This was a fun tool for a restoration project! It was made by the Lowentraut MFG. Co. of Newark, New Jersey sometime soon after 1901. It was patented by Samuel Johnston on May 21, 1901 and you can view the patent here: patents.google.com/patent/US6...
There was an earlier version of this tool and you can see the patent here: patents.google.com/patent/US5...
Some people call this a brace wrench or combination tool.
The handles are made of rosewood and the original finish was nickel-plating. I really do not like nickel-plating on antique tools as it is almost always degraded and prevents tools from getting that nice patina. I decide that, instead of re-plating the multi-tool, I would just polish up the metal that was there.
I used Evapo-Rust to see if any of the nickel-plating was salvageable, and it was on the screwdriver part of this tool. The rest were either sandblasted or polished with an abrasive pad.
Oil-based wood finished turn rosewood really dark, so I used wax to make sure the beautiful wood grain was showing through.
I can see why something like this never really caught on as most multi-tools today suffer from the same problems; they are only somewhat good at each task.
It was fun to have a nice and quick restoration for a change along with removing all the history from the tool! The MAN can't tell me what to do.
I also caught my first "blooper" on video and included it in this upload.
I'd like to thank Evapo-Rust for sponsoring this video.
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