Odd find on an old home place

[Mac232]

Any ideas ?? ......... Got an idea but want to hear what you have to say .

 

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[d2]

Maybe something to do with cooking down sorghum for mollassesd2

 

[Mac232]

What is sorghum made of ??

 

[RiverRat3]

What is sorghum made of ??

Its basically a form of sugar cane.

 

[DirtyMike]

Maybe part of an old moonshine still.

 

[squidman]

smoker-roaster maybe

 

[Mac232]

My first initial thought was a dip for hog cleaning ........ to remove the hair

 

[d2]

Vat for scaulding hogs makes good sense to me too...d2

 

[RPG]

Vat for scaulding hogs makes good sense to me too...d2

I remember those days.

Cracklings cooking in a black iron washpot. Chitterlings cooking in another. Salted meat smoking in the smoke house, more in a barrel of brine. My grandmother used to go to the smokehouse in the morning and slice a piece of bacon off and fry it with the lard made from the hog killing. Real homemade cathead biscuits with eggs and grits. It don't get no better.

 

[Burnt Chimney]

Vat for scaulding hogs makes good sense to me too...d2

I remember those days.

Cracklings cooking in a black iron washpot. Chitterlings cooking in another. Salted meat smoking in the smoke house, more in a barrel of brine. My grandmother used to go to the smokehouse in the morning and slice a piece of bacon off and fry it with the lard made from the hog killing. Real homemade cathead biscuits with eggs and grits. It don't get no better.

Ha ! that sounds familiar along with some Livermush , And they all lived too see their 90's

 

[oldsledz]

My first initial thought was a dip for hog cleaning ........ to remove the hair

it looks too big for that to me you have to get the water pretty hot so you don't want the kettle any bigger than needed, I also don't see a way to get much of a fire under it.

 

[RPG]

Vat for scaulding hogs makes good sense to me too...d2

I remember those days.

Cracklings cooking in a black iron washpot. Chitterlings cooking in another. Salted meat smoking in the smoke house, more in a barrel of brine. My grandmother used to go to the smokehouse in the morning and slice a piece of bacon off and fry it with the lard made from the hog killing. Real homemade cathead biscuits with eggs and grits. It don't get no better.

Ha ! that sounds familiar along with some Livermush , And they all lived too see their 90's

I've heard about that livermush and would love to try it.

They lived to see their 90's because they worked off the lard in the fields every day unlike me. I don't have a mule, I have a desk.

 

[cw0909]

i think its a vat too,not sure what for though
if its a vat for scalding hogs, you would need
a cherry picker for that type of vat to lower
and raise the hog, here is a pic of the method
my uncle and grandfather used

http://www.appropedia.org/Hog_Butchering_and_Smoking

 

[Noodle]

Maybe its original purpose had to do with a full round barrel with the little jets on top. Don't know what purpose, though. But maybe somebody took it later and cut the top half of the barrell out (after they laid it on its side) and used it for a bathtub. Looks like some fire could have been built in the brick siding of it to heat it up. Originally, though, if you stood it up with the jets on top, that would have been used for something else. Looking on the back side, you see holes where water could have been pumped/pushed in, allowing the water to go down through the little "thimble holes" to do something inside a full barrell that was below it. Just a guess... Farmers used to make odd uses of lots of things.

 

[kuger]

An early jacuzzi!!!

 

[AlabamaRelic]

An early jacuzzi!!!

It's a redneck hot tub!

 

[Skywola]

It does not appear to be heat driven to me, there is not much surface area of it exposed, or that could be exposed to a fire, all there is is a narrow area below it, and if I were designing something to heat water with, it would have more area exposable to fire. On the inside of it, there is mineralization all at one level.
That would be unusual in a heated tank, because the water level would change due to evaporation and boiling. I do not see any carbonization on the bricks either, and that does not just wash away with time. It appears that they took the time to make a ramp for rolling something into the barrel, or maybe it is just a work table. That something may have been relatively heavy, so perhaps it was metalic. It may be some type of smithing. I think that they were using it for washing or cooling, based on the previously stated reasons. Your pictures are way to big to see the whole photo, and I have a 1920 x 1080 monitor. Did you do any detecting around it, and if so, what did you find?

 

[wwace]

Hog dip, sheep dip or early jacuzzi. About the only sure thing is that hot water or some other liquid was pumped into the end with the sprayers. there is either a manifold or a chamber behind the cemented area. The brick work appears to be a flue. Maybe build a fire at that end and pump water into it and as it heated into steam it would spray out. The ramp indicates that whoever built it didn't want to lift the object into the tub. So the object either walked up or was rolled into the tub. The wood framing on the other end is what remains of the device to lift the subject from the tub or some sort of flat prep area or whatever. The mineral line in the tub just indicates the general water level. I guess heated water leeches minerals easier. Would be nice to know more about the other structure.

 

[lostcauses]

I would say set up for steam. Possibly bending wood to a shape. Some sort of factory.

 

[silverswede]

A real nice mixture of "possible probables" here. If I could add one more to the list, how about a split fence post creosoter. The posts only dipped/sprayed with liquid creosote about two feet on the end to be in the ground. On fencing a large property a few to several hundred are needed justifying a more elaborate process than the standard soak'em in a 50 gallon drum. Sure looks like a fun site to play around in, Mac232 and you had a great day.