Anybody know?

[Barnyard]

My cousin found this in her grandfather's barn and wants to identify it so she asked if I knew what it was. I told her the piece on the right was a ruler but I have no idea what the other is. I told her I would check around. Does anybody know what it is?

[Boss Hog]

Without a side pic, I will say it was used to run twine through when shocking corn , or husking corn may be a combination of both

[Jim Becker]

Half of a saw handle???

[Barnyard]

[Clint Carter]

looks like you would use it to pick up a hot pan with to me. A detachable handle

[Boss Hog]

Does it have a slot for twine to go through?

[Don McCombs]

The guard at the business end implies that it is sharp, although it doesn't look that way.

[Boss Hog]

I still think it is used to tie the shocks of corn

[Barnyard]

[Don McCombs]

Interesting. Not sharp and doesn't look like it ever was. Wonder what the guard is for?

[Barnyard]

She said she thought her uncle used it to tie wire hay bales when he worked for my dad.

[Bob McCarty]

Bill, With a stationary baler, there is a cut piece of wire with a loop on one end. The unlooped end is fed through slots in vertical blocks that separate the bales. When the wire comes through at the end of bale on the same side it was started, it is passed through the loop and twisted around the wire by hand. I'm not sure what the next version consisted of, but I would assume that when the baler was pulled through the field, the wire "knotting" and cutting would have been done by the machine.

Bob

[farmallcub49]

I always thought a wire tie baler when pulled through the field, still had the wire tied by hand. I thought I have seen pictures of men sitting on the back tying the bales as it went through the field.

[Barnyard]

Andy, my cousin said she remembers her uncle telling her how he would ride the baler through the field and had to place a piece of wood between the bales. That wood would have been where the wire was inserted between the bales. I think you have the right idea here when you say the later balers had riders.

I'm just not sure if he may have used this tool as part of the tying process.

[Jim Becker]

In the early days of pick-up balers, they were little more than a stationary baler with wheels and a mechanism to get the hay up off the ground. A worker had to stand up behind the pick-up unit and fork the hay under the wad board. Two more people were required on each side of the chamber to hand tie the bales. Later on, balers with auto-feed and later yet with auto-tie came along. I suppose there were a lot of farmers that started with a roll of wire, cut it to length and twisted a loop into one end prepare for baling. However, there was also wire available that was precut and preshaped. The loop end had a key hole shape to the loop. The other end looked a bit like the head of a nail. Once the wire was fished through the divider board slots, one end was simply hooked into the other. I assume there were multiple designs for the wire ends, as everyone tried to bypass everyone else's patents. Here is one patent to give you an idea what I am trying to describe. This one has multiple knots on the straight end to allow for different bale lengths.
http://www.google.com/patents/US1957676

Back to Barnyard's tool. Does the hinged end have a hole through it? I thought it looked so in the first picture.