Perhaps it cleaned the end of a "dibbled" axle? The threaded axle would be
clean enough for a "nut" to then again "catch" the threads of a threaded
wooded axle and so replace the wheelnut onto the a threaded wooden axle? This
of course would fit in the indentation of the axle end? I haven't been around
enough carriages to know, but it's been a "long strange trip" thinking about
it all day. Thanx to all.

George J. Myers, Jr.

PS the ball bearing for wagons is reputed to have been patented on March 13,
1866, at "Site of the Invention of Ball Bearing," Bellport, Long Island, NY
by Oliver Hazard Perry Robinson on a monument erected (very small one I might
add, even if you live there you might have to ask me or someone else where it
is) by the Bellport Brookhaven Historical Society in 1968.