Interesting clamp

[DiscoDan]

Has anyone ever seen a clamp like this?

 

[DavidR8]

Looks like it’s used to clamp coopered staves together.

 

[benmychree]

Good guess, but no cooper that I have watched (I did work and made setup machines for two cooper shops) ever used such a device.

 

[Dabbler]

probably used to clamp things using polar coordinates (smiley face here)

 

[FOMOGO]

Aye, that be for tuning up your scimitar. Mike

 

[Inferno]

Hard to tell how big it is but maybe wooden wagon-type wheels?

 

[Dabbler]

Kidding aside, it seems looks like it might be for clamping custom decorative woodwork. Certainly not coopering.

 

[francist]

Or curved sash. Although pretty rare now, curved sash were not uncommon through the late 1890’s for oriel and turret windows. I was thinking that because the bar is rigid the clamp would be for use on the same radius work all the time, so maybe something a sash and door place would have made up in a range of radii or at least the radii they used on a common basis. I’ve had to clamp curved sash for repair and rebuild and it’s not easy to do with regular straight clamps.

 

[dbb-the-bruce]

Yes - my first thought was "That's a very specific clamp" - could not be use for anything other than a small variation in radius. So either had a set in different sizes or made a lot of identical stuff.

 

[Jake M]

Based on the construction (not the "patina"), it appears to be quite old. Old enough that one might have been able to order such a thing for a specific job. I've got no idea what that job might have been, except that it obviously had a radial dimension.....

It looks to me to be about one step more useful than this one on Etsy.