This Common Vintage Tool Has Left Youth Puzzled. Can You Guess What It Is?

Illustration - Shutterstock

For many young children growing up in the age of the smartphone and the cloud, things that were common just a few years ago, like CDs and DVDs, are becoming extinct. According to a survey by the British government, over two-thirds of kids in the United Kingdom couldn’t identify a floppy disk!

But it’s not just technology and communication that have been changing at an incredibly rapid pace, as a photo that had the internet stumped showed. It’s also everyday objects that we use for basic tasks.

What on earth? ©Ebay

When the nostalgia website Do You Remember posted a picture of this strange implement a few years ago, many young people were left scratching their heads.

From this angle, the tool looks like something that would be used in the garden. You can see a curved metal form with what looks like a handle on one end, with a blunt edge on the other. But what’s that little opening at the bottom of what looks like the handle?

Is it a kind of shovel or tool for digging up garden beds? Or maybe a tool for planting seeds? While it’s not a bad guess, you would have never found this in your garden. It would have lived in a different part of the house altogether. Some people might even guess that it’s some kind of primitive, heavy-duty hairbrush!

Now we're getting somewhere ©Ebay

But if we turn the tool over to the other side, we get an important clue about what it was used for.

Now we can see a couple of features that shed more light on the tool. For starters, we can see a kind of edge or lip that does indeed appear like something from a shovel. But the real revelation is the triangular piece of metal that’s attached to the tool, with a sharp, pointy end.

If you have equally sharp eyes, you'll notice that there’s a small hole at the top of the handle. What would be the point of that? If you think about the hole on the other end, you might wonder if it’s to allow some kind of substance to travel through, maybe a liquid.

For people who live near the ocean, these almost look like something people would use for digging clams or oysters. The metal bit at the end could be used to pry open the shell. And maybe the holes are to let the excess water drain out of the shell? While it’s a good idea, it’s still not right.

Hint: it's not for digging clams; in fact, you would find it in the garage Illustration - Shutterstock | V J Matthew

You’ve been straining your mind to try to figure out what it is, so it’s time we gave you a small hint. This tool isn’t exactly used anywhere inside the house. You would find it in a place attached to the main living area: the garage.

Think about things that your car absolutely needs in order to run. And think a little bit more about that pointy end and the curved lip it sits on. Doesn’t it almost look like a giant version of something from the kitchen? Something you'd need to open things from the pantry?

That’s right, it’s a can opener. But you wouldn’t use it to open a can of corn or beans. It’s for motor oil!

Pretty nifty, isn't it? ©Ebay

As you can see here, you take the sharp end, push it through the lid, and let the clamp stick to the side. Then you can tip the whole can over to pour the oil via the spout to the engine. No mess and none of the spills that you often have with today’s plastic containers! Plus you don’t need a extra filter as the spout is built into the opener!

Did you get it right away? Why not share the image with your family and friends and see what people guess? You'll definitely get some laughs, especially when kids and teens try to figure out what it could be!