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I can’t figure out what this old tool is.

Does anyone know?

enter image description here

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Honey
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    It seems like a holder. Can you add another picture showing the inside of the working section? – crip659 Jul 20 '22 at 12:07
  • @crip659 sure added. Holder for what? – Honey Jul 20 '22 at 12:13
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    That sort of looks like the holder part of a glass cutter, with the actual cutting section missing. There is some sort of logo/name on the handle, but I can't quite make it out from the top picture. What does it say? – Tonny Jul 20 '22 at 12:15
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    Could be a holder for the old one sided razor blades, and used for scraping, paint etc. – Tim Jul 20 '22 at 12:17
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    TBH, that's not a very old looking tool. Looks like the handle is modern plastic, and the tool itself is nice and shiny, not old and rusty looking as one would expect an old to to be. – FreeMan Jul 20 '22 at 12:29
  • @FreeMan hasn’t been used for 25yrs :) – Honey Jul 20 '22 at 12:34
  • @Tonny it says curtis but google wasn’t helpful. This is from the 90s – Honey Jul 20 '22 at 12:35
  • I always use pliers on 8 pin packages. This tool can also be used to pull chips. It looks like it dates from the heyday of the 7400 series. People were paranoid about static discharge for CMOS too. – mckenzm Jul 22 '22 at 20:55

2 Answers2

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This is not a home improvement tool. It is a chip insertor tool.

Image found at https://www.ebay.com/itm/392277393572 Curtis Computer Repair Kit

It allows you to apply even pressure on a digital chip when inserting it into a socket. This was most commonly used for RAM upgrades. Adding 256K to an IBM PC might require 36 chips, so a tool to help install the RAM chips properly was very useful. You don't see these nearly as much anymore as RAM chips are now in easy to install DIMMs and most other chips are normally soldered in place and this style of chip has become less common.

manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
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UnhandledExcepSean
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    Damn… I could have used one back in the days. Chip pullers (like the one on the far left in the picture) were common, but I never encountered an inserting tool. Always improvised by (slightly) inserting one side of the DIP first and then using a wooden spatula to push the other side inwards before pressing down the whole package. – Tonny Jul 20 '22 at 16:39
  • At least you don't have to wrangle the electrons in place anymore! Well spotted btw, like everyone else I could've sworn it was a glass cutting tool of some sort. – MiG Jul 20 '22 at 17:35
  • @Tonny I had a few variants of "PC Toolkit" in ye olden times, including this one - same color screwdriver handles and everything. But some didn't come with a chip inserter, and I think some had a slightly simpler chip inserter. But very common. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 20 '22 at 17:55
  • @MiG When I first saw the question, I was 99% sure this is what it was. But I didn't get to a regular computer to write up an answer until after UnhandledExcepSean did. – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact Jul 20 '22 at 17:56
  • You win some, you lose some :) – MiG Jul 20 '22 at 18:00
  • I didn't know there was a tool either. I used to press one side of the chip against a table to bend the pins on that side in just enough so that the tips of the pins on both side would go into the socket without binding. Worked for me. – Wayne Conrad Jul 20 '22 at 20:46
  • Awesome. That’s exactly the set we have – Honey Jul 21 '22 at 04:57
  • @WayneConrad Did that too at times, but I found it way too easy to over-bend the pins that way. The spatula gave me more control to just bend enough to get the pins to slide into the socket. My colleague used to use a plastic glue-spreader instead of a wooden implement, until he killed a couple of ICs. Plastic and static electricity don't go well together. (At least we assumed that was the cause.) – Tonny Jul 21 '22 at 07:58
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    Man, I just used my thumb to push 'em in, you guys were advanced! The chip puller was invaluable, though. – FreeMan Jul 21 '22 at 13:24
  • Looks like it'd also work for removable EEPROM's – spikey_richie Jul 22 '22 at 08:56
  • That ebay listing has an even better picture: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/1akAAOSw9ZlctA5z/s-l1600.jpg – abonet Jul 27 '22 at 00:07
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I guessed it was a jeweller's hand vise and was missing some padded jaw inserts, but the accepted answer looks better.

enter image description here

These are a small version of a bench vise and are used for clamping small parts for filing. Something similar is used to hold gemstones for polishing, again with formed inserts to match the item.

Criggie
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