I’ve been helping the Ames Historical Society create a five-year preservation plan. As part of the project I did a collection survey and discovered something I thought would make a nice quiz of the month. I hope you agree and that we can have a bit of fun with this one.
The society has a collection of artifacts from the Whatchamacallits and Thingamajigs Collection of Don Faass. The problem is that they don’t know the name or purpose of many of the items in the collection. I took photos of a few items and was wondering if anyone (or perhaps anyone’s parents or grandparents) knew not only the name of any of the items but also the purpose. Please post your answers or guesses (especially the wild ones) in the comments.
Library and Archives Preservation 
Whatchamacallit #1.1: Double-fisted bottle opener
Whatchamacallit #1.2: Minimalist drawer pull
Whatchamacallit #2: Curly fry maker
Thingamajig #1: Spaghetti alignment tool
Thingamajig #2: Snow shoes for slender folk
…I never claimed to be helpful!
the first looks like a bridle bit, the 2nd–not sure some kind of curry comb? the 3rd might be a meat tenderizer, and the 4th–just a wild guess–grape stomping foot paddles?
Thingamajig #1 does look like a meat tenderizer. I thought the first one was rather bit-like, too, but I can’t tell the scale of the object, and most d-ring bits I’ve ever seen are jointed in the middle (although western style bits aren’t, but hey have a different angle)…curious.
That last one is odd. I’m drawn by what looks like indentations on the surface (right image) that looks like a horse-shoe shape with nails. If you have ever seen a ferrier working, you know what that pattern looks like. But I don’t know what this could be for if it applies to horse shoes. More curiouser.
Thingamajig #1 – a hand-operated ice crusher?
Sorry not to have given some sense of scale in my photos. Whatchamacallit #1 is probably about 18 inches long. Whatchamacallit #2 and Thingamajig #1 are both hand tools and around twelve inches. Thingamajig #2 comes in a pair and they are longer than my size eight foot.
Thingamajig #2 –A snowshoe for horses