157

Stephens Cigar Piercer

by Mark Woodard

I was walking through my local antique

mall recently and I spotted a Clough

wire corkscrew with wooden sheath.

The sheath advertised

―

Underhay Oil

Co., / P.H. / Auto Oil / Boston.

‖

It was

in nice condition and priced at a mere $2.00, so I picked it up, paid for it, and stuck it in

my coat pocket.

When I returned home, I took the

item out of my pocket and was about

to toss it into a drawer with a few

dozen other Cloughs, but I decided

to take another look at it. What I saw

was quite surprising. The butt end of

the wooden sheath was recessed,

and in the recess was a small metal

point, much like the tip of a nail.

In Fred O'Leary's

Corkscrews: 1000 Patented Ways to

Open a Bottle

, I found patent drawing shown at

righ. It matched my corkscrew and sheath exactly.

Eureka!

On June 2, 1908, the USPTO issued utility patent

no. 889,556 for a

―

Cigar Tip Perforator

.‖

The

inventor was not William R. Clough, but another

familiar name - Augustus W. Stephens. He lived

in Waltham, Massachusetts and it was there that

he ran the Stephens Manufacturing Company.

Stephens patented and manufactured a variety of

bottle openers, corkscrews, and the like during the

early part of the 20th century. The sheath that I

found shows the word

―

WALTHAM

‖

, suggesting

that it was manufactured at the Waltham location.

I now knew that I was holding an example of

Augustus Stephens' patented variation of a

Clough corkscrew sheath. In his patent

specification, Stephens refers to the patent

drawing and states,

―

[item]

f

represents a perforating device or pin, the shank of which