Found in a barn cleanup. It’s a heavy iron tool with a hinge and jagged teeth on the inside curve. It opens and closes but I have no idea what it’s meant to grab.

grasp, shred, or strip something from a base material. The even spacing and uniform size of the teeth suggest a repetitive action, likely involving stripping or shelling.

Such a design would be ineffective for cutting but ideal for gripping a cylindrical object and removing its outer layer. This leads us to consider its use in processing natural materials, possibly crops, where the goal is to separate a usable part from a husk or shell.

Antique handheld corn shellers were ingenious solutions to the labor-intensive task of removing kernels from corn cobs. These tools utilized a simple yet effective mechanism: the cob was placed between the hinged arms, and as the tool closed, the jagged teeth would strip the kernels away from the cob.

The process was straightforward. By holding the cob firmly in one hand and applying pressure with the tool in