Informed today that a shop bottles the quench tub water for sale as a elixir. I was Informed years back it is valuable as elixir but put it out of my mind cuz the same smith said other things like;

Oil cools steel faster than water

Blacksmiths used to marry folks and also served as the town dentist

You can harden 1018

Should I be advertising this stuff and selling it to the public? 

 

I hear it makes your hair grow back too...

1 minute ago, Exo313 said:

I hear it makes your hair grow back too...

That makes sense. But what is making all this hair grow on my neck?

Well if it's just starting to grow, I would be watchful. I hear the way things go, the higher the post count, the more glorious the neck beard...

Not sure about growing hair. It is supposed to cure the itch from poison ivy and bug bites. Cures the burn from a day in the sun and I would guess a burn. . . .? Cures common diseases and diarrhea. 

The dead mice in my slack tub would probably CAUSE diarrhea if not worse.  But if I could find someone wiling to buy the stuff....

However, smiths in history did sometimes marry people, the Greta Green (Scottish border) smith was the most famous example.  As for the dentist thing, well, if there is no dentist (or dental science) for 200 miles or (200 years) someone with a hammer and chisel might be your best option.  I have no proof of that last opinion, just makes sense.

And you CAN somewhat harden 1018 steel, google Rob Gunther's Superquench.  You won't get a knife edge out of a pig's ear, but there is a noticeable increase in hardness when used properly.  

Upon further reading, the 'good stuff' in quench water appears to be ferrous sulfate, good for iron deficiencies. (Hence the cures for weakness, 'delicate' boys, anemia and general other issues with lack of iron.)

Buy a sieve. Strain the mice.

 

 

There are mice in my slack tub too.

The smith in Gretna Green married people because of a loophole in the laws of the period. To get married in England took a license requiring your parent's permission for minors (and 21 was the age of majority!) and posting of the Banns repeatedly; however in Scotland there was a legal form of marriage where the people involved would declare their marriage before witnesses in a public place.  So if you wanted to get married and your parents disapproved or would prevent it; heading up to Scotland on the main coaching road would put you at Gretna Green as the first good sized town and the blacksmith shop was right there and always had witnesses and was a "public" place.   Had NOTHING to do with him being a blacksmith. He didn't marry them either they married themselves.  Just a trick of law and location.

(I don't use a slack tub; if I need water in the shop I bring a bucket of it and at the end of the day I pour it on the tree shading some of the western side of the shop.  Water attracts critters, critters attract rattlesnakes!)

Gretna Louisiana is across the Mississippi From New Orleans.   At one time Marriages were performed in the blacksmiths shop there.  There has been a reconstructed blacksmith's shop there with a working smith before 2000.   Marriages have been performed there by licensed Ministers.   I haven't kept up with its status in recent years so what is happening in current time is unknown to me.