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remember an old hand tool for piercing and drilling?

T

teef

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ages ago my grandfather carried around a small handtool for use around the farm. it looked a bit like an old T-bar style corkscrew except the business end of it was a straight, tri-square blade about 4 inches long, tapering from about 3/8 at the handle to a sharp, piercing point. he'd use this tool for everything: drilling a quick hole in wood, piercing a bit of leather, sideways to sharpen a stick or whatever, jab it in a length of timber to use as handle to drag it to where it needed to be, etc. every now and then he'd give it a quick touch on a pocket sharpening stone to raise an edge on those tri-quare corners and i remember the thing as being sharp as hell.

anyone know what this thing was called? the Gooble machine keeps wanting to call it a "gimlet" but that's not right and no gimlet i can find ever has that tri-square blade.
 
i'd say your Da knows his business. that lead me to this:

square-blade-bradawl.jpeg


that's apparently a square blade bradawl but it's more or less in the right ballpark. fatten the blade, extend it a few inches, put a T-shaped handle on the thing and that's pretty much it. interestingly also found this:

awl-tips.jpeg


that birdcage awl might have a tri-square blade on it, but square seems more common by far.
in any case i think we're on to something here. 👍
 
he’s a man of many talents teef 👍🏻 He’s my first port of call when I need to know something lol

He did mention it was also used as a square edge by pressing the hand against the edges and running the pencil down the shaft so the birdcage awl looks like the winner, was it possible your grandfather replaced the handle and modified it to suit his needs, iv seen many of tool mods from my father over the years
 
possible i guess, but unlikely TBH. he was a man of unusual hobbies but DIY wasn't really one of them. he was a railwayman for several decades and my suspicion (now) is that he either got it or had it made by a railyard machinist he met somewhere out on the tracks.

in truth it looked exactly as if someone had taken a tri-square file, ground it down and put a handle on it. i'd always assumed it was a fairly standard tool but there's nothing to keep it from having been custom job that he simply kept with him for the better part of his life.

i asked him once about the three-sided blade and why it had that. whether he knew what he was talking about or not his reply was "easier to sharpen and stays where you stick it" which seemed like a perfectly satisfactory answer to me at the time. i guess i'll just have to bang one up and see for myself. :D
 
Yup that’s definitely a satisfactory answer teef

probably the best route to take as you’ll have a good idea of how it should look, so banging one up should be just the ticket mate 👍🏻

mind and pop up a picture of the end result 😁 I must see it 😂
 
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