What the heck is this thing?

Kaden wants to know what the heck this thing is… He writes –

Mid afternoon yesterday I was laying out a cutting diagram for the third or fourth time,and caught myself writing dimensions down inside little

tags. Clearly, I needed scrapyard therapy.

So it was off to NorthStar. Where I found THIS (see attached) rolling around in the bottom of a tub of mystery metal.

It’s brass with a maple handle; really nicely machined metal, and the handle is *properly* attached with set screws…none of that press fitting crapola here. The brass part is conical, tapering from a 3/4″ widest dimension to a near-nasty point in 2 3/4″. Most of the lacquer is still intact on the brass, and the fold out knife blade inset into the cone still has a pretty good edge.

Huh?

Yeah…fold out knife blade. 2 3/4″ x 1/2″, hinged on a rolled steel pin just up from the base of the cone. The blade nests almost flush into the cone, and swings out effortlessly, stopping but not locking perpendicular to the cone, with the edge pointng in the same direction as the cone. It’s ,like a parallel universe mash up of a gardening tool and a switchblade. The guys at the yard were stumped by it, which is a rare event, and no one remembered when it came in, or from where. My pal Joey, who works seasonally on crab boats (as seen on the Discovery Network) was adamant that it had no maritime connections, but thought it would be pretty useful for patching nets. Me, I had it pegged as a weapon used in full-contact horticulture, but that could have just been lack of sleep talking.

Couldja put it to the Maker Massive and see if anyone knows what this thing is?

If someone can accurately identify it I’ll send you a MAKE Pocket Ref.