought it was pretty, have zero good use for it, would probably do something like make it a fountain or something. Absolutely no reason I'd need it. But if she had said $10.00, I'd have probably dragged it home :D  

Can anyone figure this out?The picture will click to much larger.

Could work on a gas stove or hang over a fire. I don't know anything about the style. It looks well done.

I'm really thinking just decorative, the inside is not polished at all, it's rough, no heavy slag, but just what was left when it was cast in a mold.

I think it's intended to have boiling water poured into it, probably for tea. The reason for the ring at the bottom is to keep the heat from marring a table top or requiring a separate hot-plate fro under it. See how so many older teapots have that ring?


If I have time later, I'll do some more hunting!

Jay Angler wrote:I think it's intended to have boiling water poured into it, probably for tea.

I think the original it's a copy of was made that way. This is a decorative one. Seriously, I'll eat food I dropped on the floor, I wouldn't drink tea out of that. It's not food worthy.

The reason for the ring at the bottom is to keep the heat from marring a table top or requiring a separate hot-plate for under it.

That makes sense :D

Look at this one! It is heated by an alcohol burner and it has a base on it. It looks like it even pivots on it's stand to pour! I've never seen such a cool teapot.

If the inside's rough cast, maybe it really is just decoration. Or maybe they just weren't too concerned about cleanliness...

Jordan Holland wrote:Look at this one! It is heated by an alcohol burner and it has a base on it. It looks like it even pivots on it's stand to pour! I've never seen such a cool teapot.

I tried to look that up off the link I could see on the pic, I can't find it, did you just buy  it?  :D If so, I was curious what the price was on it!

If the inside's rough cast, maybe it really is just decoration. Or maybe they just weren't too concerned about cleanliness...

I really think the one I posted is just decorative.

Pearl Sutton wrote:

Jordan Holland wrote:Look at this one! It is heated by an alcohol burner and it has a base on it. It looks like it even pivots on it's stand to pour! I've never seen such a cool teapot.

I tried to look that up off the link I could see on the pic, I can't find it, did you just buy  it?  :D If so, I was curious what the price was on it!

If the inside's rough cast, maybe it really is just decoration. Or maybe they just weren't too concerned about cleanliness...

I really think the one I posted is just decorative.

I just saw it searching for indian brass teapots. Here's an even better one: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/61234311_antique-art-nouveau-copper-brass-wood-teapot-w-stand
Gorgeous!

I did a search on ebay for "tilting teapot" and there's plently. A lot were done in silver plate (which doesn't tickle my fancy). I'm guessing they were used at functions alongside chafing dishes; most appear Victorian era. Now I NEEEED one...

Jordan: Rabbit hole for you, ever seen a samovar? I had a BF who was from Russia, the one in his parent's kitchen looked like this:



I think this one is snazzy:



You put tea leaves (lots) in the pot up top, with boiling water, let it sit up there. When you want tea, you put the tea concentrate into a cup, and fill it from the big pot of always kept hot water. Easy to clean, the only grubby part is the smaller pot. No scouring out the urn.

Edit: Diagram of them, easy enough to figure out the words.



What is a samovar?
Oooh, there's a museum link on that page, I fall down a rabbit hole!

Ok, just snagged this one on ebay. No burner, and the finial on the lid is gone. It's silver, but it has a muted patina that I kinda like, and I like the overall design. I'll probably try Sterno in it, and maybe find an old alcohol burner later. I figure it's worth $28 dollars to try. Thanks, Pearl!

I've seen samovars in pictures, but never in real life and I didn't know about the way they were used. It's a very logical way to do it. They had such cool stuff back then. That center-draft design is ingenious. I love center-draft lamps. It amazes me how quickly lamps and appliances developed after kerosene became widespread.

I hope this is going to the right post. This looks like a small hand printing press of some sort-home made.

Pearl Sutton wrote:Crud, my computer crashed, try this again...

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Wayne is correct, it cuts bricks.
It will cut red brick, pavers, any cementous material between about 1 and 5 inches thick. Red brick doesn't need scoring, pavers etc do because they are a coarser grain. I score pavers with a brick chisel (wide, not sharp) and then put the cutter where I want it to snap it (being a wuss, I sometimes put a cheater bar on it) and it snaps it nicely. Did you know you can buy red brick halves, that cost more than whole bricks? That's just weird in my book.

One of the things I sorted when I moved was my dad's ceramic tile storage, bits and pieces from a thousand jobs. We could often match old tile for people. I found a guy who wanted tile for upcycling furniture, and gave him 22 truck-fulls of asst tile, some 3 or 10 boxes of a color, some just a few pieces. LOTS of neat tile in there! I moved some neat old tile that we plan to use in our kitchen, enough tile to make a flowered bench in pinks and greens and creams, and a few bits of cobalt blues, purples, black etc that I can use for decorator bands on a plain field. All the rest went. I hated not being able to move more of it. At least I found someone who wanted it, I feared having to pay someone to dump it all.

Yay neat old tools my Dad had!!

FYI-for anyone with tons of old tiles to get rid of, look for artists, art schools, art commercial studios doing mosaics-the schools, donate, the others you might get a few bucks. Even cut or broken tiles. Also... Habitate For Humanity. And they pick up.

Jacki Perry wrote:I hope this is going to the right post. This looks like a small hand printing press of some sort-home made.

Hi Jacki
Posts you make go to the end of the thread, they don't hook to the one you were replying to. And, if it's the thing I am thinking it was, you were correct, that is what that thing was identified as!

Go to the last page in the thread (page numbers at the top and bottom of the thread, before and after all the posts on the page), and you can see what we are currently working on. Right now a brass teapot, we got sidetracked into other metal teapots, but still has no information found for it.

You can also, at the top of the thread adjust the watch settings, and you ll get email whenever anyone replies. That's the easiest way to keep up with a busy, bouncy thread like this.

Welcome to the game, it's a fun one!

Jordan Holland wrote:Look at this one! It is heated by an alcohol burner and it has a base on it. It looks like it even pivots on it's stand to pour! I've never seen such a cool teapot.

If the inside's rough cast, maybe it really is just decoration. Or maybe they just weren't too concerned about cleanliness...

This looks like a small samovar.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I walked into a new little shop in town yesterday, and it was full of pretty things like china and glassware. I saw this, asked the lady how much it was. She had no clue how much she wanted to sell it for. She can't find out anything about it, has no guess if it's worth much or not. She's asked some people, no one can find out anything, I figured I'd toss it past the wonderful minds here.

What I'd love to know is: Where did it come from? How old is it? Can you find a selling price for it?

What I know: She bought it a swap meet, it was filthy, she cleaned it up. Brass, inside is not polished (I wouldn't use it for tea) no markings of any sort. Approx 8-9 inch center bowl part, the base is a ring of metal that holds the bottom up off the floor, about 1 inch high, so it wouldn't sit flat on a woodstove for steam. Decorative rather than functional.  

My guess is this area has a lot of veterans, I think it is middle eastern tourist stuff, probably brought home from the Gulf War for someone's mom or something like that.

I thought it was pretty, have zero good use for it, would probably do something like make it a fountain or something. Absolutely no reason I'd need it. But if she had said $10.00, I'd have probably dragged it home :D  

Can anyone figure this out?The picture will click to much larger.

I dont care what it is, if she doesn't want more than $10 and the cheapest postage possible, I'll take it. I'm an artist and have been trying to gather up cool stuff on the cheap, to use s props in still life paintings.

Leigh

Jacki Perry wrote:
I dont care what it is, if she doesn't want more than $10 and the cheapest postage possible, I'll take it. I'm an artist and have been trying to gather up cool stuff on the cheap, to use as props in still life paintings.

If it was 10.00, I'd have snagged it. That's just it, she's been told "don't take less than 50 for it!" and "300, easy..." she has NO clue what it's worth, but it won't be 10.00
:D

Ok how about something different before I need to go buy another teapot as well.

Found this in the garage while cleaning through 2 generations worth of stuff on a work bench. Its obvious in "how" it works, but what is it For?

Welcome to permies Shea! You've got yourself a tester for the amount of alcohol in home-made wine. (maybe stronger stuff also, but I can barely drink the weak stuff).

My problem was that I never knew how much sugar I started with, as I was using things like blackberries and plums from my farm, rather than grapes, so it would tell me I had "more alcohol" but not a percentage.

Thanks Jay, been around here for awhile mostly lurk though.

It Is a hydrometer of some sort but I doubt its for alcohol. The numbers dont match. I was thinking maybe a tester for battery acid concentration? Or some other chemical? My Grandfather was an engineer for GE, thought maybe it came home with him at some point.

I'm with Shea, unless it's some metric system scale or something I don't know. If the 1140 means 1.140 (and so on), it could be the correct range for measuring sugar content in water. The lower end of the scale would be around 2.5 lbs of sugar per gallon, so it seem's to be a rather stout scale. I did a search for hydrometer scales and didn't see one like this. I've also never seen one made by GE. Possibly for nickel-iron batteries? I think it reads too dense for lead acid batteries.

It is at minimum 25yrs old. Probably 30 or 40 in truth. No real way to tell.

My brewing hydrometer goes from 1170 (bottom) to 0990.
Could it be for another alcohol?

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.BTQ-heGLmZTzwZ8TS1xQ6gHaKd%26pid%3DApi&f=1

Found an image of this in an old john deere manual. Im really leaning towards battery acid .

Tereza Okava wrote:My brewing hydrometer goes from 1170 (bottom) to 0990.
Could it be for another alcohol?

Alcohol is less dense than water, so if it was for an alcoholic beverage, it would need even more sugar to offset the alcohol. 2.5lbs of sugar per gallon would yield about 15% alcohol. It is a rare strain of yeast that can ferment to much above 20%. I thought maybe it was for some kind of syrup, but none of the ones I saw had a scale like this one.

Shea Loner wrote:https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.BTQ-heGLmZTzwZ8TS1xQ6gHaKd%26pid%3DApi&f=1

Found an image of this in an old john deere manual. Im really leaning towards battery acid .

Looks like it. I looked up some battery hydrometers first, but didn't see any in this range. But that one's almost an exact match.

Sorry to lead you guys astray - I haven't made wine in 5 years or so and I couldn't read the scales on the images on the web. My alcohol one also has a larger air space. I realize that could be balanced by the amount of weight, so I guess I was thinking in terms of my friends who run a small still to increase the alcohol density.
Here's a photo of mine for comparison:

Is that a GE (General Electric) logo on it?

No problem Jay. Your post managed to make me remember the term hydrometer. Kind of hard to search for something if you dont have the correct terminology for it.

Tim Siemens wrote:Is that a GE (General Electric) logo on it?

Yup. Probably walked out of a plant with my Grandfather.

A specific gravity tester most likely battery acid with the GE logo. Might not all be there. Sometimes they are encased in a turkey baster affair.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I have no clue! I have a headache this morning, couldn't focus on the picture well, so I ran it through photoshop and blew it up, cleaned it up a touch, focused it, still can't ID it. Posting my clean up of it, maybe someone else can ID it easier now.

Edit: A better one was posted, tossed mine, this is the best one off the link

Early screen printer?

Got another goodie at the auction, this may be too easy for you all.