Earlier this year in a museum I came across these old safe cracking tools that were collected by a sheriff in a small Ohio town:



Along with the drill there are a couple of black powder blowers, a lamp, some black powder, and this mystery item at the lower left:





Does anyone know how this might have been used in cracking an old safe? Maybe it was a small heater for warming the hands in the winter, or possibly it's not really related to the other tools in this collection.

I'm inclined to guess that it was for melting some low-temperature metal... primitive key casting with lead, perhaps?

(I have a couple of other thoughts related to drilling / blasting, but I think that's probably walking too close to the line for the public forums.)

Thanks for the reply, sounds like a good possibility.

sterno for heating lunch.