A brace driven tool

[Brad in Wisconsin]

what is this widget for? Seems to be driven by a brace. no marks seen on it and let the fun begin!

[Lostmind]

Looks like a socket for a square nut on a wagon or carriage.

[mikeswrenches]

Looks like that to me too.

Mike

[turnnut]

it looks like a buggy nut wrench with two nut sizes.

[Billman49]

Many carriage & buggy wheels had 8 sided brass nuts covering the end of the axle..

[Brad in Wisconsin]

I measured the dept of which the nut could be inserted inside the 8 sided area and it is less than 1/4". You would think it would be easy to strip/round a nut over at with that lil. area to hang on. Could this be part of a ratchet mechanism ? Thinking out loud here. Brad

[Billman49]

Brass carriage wheel nuts were just a decorative cover to the end of the hub, like a car axle hub cap - they were not done up that tight, and only had faces about 3/8 to 1/2 inch deep, before the round flange...

Can't find a decent image, but this one from a 1920's Buick is of the same genre...

[john k]

I've not seen many fancy buggies with such, but thinking about it, the hose cart hand pulled by firemen had nickel plated caps like that.  Also back in the square nut days, things were just not torqued down as hard as they are today.   Or so it seems to me.