It’s a round…thingy?

March 18, 2022 1:49 PM

What the hell are the things in this tweet thread?

I have no personal stake in this, I just love a “what the fuck?” object mystery and this seems still unsolved. What are these?

posted by cortex to Technology (12 answers total)

Strictly a guess, but it looks to me like part of a slide carousel.
posted by sacrifix at 2:16 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh man I was just reading that thread so I'm glad you posted this. It does indeed look like a big pin holder so I'm wondering if it's something that holds large pin-like things for some industrial machine.

And just to clarify anyone confused by the account name, it is most definitely not a Lego product.
posted by bondcliff at 2:17 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

reddit has a great "What is this thing ?" sub...toss a few pics in there.
WITT
posted by lobstah at 2:44 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

They remind me of the dials on those old manual label makers, which had two layers. It does look to me like two disks would fit together. I don’t know what purpose such a big dial would serve or why there would be so many on the beach.
posted by Comet Bug at 3:18 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Yeah, the beach angle is sort of fascinating and also feels like a red herring (or more enticingly, a side-story): unless they're washing up on EVERY beach, it's not a beach thing, it's a, like, ship cargo accident thing that probably doesn't have much to do with either the location or the item. Unless it does?! I'm genuinely enchanted by the banal strangeness of it and hoping someone will recognize the item as some semi-obscure object of some given discipline.
posted by cortex at 3:27 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that's part of round knitting machine, where you can knit a tube, like hats or socks etc. The 'pins' would be the machine hooks where the yarn gets looped onto.
posted by ananci at 3:46 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Regarding the knitting machine angle, the superficially similar part would be a circular ribber/ribber dial. And I've never seen a circular ribber that wasn't machined aluminum (save one company that's 3d printing sock machines) and I've never seen a hat-sized plastic circular knitting machine that included a ribber. And on the mystery piece, the little round nubbins are obstructing where the needles would go.
posted by fountainofdoubt at 5:08 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yeah, and looking at knitting machine cylinders online (as a total dilettante, granted) it seems like they're mostly vertical-walled objects with a pretty thin inner-to-outer radius measurement, whereas these are very flat, seemingly less rigid, and with a wide inner-to-outer radius; a platter with a hole in the center rather than a cylinder with a large bore. Which isn't helpful at identifying it exactly, but does at least eliminate some likelihoods.
posted by cortex at 5:15 PM on March 18, 2022

The first thing that came to mind for me was a packaging disc for Christmas lights that I've seen, where the string of lights is woven in to and out from the center all the way around. I can't find an example online, though, but it looks to be about the right size.
posted by rhizome at 9:10 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’m team disk from a label maker. The rounds are for pressing down the letters that are on a matching spindle but where the “arms” would have broken off in the sea voyage. I’ve used a giant one before so the for sure come in different sizes. Seconding that it must be lost cargo rather than accidentally overboard. It does also look like part of a 3d printing filament spool except for the rounds.
posted by Iteki at 10:27 PM on March 18, 2022

Just looks like when my mum bought pins for sewing when I was a kid, they came in a disk like that. The knobs are the pinheads.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:40 AM on March 19, 2022

Someone in the thread suggested a loom for making lace doilies.
posted by indexy at 12:18 PM on March 19, 2022