Watermarks on Wood Furniture

There was a time not long ago when I moved deeper into the heart of Toronto on a quest for a better apartment. I made the switch in the middle of winter, and in the middle of a snowstorm; it was painful on so many levels. But I live downtown now, and all I left behind were bad memories.

Like this one particular bad memory I shall relate here:

Do you have any watermarks on your wood furniture?

Inside my old apartment I had kept an avocado tree in the window.

I had raised this plant from a seed. One of the first avocados I ever consumed no doubt. The plant is a good friend and almost ten years old.

See here how it has wept for me... But I did not know this.

For many months, I did not realize that the water leaked from a tiny hole in the bottom of the pot to leave a circular ring underneath. The water had scared the top of the white oak window ledge. Honestly, I did not know the urn had been compromised.

The wise old man has taught me that anyone can turn any disaster into a learning opportunity.

And as a blogger with a popular domain, I can learn and teach at the same time.

Here's an article I wrote last year that's devoted to the subject of How To Get Watermarks off Wood Surfaces. This was just the second hand knowledge I needed, and so I followed my own 'terrific' advice.

Without any hesitation, I retrieved my camera and a jar of mayonnaise and I set about rubbing the smelly stuff into the wood using an old rag (which I threw out after as it was so disgusting) .

I worked up quite a steam and soon the whole room smelled like a chip wagon.

In summary, although the author of this Gomestic article is a genius, the work is just not accurate in many respects, and it fails to note how long term damage cannot be cured by any miracle polish short of paint. The only remedy here is to sand the watermarks out of the surface and reapply lacquer.

Geocaching Collectible Coins

Dumpdiggers love Geocaching – this new sport (it all started less than ten years ago) is a great way to stay in shape, see the countryside, and interact with family and friends while sharpening your own skills as a treasure hunter. In fact geocaching is kind of similar to relic hunting but without the rich historical rewards. Sure there's some plunder, but the sport actually requires participants donate prizes of equal or greater value after completing each quest. Maybe I should back up and explain some things…

What is Geocaching?
American military technology has transformed treasure hunting into a thrilling 21st century sport, but instead of using an X to mark a spot on a map, we can now use GPS devices to pinpoint our quarry, and throw away the map.

G.P.S. means Global Positioning System
Unless you’ve been hiding underground for the last fifteen years, you probably already know that satellite based GPS first appeared as the invisible hand that guided those smart bombs into Iraqi equipment sheds in Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990’s. Now it can be used by the public to glean the position of anything anywhere on the planet. Armed with a love of exploration and a decent GPS system, participants use alpha numeric coordinates to search and rescue cached goodies.

One international Geocaching Website binds the entire community together with remarkable unity. On this one site, ALL geocaches in ALL countries are listed, along with their coordinates and any hints you may need to find the booty.

Introducing Norman Hissa and his son Neil. These two avid adventurers have extensive resumes as anglers and rock hounds on Lake of the Woods.

Together they discovered the thrill of geocaching in late July 2007, and now obsessed, both evil geniuses conspire to create the most challenging travel adventure in the area; an empty peanut butter jar has been codenamed 'LOW not Whisky Island' and indexed as GC152ET . The drop was made on a tiny island in the middle of the lake on August 10, 2007. (There was a spectacular lightning storm at 4pm that afternoon and the boating party was lucky to get back alive.)

Why plant this geocache?
Operating under the moniker ‘Rosie’ in July, the duo found and logged their visits at all the geocaches in Kenora in under three days. Unfortunately these caches were too easy to find; like most targets originally seeded by Rambling Rose, they require a hike along the railroad tracks. Keep your eyes peeled for railroad dumps near Tunnel Isle – there’s a nice one in the marsh just east of the first rock cut (on the north side of the tracks).

This family understands Geocaching's appeal, and sees the new sport's potential as an emerging tourist activity. The snowmobile clubs have 'poker runs' where drivers pick up cards and rally between ice fishing huts - soon there will be Geocaching Clubs visiting Lake of the Woods in all seasons. Frustrated with how easy it was to find ALL existing caches in Kenora, Norman and Neil decided to create this super-challenge.

GC152ET is the alpha numeric key code for a geocache that was planted by stormin’ Norman Hissa and his son Neil in the middle of the lake. Without question this is the hardest target in the entire area; GC152ET requires a boat (or a snowmobile in winter) and some special skills!

Geocaching on Lake of the Woods

At the time of this writing, there are 508520 active caches worldwide, and there are over 5000 caches in Ontario alone, but less than fifty caches in the Lake of the Woods area. GC152ET is a peanut butter container filled with trinkets, buttons, pins and collectible coins.

Collectible coins?
This sport is one of the few hobbies around today that traffics in collectible coins! Geocoins, as they are called, are created to mark events and honor places - and they travel in the pockets of geocachers all over the world. Most will probably increase in value over time, depending on certain key variables that seem kind of mysterious to this author, at this time.

Three companies have set up shop here in Canada to manufacture such coins. Check out Land Sharkz, and Angies Outdoors and Geocoins.ca to peruse new material. I suppose if this collectible merchandise is preserved in mint condition it will increase in value - there's some proof of that here in a Lady Luck Blonde geocoin on eBay that’s getting the attention of geocoin collectors worldwide. I would like to know more about geocoins and what makes them collectible. Perhaps I should issue a series of Dumpdiggers coins?

Relics of the Fur Trade #2

This blog series imagines Chester Huff's crew of Dumpdiggers working in secrecy somewhere on the north shore of Lake of the Woods (near Bigsby's original Rat Portage).

If Dumpdiggers unearthed a forgotten fur trading post, what kind of relics could they expect to find?

The second artifact in this series was selected because of its value in today’s marketplace. If Dumpdiggers were lucky enough to find just one of these items, it would indeed confirm their location as a genuine Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading post (and should probably be reported to qualified archeologists as soon as possible, Chester).

The first Europeans to trade with Native Canadians must have realized immediately that their gold and silver coins were worthless to First Nations and Inuit people. The indigenous people wanted blankets, copper kettles, and exotic colored glass beads. Above all else they traded for metal goods such as knives and axes. Prior to European trade they had only sharpened stone and sea-shell blades - these utensils did not last as long and could not be easily sharpened.

Eventually the beaver pelt itself became currency, and the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) established a system that calculated how much one "made" beaver pelt was worth compared to other furs and goods so that HBC traders and aboriginal hunters and trappers would not try to get more than the standard allowed.

Relics of the Fur Trade #2

Extremely collectible, this token is part of the National Currency Collection, Bank of Canada.

Hudson’s Bay Company
‘One Made Beaver’ Trade Token

There are many different types of Hudson's Bay Company trade tokens, but the most coveted are the "East Main" brass tokens issued in 1857 under Chief Factor George Simpson McTavish for the East Main District (South and East of the Hudson’s Bay). This metal 1 Made Beaver token was widely circulated the 1860s and 1870s and would certainly have been used in and around Lake of the Woods.

In addition to providing more incentive to trappers to trade with HBC year after year, the distribution of uniform coinage with the company crest enhanced the Hudson's Bay Company's fiscal reputation. More importantly, the metal coinage provided HBC with a method of structuring trade at their posts; the ½ and 1/8 made beaver tokens streamlined the process by which fur traders could give accurate change to fur trappers.

The token is made of brass and stamped with the letters HB (Hudson’s Bay Company), EM (East Main District) and MB (Made Beaver) and the denomination. In fact, instead of MB the letters NB were stamped in this particular coin series due to a die-cutter’s error. This is another reason why this relic is prized above all others.

Before metal tokens came into use, locally produced tokens of ivory, stone, bone and wood were used at some Hudson's Bay Company posts. There is some dispute about when these brass token were first issued; the experts at the National Currency Collection believe this particular coin was struck in 1857.

I'm told however that Larry Gingras of the Royal Numismatic and Canadian Numismatic Research Societies,who published Medals, Tokens and Paper Money of the Hudson's Bay Company, in 1975, lists another date of origin for the brass HBC 'East Main' 1 Made Beaver token.

What's a relic like this worth today? Let’s have a look at a recent eBay auction of an HBC 1 Made Beaver coin. Don't feel like clicking away to eBay, well the auction closed at $600.00 US.

Haunted Gold Mine

The smell of fresh cooked pork sausages filled the air as we loaded our provisions into two canoes alongside the long wooden pier at Bare Point Marina. The four of us had already drove half an hour west from Kenora, through an unkempt Indian reservation named Rat Portage, to the north east corner of the Lake of the Woods - it would be another hour or more before we stopped for anything to eat.

On this particular Saturday afternoon the world was bright and alive with the sound of children’s voices, dogs barking, and the ubiquitous hum of motor boat engines. None of us could fathom that our adventure would leave the land of living and descend into the darkness of the dead. There's no cell service on Lake of the Woods, and we travelled back in time as we paddled across Bald Indian Bay 

This is a true account of how we came to hear the ghostly voices of four dead miners at the bottom of the Number Two shaft on Sultana Island.

I'm Rob Campbell and I led the August 4^th 2007 expedition to uncover the history, and search for valuable relics in the bowels of Sultana Island. This is the story of a forgotten gold mine, and one that’s not completely abandoned. Accompanied by Trixie Blasé, Jasmine Edu and Chester Huff (and two four legged friends, Theo and Poncho) my intrepid crew or fortune hunters set out with the best intentions.

The plan was simple – by canoes it would take us forty minutes to cross the bay. We planned to explore Sultana Island all afternoon and then return before sunset. It was our objective to find the lost gold mine and rummage around through the remains of some of the original buildings. Trixie and I have been trained by the very best dumpdiggers on how to dig century old foundations to find important relics… It’s important to remember, this mission started as a treasure hunt, not a séance.

Sultana is one of the most famous gold mines on the Lake of the Woods. The original claim was staked in November 1888 by Henry Bulmer, who sold the 27 acre property to a group of fifteen men who called themselves the Ontario Mining Company. This group, who did not even bother to register the claim, hired a prospector and a mining engineer from New York to assay their purchase. Unfortunately this ‘expert’ wrote an adverse report in the summer of 1889 and because of this document a third party named John F. Caldwell of Winnipeg managed to pick up the claim for a very reasonable price. He ignored the expert. He had visited the site himself and truly believed there was gold in the greenbelt quartz - he was right.

Mining operations commenced in the summer of 1892 when three small veins were discovered in the rock. Caldwell must have found enormous profit in his first six months as he soon spent $30,000 erecting a five stamp mill on the island. This was a steam powered machine that crushed quartz to release gold nuggets from the ore. The machinery was imported from Chicago and its assembly was completed just before Christmas. The stamps weighed 850 lbs each and were dropped eight inches 92 times a minute in the standard order, namely 1,5,2,4,3.

When we arrived at Sultana we found the sandy beach deserted of all life and the shore absolutely full of driftwood. It was a Beachcomber’s paradise. Beyond the dunes there was long grass and a dense forest that obscured all signs of any previous development. Just beyond the trees we encountered a crumbling rock wall holding back a mass of rusty barrels that was bisected by a narrow trail that snaked its way up a steep incline. A set of stairs had been cut right into the rock.

Chester found a small chunk of dark red ore buried in the soil here – a crumb of some really heavy metallic mineral. When I dug down into the rocky soil I dredged up barrel hoops and bucket handles, thick square nails, and rusty hinges… There was corrugated steel roofing lying in the grass beside the trail - this was all that remained of some structure no doubt integral to the operation of the mine.

As we continued walking up the rise the rest of the island came into view. At the top of the hill we each stared open mouthed at a century old rock cut that was the throat of the number two shaft. In the jaws of this stone cavity we could see moss covered timbers set right into the rock. At one time these tree trunks had supported a sturdy platform on which miners might have worked the hoists. At one point I threw a stone down into the darkness and we listened as it ricocheted off the sides of the passage - we waited almost fifteen seconds to hear the splash.

Unaware of any danger I climbed down the rock wall to stand on the bed of timbers. Immediately I felt a blast of very cold air rising from the cave – although it was the heat of the summer there was still plenty of ice down there in the darkness. Trixie was the first to hear it – dripping water echoed up the shaft and between each drip there were other sounds, less natural.

In December 1899 Caldwell sold the mine – he’d made his fortune and was probably aware that further mining would not produce more bullion than he’d already liberated from the island. The new owners kept the staff; 12 miners, 1 blacksmith, 5 mill men, and 2 cooks were each employed at $3.00 day. The Sultana mine had been very profitable for many years and the new management was eager to maintain production – too eager.

When the gold seams faded away into the rock a few months later the organization hired explosive experts and ferried a mass of low grade dynamite to the site. As the TNT was lowered down into the pit there was an accident. History doesn’t record exactly what happened, but it does detail the deaths of four miners in 1901. Two men were buried in the rock at the bottom of the tunnel - it took a week’s digging to recover the bodies. Those are the two spirits who cries forever resonate in the darkness of the mine.

Trixie bade us all to shut up and listen. Just for a moment, as I peered into the darkness of the abyss I could hear the rope squeaking and then I too heard the faint echo of human voices… it sounded like two men whispering soft warnings to each other… The air grew even colder as their voices grew louder and every member of the expedition was paralyzed with fear – we slowly backed away from the rock cut and then quickly ran down the hill and back to the boats. It was seriously scary stuff – fear pervaded our very beings and it wasn’t until we were back in our canoes and well away from shore that we could discuss the experience. We laughed about it then, but I think it’s safe to say that each of us was overcome with fear.

When I researched the mine at the Lake of the Woods Museum in Kenora, I learned that although the Sultana property was worked off and on for another thirty years it was never as productive as it was before the accident. And it was riff with very spooky incidents that speak of supernatural phenomenon; on two occasions there were dynamite boxes mysteriously emptied of all explosive material before they could be deployed. Equipment was found broken at the bottom of the pit and many new miners reported hearing voices calling out to them, begging for help. When I read that a cold shiver climbed up my spine; I had been there and had heard those voices myself.