So I have been cleaning out the house of a deceased family member who loved to fix stuff. I found this tool, and have inquired at 3 hardware stores (and asked 'senior' workers, (ie, been there a long time and have most T shirts) to no avail. Looks like a handle into which two long nails were inserted,with small head of 2 nails on the outside--- but I don't think this is homemade. We made guesses, but no one knows whatitis or whatitdo?

Imteresting..... It looks like it could come in handy for holding a bolt, screw, nail for starting or removing in a hard to reach spot? Kinda like a holding screwdriver that would hold anything? Just a thought....

It's a nail holder.

In the early days of monofilament fishline, it was very stiff, and would lie on top of the water, held up by the surface tension of the water. From underneath, the fish could spot the track of the line straight to the lure, particularly a popper, which had to sit still and just be jerked now and then. When the line was jerked, the complete length of the line splashed and rippled on the surface. Imagine what that looked like from underneath on a sunny day!

This was a giant problem with a large popper, such as a Hula Popper.

This tool was invented by a next door neighbor of ours, Berkley Bedell, to put a curl into stiff monofilament line. The line was threaded around the nails in a figure 8 pattern, and then pulled through under tension. This gave it a nice curl so that it would only contact the water where the curl touched it, rendering the line much less obvious to Mr Largemouth.

He and Fred Arbogast spent entire weekends trying different versions of their products together, as the line and the Hula Popper was a combination that really needed work.

The device had two flaws:

1. The curls made backlashes much worse on the reels used at the time.

2. An unskilled user would drag the line too close to the nail heads and nick the line on the die marks just under the heads. This caused line failure later.

Despite the failure of his first foray into fishing tackle marketing, Berkley went on to become a maker of better tackle, and ended up as a congressman.

He re-introduced the tool, with smooth shanks when spinning reels came out, but the curling kept the line from coming off the reel uniformly during casting. The problem was particularly vexing to those poor souls who used an early Airex reel with a quarter circle bail.

This second failure distressed him so much that he brought out his own line of line, Trilene. It turned out to be such good line that it made his fortune.

His company now relabels Chinese products and enjoys great success.

Of course Bill H. is correct.... The fresh straight line was also called a "light" line and the tool, after proper use, would convert the light line to a dark line, meaning it had been run through the tool.... Well Berkley was so clever that he had, and advertised, another use for his light to dark tool.... If properly inserted into a "dark sucker" socket (search for a previous post) it could release some of the "dark" so that you could use the socket for a little longer after a full dark sucker was reinstalled....

You guys must like to write about 6:30 PM, at least an hour after the 'smoking lamp is lit'. Love it! Great way for me to start off the day with a smile on my face.
Could this also be used by the gender that likes curls instead of straight hair?
Jim