This old odd tool has no marks or logo's. Is a hammer, nail puller which fits down in the chisel end of tool. The over all lenght is 15 1/2"..... could be fence or carpenter tool? Just thought maybe someone had seen one of these while looking for old treasures.

How about for opening and closing lids like the ones on 5 gallon pails with sheet metal tabs.

Brillant thinking, I'd say you have "got it"in one!    A nice hand made tool which would do the job, but I'll bet most of those tins were opened with a screw driver!  The claw is a bit of a puzzle? didn't those tabs have a triangular hole?
Graeme          '

The claw is cup shaped & about 1/4" thick at edge. This isn't a hand forged tool. Also yes on tin pails, lids were oval shaped & this tool wouldn't go into oval.  You can see the hammer part has been used a lot as it shows a little mushrooming on edges. Would it be possible it was used to taking off shingles on roof? I'm just guessing....

My guess would be a nail puller

How about a fancy crating tool?  Start lifting the boards with the "chisel end" and pull the nail with the claw.  Hammer it back down with the hammer head.  There were a lot of different and sometimes strange tools for opening and then closing wooden crates.

How about some sort of ferrier tool for removing horseshoes perhaps??

  Jim

  I think everyone is very close to what this tool is ......I just found one just like it on Meeker Antique & vintage tools list for sale. It can be viewed at (www.patented-antique.com/Backpages/T-F-S/FARM/misc_farm.htm). I would like to thank everyone for there help identifying this old tool. I just took pic's of 5-6 more old tools I need help with & will post some of them soon.

This one needs more research.  It basically does all the things a crating tool is supposed to do, but is really quite different in construction -- since there are at least two of them, I'd think somebody had a patent on the device.  It looks like it originally had some kind of handles on it, maybe on the order of the wood handles on the older Coes patent monkey wrenches. 

A very interesting tool.

It occurs to me that the wedge would be ideal for prying up staples....

I agree about handles, the type used for pruning shears etc....

  Yes the handles are serrated like it may had at one time wood handles. But the handles would have had to be very thin as tool won't close if they had much thickness.

It looks like you could get the claw under a nail head and use that long nose lever to work the nail straight out of the board with a little practice.  That would be valuable for craters as they could drive the nails back in without having to straighten them.
Cool looking tool in any case.