Hello,

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas.

Grandpa thought it was an old bearing press or pipe tool but he wasn't sure. 

It's about 28" tall. Thanks,

Welcome to Tool Talk!

That might be a fixture to hold an electric drill to make a drill press. The lower jaws don't look substantial enough to press a bearing.

Yeah that's sort of like what my grandpa said, something about electric motor bearings.

Maybe we're on the right track. I haven't found anything on eBay or Google related to those terms.

Maybe someone else has seen one of these before.

Thanks for the welcome,

Back in the 1950s when homeowners began to have basement shops and electric drills about every maker of electric drills had a device similar to that in their offering.
A man who owned a ½" electric drill was king of his block.  A man who owned the drill press conversion setup was KING of the subdivision. 

I have a Black & Decker complete with drill motor from that era.  It has a set of adapters B&D never thought of so I can clamp it to pipe or square tube and drill holes easily and almost effortlessly.   
Handy as hell to have because it can be easily carried onto a jobsite, and does more work than a magnetic drill press.

Agreed, it's a drill press for an electric drill - many were type specific e.g. Black and Decker - your appears to be universal, to take a range of different makes...

The most common make in the UK was Wolf....

Thank you all,