Need help identifying a key

[ltdbjd]

My wife picked this up in an antique store in Denver. I have no idea what was for. The grooves remind me of the tubular decoders, but these are sized too big. Anybody run across one of these before?

[mseifert]

Almost doesn't even look like a key ..

[kwoswalt99-]

Maybe the grooves were already in the piece of steel the key was made from.

[ltdbjd]

Both ideas sound reasonable. Your guess is as good as mine. I've spent some time doing different searches with different key words on-line and haven't come up with anything yet.

[Mighty]

Gauge was my first guess, but the depths have an angle at the top which wouldn't make sense. Do the grooves come to the edge of the key making a fine edge? Almost seems like it could've been a makeshift knife/fork or an opening device. Maybe the grooves are just for grip, and its a scraper of some kind.

What is the size of this thing?

[ltdbjd]

It's pretty much the same size and thickness as a standard key.

[tjohn]

goes to one of those triangular locks with the pin that you commonly see used with Oriental jewelry boxes, probably can google cheap Chinese jewelry box padlocks or find them on eBay to see what I'm talking about, sometimes found with decorative shapes like dragons or turtles and such. The prongs activate the spring loaded mechanism after you insert key fully into the base of the triangle and it pushes it apart

[GWiens2001]

The tip appears to be twisted.

It does not look like the keys I have seen for the locks you are referring to. Those have a 90 degree bend at a right angle to the width of the key with the split so they can push in the springs.

Here is a thread with a small lock of that variety.

This is a larger version. Much larger.



Gordon

[ltdbjd]

I've spent some time looking at the jewelry boxes and going through all the images. All the ones I've seen are like Gordon has displayed ... Two tines on the end bent 90 degrees. But I'm still searching to see what I can come up with.