What's with the "scaly" finish on this bearing scraper?

Pretty sure it was used for auto bearings, as it is a left over from a shop my wife's great grandfather operated nearly a hundred years ago.

The odd thing is the finish on the thing, which has marks like scales all over it. On the shank other than the part that goes into the handle, and on the top and bottom of the "head" of it. The shank ones look like some dort of "feed wheel marks", but the ones on the head are odd.

Any reason for it? Looks like it was deliberately put on it when the thing was made.

Overall



Head, top



Head, bottom



Shank

Forged from old file

2nd that: MattJ is correct. It was quite common to forge scrapers from old files. I've done it a few times myself. Normally, the "cuts" are ground off the file, leaving smooth surfaces, before the forging is done. The "cuts" on an old file will either "fold over" during forging, creating a surface that is not solid, or will create stress risers that could result in cracking during quenching or during use.

In the photos of the scraper shown here, the cuts have been forged, resulting in a "folding over". The result is an interesting effect, much like the skin of a snake. Some artist blacksmiths do forge old files and rasps into sculpture, and leaving the cuts on the file or rasp and forging is often done to produce effects like the ones seen here. I've seen snake sculptures forged from old hoof rasps where this effect was deliberately created. In forging a scraper or other tool from an old file, I was taught many years ago to grind the cuts off the file before doing anything else. Your wife's great grandfather may not have had access to a powered grinder, and needing a scraper, did what he could with what he had to work with. Obviously, it has stood the tests of use and time. It hearkens back to the days when mechanics made their own tools or repair parts from whatever was at hand. In the early days of the automobile, most garages had a blacksmith's forge and anvil. This was used for a variety of purposes including forging tools, heating/straightening bent parts on cars, forging parts from scrap, and melting babbitt. Your wife's great grandfather may have had a blacksmith shop that got into repairs on early cars and trucks and may well have had only hand powered equipment in the shop. Tools like this can speak, and this one speaks of such a shop and a blacksmith-turned-mechanic who did what he had to do to get jobs done. No calling MSC or similar, no going on-line to find a youtube of how to do a job, no using an electrically powered grinder, just a man's mind and skills and basic smithing tools in a shop probably lit with kerosene lamps.

I agree on the file being forged and that brown stuff is old Vactra or some sulphur based bar chain type oil and rust. The one side looks like snake skin doesn't it...sort of creepy..lol

Joe, you have it right.....

He did have a blacksmith shop, and I have an old B&S that used to power a generator to light it. That should have been a clue.

As soon as I saw the first post saying "forged from a file" I instantly "got it". But, it is a really good reproduction of the actual commercial versions, he had obviously seen one and made this to the same pattern.

I have NO idea why that did not occur to me about the files....aside from a lot of the "scaly" being of a larger size than the "scales" on the rest of it. But that will be from the shank being "drawn out" to a longer but narrower shape, which would expand the pattern, as well as tend to flatten it.

Obviously the pattern withstood the forging, but the shank part got flattened a lot more due to the drawing out process. The file must have been a fairly coarse double cut type. And files are simply covered in what will turn out to be "cold shuts", so the pattern could easily last through a good deal of heating and hammer work.

I have a box with some others, and I think this will go in with them, it seems to be nearly the same, and I think there is one in there of the same pattern. I will have to pull out the box and get a pic of the two together, if I am correct about the style. I do not scrape too many bearings..... and I would use one of the triangular scrapers on the size bearings I need to work on.

Don't know if anyone reading this is from up near Sandusky OH, but the blacksmith and repair shop would have been somewhere around Olena, just a short way from Norwalk..