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I think that it is a very old nutcracker. a nut would be placed in the between the wooden boards and the handle is pulled, crushing the nut.

its an old day "knuckle buster" with wood extensions for more face damaging pleasure.

I believe that it is a crank for tightening a rope bed.

some sort of press? maybe for clothes? maybe printing? hummm

This Device May Have Been Used for Lifting and handling, possibly for blocks of ice!

finger crunching device for torturing some poor schmuck into changing religions. Hopefully from scientology to athiesm. :P

I have it on bad authority that this is a device used in training by the late contortionist Harry Houdini.
Two hours a day on this and he could escape from any tight situation.

Personally, I disagree,
Is this an old fashioned trouser press?

I think it is something to press sheets of paper together before the pages were stiched or pasted. I seems that pressure was gained as the handle was twisted. Definitely it was used to manufacture books!

as opposed to a new fashioned trouser press, like an iron.

Obviously, an instrument of torture.

a clothes hanger?

This is an oldstyle penis enlarging kit with handles now only 2,99 ;)

but personally i think its a device to handle and lift materials in blocka [bricks maby]

torture contraption? possibly to break fingerjoints or something like that. just a guess!

Its a curvicle. As a boy it my chore to go out to the chilling hut and curvicle the family's shoe points before Sunday church. This was quite a task before the epidemic. I had really hoped to never see one again, just looking at it makes my thumbs ache.

I think this is a rope braider.

a monkey bashing device

It's an antique 3-hole puncher... to punch holes for antique 3 ring binders of course!

I think it's a press of some sort...for pants perhaps?

It's a device used in the lost art of snake pressing. It was a common hobby back in the day but was deemed cruel and unnecessary by animal rights activists.

In order to keep the craft going many snake pressers moved on to flower pressing which proved more successful in the long run due to not only flowers being safer to obtain but much prettier to look at.

I believe it is a press for towels and linen when they are to be put into a steamer trunk

Collar Press

I'm afraid I was beaten to the punch. Kevin said crank for tightening a rope bed, and I agree. Remember the phrase 'sleep tight'? That's where it came from.

old school vice for wood working ?

A pencil dullener?

You are all so stupid. It's obviously a banana press.

Contrary to popular belief, the original Spirograph was not invented nor marketed by Hasbro co., but rather, was an invention created hundreds of years earlier for woodcuts by none other than Leonardo DaVinci. Shown in the picture above is a modern-day replica taken from his notebooks in which the carving implement used to make the woodcut is inserted into the metal wheel in the middle of the device, and by holding the frame of the object against a flat surface, a "spirographic" design was geometrically etched into the template of a piece of wood by spinning the metal wheel in various arcs, later to be duplicated by relief printing the carved image therewith onto paper.
It is conjectured that DaVinci may have used this device to create his famous "Vitruvian Man", but that hypothesis has not been proven as of yet. However, ample circumstantial evidence via Leonardo's other sketches show that his mathematical prowess and geometric forms likely benefited greatly from having this 'prototypical spirograph' invention, and there are many proponents of this theory, in fact, a 10,000 dollar award is being offered by private investors in Italy to disprove that Leonardo used this device in his sketches. No one has claimed that prize yet.

This is a bit off topic but the Canadian version of Antiques Roadshow has a whatsit. I tried contacting Rob at the what is it blog but couldn't find an address. Maybe you folks can help? http://www.canadianantiquesroadshow.com/tv_link_mystery_item.htm#

it's clearly a time machine.

It's a clamp.

ok I had to think back to an old relationship. The woman was a bibliophile (book nut). This device is used to hold the pages of a book for binding. So it's a book binder.

Oh, of course... now I see. A Daschund trap!

This device is a simple clamp used by furniture makers circa 1900. The wooden rails were placed along the pieces needing clamped, and then the "dial" was wound up until one of the holes aligned with the hoop. This would hold the pieces in their place for gluing under compression.

It is, obviously, an antique Scanner. Probabbly a Dell.

On a more serious note - Im gonna guess its an old clamp. Where when you turn the dial - the rope gets tighter and tighter pushing the two boards together. And the holes in the dial are so you can put a piece of wood, a stick of sorts, through it so that it does not unravel.

P.S. - If im right, email me :)

it looks to me like an old wooden clothes hanger - for slacks.

Ooh, this is a good one. One close guess (I won't tell which one, but it's in the first 10 comments), but nothing hits the mark just yet.

And no, despite Neatorama's strange obsession with torture lately (just read the comments), it's not a torture device.

It looks like it would be for squeezing and clamping something together. I would guess it's some sort of tourniquet used in surgeries. Possibly for clamping the umbilical cord after a mother gives birth.

its a shirt collar press !

I say it's a screw driver!

a cheese press.

You all know nothing, its a Banana Straighter

A cheese cutter?

An orange juice squeezer.

A vice used in book binding.

isnt it a clamp

A torturing device?

is it an exhaust manifold perhaps?

A clamp.

It's a device to hold your newspapers together!

It is a clamp used to hold wool while it was being carded prior to spinning it into thread.

I think it's for holding a recently glued book and pressing the "encuadernation" or however it's said in english ^^