Unusual GPO hammer?

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Unusual GPO hammer?

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Following on from Vic's thread about hammers it got me thinking about this little beast! It looks like an old UK GPO (General Post Office) tool. The markings on one side say GPO 68, I presume made in 1968. The other side says 'Highgate' I presume this is the main GPO depot in London.

So if there are any GPO engineers on this site which could shed some light on this hammer I would love to know its purpose, because it looks like a hammer for a very specific use. It has a curved wedge shaped head, maybe for levering something? I use it for delicate precision destruction.

I did notice that Youtuber Clickspring has one very similar but I think he made his, maybe from this design?

Ian

[bill ellisParticipant @billellis45274]

I used to be GPO engineer back in the early seventies, as an apprentice (TTA, trainee technician apprentice) we were given a toolkit in a large leather bag. In the bag was a hammer (similar but not exactly the same as yours), we called them toffee hammers and they were for banging in the little clips to secure cables along skirting boards and around door architraves.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

So it's not a Generic Planishing Object, then?

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Everything had a number, that should be a hammer (use it was meant for) number 68, never seen any tool with a depot name on it but then London was always a bit special.

Long nose pliers were Pliers Wiring number 81, we just called them 81s.

[bill ellisParticipant @billellis45274]

Oooh 81s! Lindstroms were the best, cutters, strippers & 81s all in one. A pair of those and a No2 screwdriver and you could fix anything.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Remember the old Rate Book? I used to work at Dollis Hill, designing RF equipment. We wanted some coil formers with screening cans and adjustable cores. They obviously had them because one was on display behind glass showing all the things they stocked. after a lot of trouble we managed to ascertain that the adjustable cores were known as "cores, dust" while the actual main item we wanted, the coil former, was known as a "mounting, core, dust".

I was always amused that a good old terminal block was listed as a "block, terminal", which everybody eventually spoke about as if the block was the noun and terminal the adjective – of course then it should have been listed as "terminal, block"!

[Swarf, Mostly!Participant @swarfmostly]

Back in the 1960s one of my work colleagues had previously been a GPO Linesman. He told us that his toolkit included a hammer, I don't know what it looked like. He said that the most important use of that hammer was, before climbing a telegraph pole, to give the base of the pole a smart wallop. If the resulting sound was 'dead' you didn't 'go up the stick' . The 'dead' sound indicated a rotten pole.

My apologies if I've misused any technical terms – I'm reporting second hand and it was a long time ago!

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

[bill ellisParticipant @billellis45274]

All the old GPO kit seemed to be named arse about face, meter multirange, pliers wiring No2 etc etc. For those of us who worked on Strowger kit (2000 & 4000 type 2 motion selectors) we had loads of machine specific adjusters and gauges to keep them fettled. Each one had a proper book name but was usually known by another name. One tool I remember was a little device for adjusting the contacts on relays, this was invariably known as a tweaker, another tool which did the same job was a saurus (cos it looked like a tyrannosaurus head from the side). Happy days, going into the exchange and knowing which switches had failed overnight by the pile of bits on the floor and the smell of burned out relay coils.

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

I thought as it were a small hammer the GPO meant "gentle percussion only".

(now taking cover)

[Don CoxParticipant @doncox80133]

God's Poor Orphans when i worked for them. I did pretty much all of the job types mentioned above, and quite a few more during the 33 years I was with them. Quite a few hammers were shortened to fit inside a tool wallet no. 3 which was the one carried by most linesmen (I was one of them too for a while).

Don

[WatfordParticipant @watford]

Posted by bill ellis on 28/09/2019 20:34:56:

All the old GPO kit seemed to be named arse about face, meter multirange, pliers wiring No2 etc etc.

In the forces, REME, we had…….Wheels, Fly-type, One. Also probably….Boxes, Gear.

M

[WatfordParticipant @watford]

 

 

 

Edited By Watford on 28/09/2019 21:22:12

[Adam MaraParticipant @adammara]

A bit off thread, but my wife was a GPO telophonist in the early 60's, she was having her hair done yesterday when the young hairdresser asked what she did before she was married. My wife replied ' a telephonist' …. whats that? asked the hairdresser! How times have changed.

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

Aaaah! – Government nomenclature! Auntie Betty's Flying Circus was similar plus a whole vast array of paper vouchers, inckuding Issue, Exchange and Return. Memory (VERY fallible nowadays) suggests Conversion vouchers – MOST useful for making good inventories which had become depleted. Oft repeated was the old Storeman's ability to 'Convert' HangErs Clothes to HangArs Aircraft! Even so, it was well-founded wisdom to be good mates with the Stores chaps! One such genius, at Tern Hill somehow managed to 'vanish' 10 Tables, long ,library plus one Simulator, Helicopter, Training which I had signed for but had never set eyes on!!! Made Paul Daniels look positively pedestrian!

rgds

Bill

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

"Block, Terminal"… or I think sometimes just "BT". (That organisation of that name being far off hence.)

The noun-adjective-adjective system is common elsewhere. It can be very useful, too, as this shows:.

I am trying to teach myself TurboCAD, but have had to Come To An Arrangement that if I avoid the mysteries like Layers or its Dark Side (3D), it won't bite me. It does have an on-line "Help", which invokes a document called a "Manual"; but like many software "Help" sites, Helping users is not in the designers' remit.

The difficulty with this document (apart from it not giving too much information away) is its sketchy, rather random layout, reflected in a Contents list but no index.

However…

Surprisingly for a pdf file, I found I could copy the Contents into 'Word'. (Usually, pdf image files insist I rent Adobe's converter at over £30 a month. Do they think I'm made of money?)

The layout used long lines of "……." to join words to page-numbers. Laboriously, l replaced them all, line by line, with single commas. If you use 'Excel' you'll now be ahead of me.

Next, after tea, I re-wrote the titles in GPO / Military noun-adjective-adjective style.

My punctuation changing allowed Excel to read the plain-text 'Word' file as a .csv (comma-separated-variables) file, hence 2-column spread-sheet: Titles and Pages. Now, I could Sort it alphabetically, correct and refine, re-Sort… eventually reaching a full, proper Index I could print.

I keep the print to hand so it leads me straight to topic, detail and page number when using the on-line document. Some hours of work, but using that GPO-style title format has paid off.

At work, the establishment's Intranet directory of Safety Data sheets and the like was a mess, with a lot of duplication making it hard to search, partly because no-one had had the forethought or indeed experience to use the n-a-a system.

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Some great replies as usual thanks, never thought about the number 68 being a part number.

And talking of REME reminds me of the EMER's store system on microfiche took me ages to figure out what the heck they were on about!

Still none the wiser as to what the curved pointy bit is for though!

Ian

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Ian Johnson 1 on 29/09/2019 00:45:55:

[ … ]

Still none the wiser as to what the curved pointy bit is for though!

Ian

.

I looks like a fairly ordinary Jeweller’s / Watchmaker’s Hammer to me

Lightweight and well-balanced … use it for what you will.

I thought the ‘unusual’ bit was the G.P.O. markings.

MichaelG.

.

Cookson Gold lists something fairly similar [‘though less elegant], as a ‘riveting hammer’

**LINK**

https://www.cooksongold.com/Jewellery-Tools/Riveting-Hammer-60mm-Head-prcode-999-89M#description

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 29/09/2019 08:52:06

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

The "curved pointy bit" looks very like the shape a tinsmith would use to persuade sheet-metal over a wire in order to create a rolled edge..

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Just found this wonderful new [to me] tool-shop: **LINK**

https://www.toolsntoolsuk.co.uk/product/quality-watchmakers-hammers-swiss-style-watch-hammer-repair-jewelry-90-mm-head/

Check out their range of hammers

MichaelG.

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

Posted by bill ellis on 28/09/2019 20:34:56:

. One tool I remember was a little device for adjusting the contacts on relays, this was invariably known as a tweaker, another tool which did the same job was a saurus (cos it looked like a tyrannosaurus head from the side). Happy days, going into the exchange and knowing which switches had failed overnight by the pile of bits on the floor and the smell of burned out relay coils.

We called the armature adjuster a knacker cracker.

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Re GPO tool & item nomenclature.

I always understood it to be from the military, certainly when you started using electronic components, valves, transistors, diodes, they all used CV followed by a number even though there was a perfectly good commercial designation, eg (from memory) CV9507 (PNP 65V 500mA 40-120HFE transistor) commercially was a BFX85.

However, although the designations did indeed seem odd, in fact it was perfectly logical, eg, suppose you wanted a pair of pliers, you would start by looking for Pliers. You would then find a large variety of different plier types, so if you wanted some for wiring, then the designation became Pliers, Wiring. Finally, under Pliers, Wiring would be found the different sizes, eg Pliers, Wiring No. 2, Pliers, Wiring No. 3 (standard length & long length jaws respectively). This system was applied to all tools & parts, eg screwdrivers where an 8" cabinet screwdriver became Screwdriver, Cabinet, 8 inch, whilst ordinary screwdrivers as might be used by a technician in the field were known as Screwdrivers, Instrument, No's 1 through to 6 depending on blade width & blade length.

This system was used for everything, hence as has been described, Blocks, Terminal, usually followed by some more letters or numbers, so Blocks, Terminal, 20/4 had four sets of terminals in it, Blocks, Terminal, 20/8 had eight sets of terminals in it. Jacks (or sockets to the unitiated) was another one. Just imagine the sheer variety of sockets you might have in your house – mains outlets, telephone outlets, light bulb fittings, 3mm & 1/4 inch on your hifi. Now think of the old telecomms systems where you had switchboards with strips of jacks, some being 1/4 inch, some being 3/16inch, headsets jacks where old versions were of the order of 5/16 inch, later versions being 1/4inch. Then there was the exchange equipment, a lot being plugged in. Not surprising really that the Rate Book (Vocabulary of Engineering Stores to give its correct title) was a good 3 inches thick.

Peter G. Shaw (Y2YC, T2A, TO, AEE/MPG2/etc between 1959 & 1994)

[Ian Johnson 1Participant @ianjohnson1]

Looks like the GPO hammer is indeed a type of jewellers hammer, made in the UK too!

Ian

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 29/09/2019 00:41:29:

The layout used long lines of "……." to join words to page-numbers. Laboriously, l replaced them all, line by line, with single commas. If you use 'Excel' you'll now be ahead of me.

Your long-suffering editor has to do such things often as part of removing all the idiosyncratic formatting helpfully added by our contributors

I have learned many subtleties of 'find and replace' that go way beyond simply swapping 'figure' to 'photo'.

In your case , you needed to replace '..' with '.' repetitively until they were all single '.'s.

Then replace '.' with ','

Less than a minute…

Sorry!

Neil

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Our stores code book had many strange descriptions, the stores personnel were mostly not tradesmen so accurately describing many items was beyond their personal experience so some strange descriptions were listed. Wading through a massive fan fold catalog was a time consuming task when you were in a hurry for a spare part. Even in recent times when the catalog is computerised some skill is required in search terms to find what you were looking for. MG would be a useful man to have around with his mastery of search skills.

Mike

[Author]

Posts