The Grater-Handle Corkscrew: Shake the Handle and It Grates the Nutmeg

"The nature of my invention consists in providing a metallic tube four inches and a half more or less in length, and one inch more or less in diameter with a sliding metallic grater, seven eighths of an inch or less in diameter and three inches more or less in length, the grater to be so arranged in the tube as to stick up or down without dropping out when the tube is shaken by the hand." "This also has a slot cut out of the center of two-thirds its length and half its width, so as to admit of the upper end of corkscrew D passing through the tube A, at the same time the end of corkscrew D preventing the grater B from sliding out of tube A."

**Tube.** Cut 115 mm of 25 mm aluminium tube and file the ends smooth. Drill a 20 mm hole in its side at the middle, and two small holes straight across the tube at the middle, square to the big one, for the corkscrew. **Grater.** Cut a strip of tinplate 75 × 40 mm. Punch it all over with a nail from one side so the burrs stand out on the other, and bend it into a trough, burrs outward, that slides freely in the tube. Cut a slot in its middle two-thirds of its length long and half its width wide, and slide it into the tube. **Box.** Cut 25 mm of the same tube, shape one end to sit on the big tube's side, and epoxy it over the hole. Put in a nutmeg, then a light compression spring, and close the box with a tinplate lid bent over its rim. **Corkscrew.** Wind 2 mm spring steel wire into an open helix round a 6 mm rod, file its end to a point, and bend its straight upper end into a U that passes through the two small holes and the grater's slot, twisting it closed above the tube as a ring. **Test.** Hold the box and shake the handle quickly lengthwise over a plate, then weigh the nutmeg grated in 100 shakes. Draw a cork from a corked bottle with the corkscrew, holding the handle crosswise.

**George Blanchard** of New York, New York, received US 15,325, dated 15 July 1856. His tube was of tin or another suitable metal; the box C, braced or cast on the tube, held the nutmeg E and the spring F; the grater B was of tin or other metal perforated with holes or roughed, cast solid or soldered on, or fitted with lead so that it would slide. His claim is the self-sliding grater inside the hollow corkscrew handle. **Honest limits.** Aluminium tube, punched tinplate and a wound wire helix stand in for his tin tube, grater and corkscrew. The notebook ignores the nutmeg's own weight and the air in the tube; its amplitude, rate, mass, friction coefficient and spring forces are examples. Your grated nutmeg is the result.