If you’ve never spent time on the r/whatisthisthing subreddit, it’s worth checking out. If nothing else, it’ll give you an encyclopedic knowledge of the random tools, toys, widgets and bits of random detritus that people are unable to identify .
And if you ever need help identifying something weird , you’ll know exactly where to go.
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“Rubber core surrounded by chainmail at a house I’m housesitting at.”
This is a humble pot scrubber. The chainmail serves the same purpose as a coarse brillo pad or steel wool. You can really get Medieval on some dishes with this thing.
“What is this thing? Stone structure on bearing manufacturer campus which no discernible use.”
The original poster actually researched this one after getting a good lead. It looks like a miniature amphitheater, but it’s actually a sculpture based on the ziggurat form.
“What is this please? Dug up in the garden of an old house in London. Is is light, feels like wood and is the size of a squashed golf ball.”
If it looks like a golf ball and it’s the same size as a golf ball, well, it’s probably a golf ball. This is simply a very old, pre-modern golf ball.
“Does anyone know what this instrument is called and in what music it is used? It only has this one fingerhole and thus produces only two notes.”
This is a cuckoo whistle, perhaps the most rudimentary musical instrument that exists outside of a referee’s whistle. Indeed, it can only produce two notes.
“Small vintage container with cork.”
I thought I’d seen something vaguely similar to this at a sushi restaurant, and it turns out I wasn’t far off. This is an antique soy sauce container or dispenser.
“Plastic card with sliding smaller cards and numbers.”
This is a really fun little device for anyone who has to memorize different pin numbers. It’s a card that fits into a wallet and can store multiple pin numbers, all encrypted from the same base code.
“The chef/owner of the restaurant where I work has this copper pot with a cylinder that is placed in the pot with a bracket and comes with a vented lid.”
You’re looking at an old-timey petri dish sterilization chamber. It has a bracket to hold petri dishes, then the whole thing is put into a pressure cooker for cleaning and sanitizing.
“Found in the ceiling of a bedroom in a house we just bought.”
If you’ve ever had lazy painters paint over some piece of household infrastructure, this is immediately familiar. It’s just an old bracket for a smoke alarm that was painted over.
“Goggles that blind you.”
When I think of googles that blind, I immediately think of welding goggles. Turns out that’s exactly what these are. Welding goggle technology has come a long way since.
“Pointy stick thing inside my new hairbrush.”
If you turn the pointy thing around and put it back in the brush with the pointy end sticking out, it can be used as a hair separator to smooth out unruly tangles.
“This thing is in an F150 my parents bought. Looks like a little speaker? Thought it might be for the backup sensors but it doesn’t seem to make any noise.”
This is an aftermarket part. It appears to be a little LED light that was clipped on for whatever reason by the previous owner. Maybe they liked to read in the truck but didn’t want to drain the battery.
“What is this? Looks and feels like a microchip in the middle. Found this underneath the sofa.”
This thing is a diabetes test strip. The ‘microchip’ part of it is just a metal grid to serve as a target for blood droplets.
“Toilet with a u-shaped divot in the front.”
This toilet is designed for people with challenges getting onto or off of the toilet. For those who can’t lift themselves off, it enables them to slide on and off without their junk touching the toilet bowl.
“Minivan with telescopic antenna on top. It appears that the antenna is tracking something.”
This one wasn’t definitively solved, but the truck is most likely a portable mobile base station, which is used as a relay to boost cell phone connection between towers.
“Where is this type of clamp used?”
This is a gang lock, which is intended for use when multiple people are working on equipment. Attach it to a breaker and it prevents people from turning it on.
“What’s this hard plastic 8 chamber unit with rigid metal non-moving pins? Some kind of revolver cylinder?”
This one was immediately familiar to me, and I wasn’t even allowed to have toy guns as a kid. As many of you have likely noticed, it’s the revolver cylinder from a cap gun.
“Odd wooden box found in an abandoned prison (legally acquired). Has a painted green lightbulb on top as well as a vented hole on each side of the bulb.”
This isn’t really prison-related, as it’s simply a tool for testing old electronics. Known as a lamp limiter or dim bulb limiter , they can be used to test power levels in virtually anything.
“What are these successive white target markers attached to the train tracks? They have a tiny through hole in the middle and are on both rails at the train stop.”
There are a lot of train nerds out there, so this one was pretty easy to solve. These are little optical targets that give the train’s measurement system something to focus on as it measures stuff like braking performance and track bend.
“This is a piece of the freezer that fell out last night. It melted the drawer that it fell on. It’s metal, it weighs the same as 3 AA batteries, it’s silver and black.”
This highly-specific piece appears to be the rod that connects an auger to a motor in a freezer’s ice maker.
“Red and clear rubber toy-like thing found in a playground.”
I thought this one was tricky since it doesn’t give much of a sense of scale, but it was solved almost immediately. Turns out this is a part from a Duplo set, which is part of the Lego family.
