"These patches on a U.S. Army Jacket worn around the 1960’s?"
A: "Division patches for the four point one is 4th Infantry Division."
"What is this ship/vessel spewing off the coast of Portugal?"
A: "It’s dredging. Either to clean the seafloor, or to make new land where it’s dumping the sand."
"What are these solid white domes of varying sizes the one pictured here is about a meter high and meter wide though some were bigger. Found all over the Andalusian region of Spain. They’re solid with no openings and seem to be made of some sort of solid rendered material maybe concrete."
A: "Lots of European countries have things like these as tank-deterrents left over from WW2."
"This looks like a typewriter but the letters are in alphabetical order."
A: "It’s a keyboard panel from a tabletop jukebox selector."
"Found this by the campfire. Has a glass water compartment attached, with a hole on the top. The water doesn’t escape the hole very well. Any idea of it’s purpose/use?"
A: "I have one of these. It’s an oil lamp. The glass is filled with lamp oil and there is a wick that soaks the oil and protrudes out the top of the rock through the small hole so that the flame looks like it is floating on the rock slab. I rarely use it because it requires a small funnel to load the oil from the top and I find it burns too quickly because of such a small oil reserve."
"Small hard triangular objects found in gravel road."
A: "They are ceramic tumbling media."
"Weird excavations at the construction site of a highway. Symmetrical, look like sculpted out of the ground, 2-4 meters across, up to 1m deep. Only thing that comes to mind are archeological excavations? Or some kind of ground cross section analysis?"
A: "Most definitely archaeological excavations prior to the building of the highway. Most European countries have heritage laws that impose preventive archaeological surveys before major public projects. The shape of the “holes” is the result of a systematic search for archaeological artifacts at different stratigraphic levels."
"10 foot long metal thing. It is conical shaped, kinda of like a “spaceship”."
A: "Grain hopper (feeding bin)"
"Found this on a train in Sweden, you can pull it out an push it in to the table in front of your seat."
A: "It’s an extender e.g. for big laptops."
"What is this folding hook I found"
A: "It’s a folding button hook. Most likely for a pair of boots."
"A kitchen utensil with a wooden handle, attached to a round metal cup with 3 spikes (with holes in)"
A: "It’s a funnel for making a portugese sweet called fios de ovos or egg threads."
"This thing is made of Terracotta and has sunflowers on each end."
A: "Taco holder"
"This wooden bench with big screws at either size repurposed into a basin desk in a toilet in a brewery in the UK"
A: "That is a tremendous WASTE of a really great old woodworkers workbench"
"A white cubicle with a black glass screen and a control panel on top."
A: "Portable steam room"
"A pocket-sized metal box from 1924 with a plunger-ejector mechanism"
A: "Looks like a tobacco box with a contraption to fill the paper tubes to make cigarettes."
"What is this thing my friend got into his shop? Looks like a chopstick set to me but can’t work out what the other pieces would be for."
A: "They’re to rest your chopsticks on so you don’t get your table dirty."
"This tool was in a pallet of miscellaneous stuff. There are no markings or numbers on it. It is made of plastic and metal. The metal part screws into the handle. I have no idea what it could be."
A: "It’s a watch band pin remover."
"Aprox. 3cm long × 5mm wide. Made of plastic with a metal spring inside. Smaller part with spring clicks when pressed against the larger part. Has a number 62 in one of the metal pieces."
A: "Looks like a piezo ignition from a lighter."
"A strange metal container with a lock and a hole in the front and the word ‘Nelson’ on it. The back has a dial reading just under 22 with no units."
A: "It’s a lock that is used on shipping containers. When the pin is inserted and it’s locked, there is nothing exposed that can be cut."
"Two plastic bullet-type things i found in the pen pokets of my alpha industries bomber jacket"
A: "It’s a protective bottom of the pen pocket. To stop rips or ink stains of the material."
A: "It’s a jewelry holder. And the hole in the middle prevents the pottery from breaking."
"Turns out it’s for the statistics of how much the highway is used."
A: "It is the circuit breaker reset for the outlets."
“This is an all-metal object, pumpkin-shaped. No markings, wondering what it’s used for. Found it at a ski cabin.”
A: "It’s a fruit bowl. We used one of those at our restaurant to hold oranges for pressing juice."
A: "It’s a drowning detection device. They’d normally be placed at corners of a pool and work by sending beams between units, and if the beam is broken (by someone falling into the pool), they trip. So, presumably, it could do the same function above ground."
A: "It’s the lid to a copper pot."
A: "This thing is used to put wax on a surfboard to prevent the legs from sliding."
“What is this pot inside of the fireplace of the apartment I am renting in Italy?”
A: "I think it’s a chestnut pan."
A: "They are the cups for a milk/cream separator. The cups rotate and the milk goes to the side and the cream stays in the center."
A: "Pocket stove — it’s part of a vintage camping stove."
A: "It appears to be a machine for microdermabrasion facials."
A: "I’ve seen similar ones to these as spools for winding Christmas lights on."
A: "The precise spot used to survey the trail left by the surveyor so any follow-up work can be based on those exact points."
A: "Looks like an aluminum candy dish with a glass insert. Popular in the mid-century and earlier."
A: "The one on the left is a solar load sensor for automatic air conditioning, and the one on the right is an ambient light sensor for automatic headlight operation."
A: "A vaporizer bottom, we had one when I was a kid. It had an aluminum cover and a heating element where the steam came out. Usually, the top survived and the glass bottom got broken."
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I have one for each of my extension cords.
Pur coals inside and then place under covers.