Glass Message Board

A publication from 1896 where on page 96 there is a discussion about box irons etc to use for smoothing linen.  The writer says the box iron is as old as at least 1746.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Notes_and_Queries/AiX4qzn9i0MC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sleek-stone&pg=PA96&printsec=frontcover

Obviously I appreciate there will have been timeline crossovers of implements etc. and that because a new one begins it doesn't mean an old automatically ends.

 There is also mention of sleek stones but no real descriptions of what they look like (i.e. handled v not)

Ekimp - if you (or anyone is still reading my ramblings    ) the question I'd remembered was actually from the Warrington Museum saying they had a piece with the appearance of a 'claim' to be a sleek stone dated 1607. Author said it weighed 25 1/2 pounds and wondered if there were others around.

I'm a bit confused about the sugar and salt petre mixing using the same implement but then I'm not a chemist.

I believe those two ingredients mixed in the correct proportions are explosive (but I’m not googling it to check).

1745 document with the name of Clownestanegill (a rill) by Gribdae burn
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_New_Statistical_Account_of_Scotland/9uk1AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=gribdae+farm+kirkcudbright&pg=RA2-PA5&printsec=frontcover

It was Clownestanegill the OS people had come to find in 1850 according to this
https://www.thenorthernantiquarian.org/2021/03/10/bombie/

and William Bell who told them about the stones.

Cagney thank you for that further information.  Much appreciated.  I think what I'm a bit surprised about is that neither the Stewartry museum nor the author of the Scottish Antiquaries proceedings written in 1878 had ever come across either the viking article or the one from Gribdae farm and did not know what either were.

It also seems that when the handled one was donated to the Stewartry museum (presume pre 1861 as the donor was dead by then) no one knew what it was then either. 
So if these were in such normal every day use as linen smoothers I might have presumed they would have known what they were. 
The donators father (who had died in 1835) had been using it to grind sugar and salt and even if one assumes the story about the cairn find might not be true he surely wouldn't be donating a well known item for the era and pretending it was something else - surely someone would have realised?

And I do think the donor obviously thought it was something interesting and special otherwise why would he have taken it to the museum? He obviously donated it decades before the viking article was written about so it wasn't to do with jumping on a bandwagon.  The description of his farm sounds as though he was quite well off and the farm was very large.  I know that memories can be opaque and the wording of the Stewartry letter to the Society does appear to put 2 and 3 together and come up with 4 to make the situation fit a 'viking' cairn find but it could well be that William Bell did find it under a heap of stones.  Just that it wasn't a viking find.

Correction and apologies.
I think the William Bell who donated this might have been a F.S.A. and might have been the son of the father William Bell who died 1861.
Detailed information here on William Bell and his Father William Bell

http://www.kirkcudbright.co/kirkcudbright/lands.asp

and some here

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/136491675/william_bell

So the donation may have been recent to  Hamilton (1881 ish when his letter was written to the Proceedings).  Hamilton wrote in his letter to the Proceedings in present tense I think.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Proceedings_of_the_Society_of_Antiquarie/ll52di4ljB0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=gribdae+linen+smoother&pg=PA372&printsec=frontcover

And given I think William Bell might have been a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, it could well have been a 'ah, I have something like that at home!' moment after he'd seen the information from Dec 1878 re the medieval one without a handle.
Anyway, the son William Bell was born in 1845 and so was possibly 36 if it was donated to the museum in 1881 by him.
He was 15/16 when his father William Bell died in 1861. If we assume the account of the find was given by W.Bell the son,  to Hamilton in 1881 ish and he accounted that it had been found 40 or so years ago that would have been before he was born. 
He also accounted that he remembers his father using it to grind sugar and saltpetre - so a memory of before he was 16 in childhood but that was potentially only 20 years prior to the donation (assuming 1881).
He also apparently accounted that it was found digging a drain but the account from Hamilton does say Bell remembered talk about another drain being found on Gribdae.  It all sounds a bit apochryphal on re-reading  the letter from Hamilton.

I'm a bit confused about the sugar and salt petre mixing using the same implement but then I'm not a chemist. 

Could the big heavy ones be doorstops? The Bonhams one looks like it has a ring of wear at the widest point where it would contact a door. I have a 3kg dome shaped victorian dump “doorstop” that is not very easy to move without a handle, unless you kick it.

Ekimp, iirc somewhere in the Proceedings of the Society for Antiquaries Scotland (maybe 1879/80 when the handled item was shown in the letter from the Stewartry museum? ) there was also a letter from someone in another museum I think(??) saying they had a 25lb version and did they think that was a linen smoother. I'll search through again later and see if I can find that reference.
 
I think if it was a doorstop wouldn't someone have recognised it as such? 

This is all so odd that in 1880 ish no one recognised these objects. And even in 1861 or before re the handled one.