tamping bar

9.3

A long heavy tool for packing material tightly into a hole or small space

noun
/ˈtæmpɪŋ bɑr/

Specialized

: barra de compactación

For better flavor, she used a tamping bar to pack the tobacco tightly in her pipe.

Examples

He carefully inserted the tamping bar into the drill hole to ensure the explosives were securely compressed.
The construction workers used a tamping bar to pack the freshly poured concrete firmly.
At five, I crossed the field to him as he used my iron tamping bar to set a locust post.

Fiction book (1998)

Synonyms

tamper

vstamping bar

4 8.2

A tool for pressing down soft things like soil or tobacco

is longer and heavier, designed for stronger packing in deep spaces

tamp

vstamping bar

1 8.2

A tool for pressing things down, for example tobacco in a pipe

is longer and heavier, used to compress material with greater force

stemmer

vstamping bar

Specialized

9.9

A heavy bar used to pack material over explosives before a blast

is a general long heavy tool used for packing beyond mining work

How Heavy

plate compactor

Specialized

6.7

rammer

Specialized

6.0

tamping bar

Specialized

9.3

handpress

Specialized

6.5

tamp

1 8.2

Surface Forms

tamping bar singular

tamping bars plural

Morphology

tamp + bar

The meaning is directly and transparently derived from 'tamp' (to compact or pack) plus 'bar' (a long rigid piece): a bar used for tamping/compacting. This is a common noun-compound pattern (tool-for-verb) and would be predictable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents, so the expression is transparent.

Etymology

The noun tamping bar comes from the simple image of a long, heavy rod used to 'tamp' things down. The tamping part is the pressing action and the bar is the rod, so it means a tool for packing material tightly into a space.