Copper

What the Ojibwe Knew About America's Lost Copper Mines
Last Cartographer and Ageden Pro

Now I wonder if maybe The Sea People had an advanced civilization living in the far north, or maybe in Doggerland / Atlantis, and they were sending ships across the Atlantic and through the Great Lakes to get this copper. That sounds kind of nuts, but if it wasn't The Sea People, then where did all the copper go?

I posted about upper Michigan copper mines before.

For more Copper posts, click on the Copper label.

Sturgeon

Jay Woiderski (left) presents a trophy to Austin Dreifuerst, who was crowned the 2025 Black Lake Sturgeon Shivaree King. Photo courtesy Jay Woideroski

All I know about sturgeon is that they are big fish, and that's where caviar comes from. Don't think I've ever seen either one, much less eaten any. But I'm old, it could have happened. The fish in the photo weighed 78 pounds, which is a chunk.

I'm posting this because of the weirdness of the sturgeon fishing season at Black Lake in Michigan. The department of fish set the opening time and then closed it by notifying all the registered sturgeon fishermen by text message. Each time someone caught a fish, they had to notify the government that they had done so, also by text message. When the government got their 7th notice, they closed the season. It took 17 minutes.

Gotta keep a tight rein on the planet's apex predators or they will kill everything.

OutdoorLife has the story. Via The Shekel.

Snow

Path to the Gravely

Uniberp got inundated a week ago:

I suppose it's usually only once a year, but I got caught being casual again.

I suppose it's because I only commit to a limited loss in each step that I do things so incrementally, that if I prepared properly and had a more confident view toward the future that I would prepare better, but it worked out anyhow, at least for this once more time.

I left the Gravely out by the tree after digging a yard of dirt out where I'm going to move the shed, and was faced with retrieving it through 18 inches of snow. Fortunately the little Honda snowblower was able to cut this path. The Gravely also needed a new power switch so I got to put that in using gloved hands in 15 degree weather. Then I got it started (after a battery charge), decoupled it from the dirt wagon and backed it out through this trench. 

Found some bolts and attached the snow cannon. After that  it was pretty much the old same thing. 52 year old tractor cutting through the Devil's Ice Cream Cake 300 feet down to the road. Made 4 passes (3 is sufficient but I had to come back up anyhow.) and did the neighbors sidewallk. Pretty much done for now. Forecast is only a couple inches more this week as the lake cools down.

It's too cold to go get pics now, the next morning but maybe later. It's zero this next morning.

 

Alligator

Shallotte River Swamp Park

The Shekel notes that there are now big alligators in Michigan. Michigan? Isn't it a little cold for gators? As The Dodo explains, evidently not:

North Carolina’s Shallotte River Swamp Park is home to 12 alligators rescued from captivity. As the recent extreme weather system moved through the area, the water they inhabit froze over.

So, rather than allow themselves to get trapped under the ice, or risk freezing in the colder air above, the alligators did this instead.

They protruded just the tips of their noses through the surface as it iced over, allowing themselves to breathe while remaining mostly submerged.

Grand Rapids

Pergiel Building
1036 Butterworth St SW
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Diligent daughter and I were looking at the Pergiel building (zoom in and you can read the name in the stone near the top) on Google Maps the other day. Today we want to look at it again, but we can't remember where it is or what led us to it last time. Went and rooted through my files and couldn't find anything. Finally pulled up Google Maps and searched for Sacred Heart church. Then I remember that the building was built at an angle, and there was a big dirt parking lot there. I noticed Butterworth runs at an angle, so I pulled up the satellite view and presto - there it is.

I writing this down so I will have some record of where it is. My grandfather built this building to house his bakery before WW2. Rumor has it that back then he was a competitor to Sunshine, but then the war and rationing and the draft came along and running a bakery got to be pretty thin. My dad worked there for a while before the army gobbled him up and shipped him off to Alaska and the Pacific.

Where is the Ambassador Bridge?

Ambassador Bridge

Apparently Google doesn't know either, witness the big red question mark plopped right on top of it.  Actually, I think red question mark just means Google doesn't know whether the bridge is open and the big pink circle indicates the area where traffic is impacted. The Detroit News reports that the bridge reopened over a week ago. In case you missed it, the bridge was blocked by the Canadian truckers protesting that idiot Trudeau's draconian rules.

Ambassador Bridge

Got started on this by a link on FlightAware to a story about how air freighters are picking up the slack by delivering auto parts to automobile manufacturers. Well, that's kind of expected. Once a giant factory gets geared up for production they aren't going to want to stop because they run out of widgets.

Hackley & Hume

Hackley & Hume Historic Site

Uniberp reports:

We took a guided tour through the Hackley and Hume Houses the other day, big old woodworked like crazy, painted Victorians. Hackley really liked ornate wood and stained glass, Hume had a bunch of kids, so had more running room.

Turns out those houses were built at the same time mine was. Mine has a new furnace.

He's been working on his house for awhile. We get reports occasionally.

Hackley & Hume were partners in a very successful lumber business back in the late 1800s.

Google Maps can produce a similar view of these houses, though the level of detail is not as high.

Uinberp's Progress

Uniberp at his Muskegon Cottage

So here is what I've been working on, 3rd year. Finished (nearly) the new steel roof this past weekend.
In reality it only took like 6-8 working days to strip  and replace the roof but i had long periods of recovery between so the roof took about 6 weeks.
The 5th and 6th pics show some the extent of the gutting inside, and all new sewer, plumbing, HVAC, 2 additional bedrooms upstairs,
It's still gonna take a lot to make it habitable. Siding done on 2 sides, the 4 sides showing are left to be done, about the same sq footage as already done.
18 foot cathedral ceiling. 1.5 bath. I demolished and removed ~30,000 pounds of debris (300 barrels, 10 at a time, to the county dump). Demolition is pretty much done, one section of ceramic floor to go.
Some floor joists had to be replaced, I may replace them all at some point. The upstairs is all new anyhow, so new joists and flooring.
It originally had 10 foot ceilings with a tall attic  kneewall as well.
Double lot. 30 x 30 garage on the alley. 2 blocks from Lake Muskegon.
I got a DIY Foam-It spray insulation kit  for the crawlspace foundation wall.
For the cost of a 2014 Chevy Suburban.
Plus $1500 property tax annually. Not really using any significant amount of utilities.
6 Attachments

He has a zillion times as much energy as I do. I might have had that much energy once, but it was a long time ago. Previous posts on this project.

Saginaw Michigan

USS Edson Saginaw, Michigan

The Shekel posted some photos from his flight this weekend. I thought I would see if I could find these places on Google Maps.

Saginaw River, left, flowing into Saginaw Bay
The industrial complex on the left is an electric power plant

That is all.

P.S. The ship is the USS Edson as opposed to the USS Edison

The House That Clipper Built

Stone Hills Estate, Grand Rapids Michigan

A while back California Bob was feeling the pinch from Proposition 13 and decided to see what the housing market looked like in the old home town of Grand Rapids Michigan. He found this dilapidated old mansion on a five acre estate close in to downtown. It looked like a bargain at $500K. Michigan Mike went and took a look and reported that it was just what you might expect of a bargain: it would take a heck of a lot of work to make comfortable. Nothing came of this, but somebody else thought it was a deal, bought it, fixed it up and now it's on the market at a price somewhere north of a million.

While this place is under discussion, someone notes that it was originally built by Frank Stone of Clipper Belt Lacing fame. Never heard of him? Me neither.

A pair of v-belts

Back in the bad old days, before the invention of the V-belt, transmitting power from one machine to another was done with flat belts.

Threshing at Malton (early 1950s)

Farmers used these flat belts to transmit power from their steam tractors to their threshing machines.

Factory machines driven by Line Shafts & Flat Belts

Factories used them to drive their machinery, notably machine tools. These belts were made of leather, and the ends of these belts needed to be spliced together to make a continuous loop to drive the machines.


SHOP TIPS #316 Pt 2 Using the Clipper belt Lacer tubalcain A condensed version of this video can be found here.
Frank came up with a system of hooks and a tool to affix these hooks to the ends of the belts. It's as simple minded as can be, but it did require a certain amount engineering. In any case, it became popular enough that he made a fortune and was able to build his house. Flat belts aren't used for power transmission anymore, except for those antiquarians who keep the old machines running so the iPod generation can see how it used to be done.

The Clipper company is still in business, though is now known by a cryptographic combination of letters: Flexco. Can't be much of a business if the only people using flat belts are operating museum pieces, but that's not the case because there is another market has been growing steadily for the last hundred years and that is conveyor belts.

Package Handling & Distribution Center Conveyor Belts

All of the package distribution facilities for outfits like UPS and Fedex are full of conveyor belts.

Mine Conveyor Belt

Mining operations make heavy use of conveyor belts. Most are fairly short, but some of them run for miles. So Flexco has a solid customer base and will likely be around for a long time.

Uniberp's Progress

Still working on the cabin in Muskegon, Michigan:

Triage continues. After finishing demolishing and replacing all the garage roof decking with 35 pieces of 1/2" OSB and covering with battened down roofing felt, which made it wind-and-watertight, and having heard that OSB can withstand a certain amount of exposure, I decided this weekend to take it easy and  do cleanup and estimating, which included 2 trips to the dump to offload 1800 lbs of old roof.  Will-calling a crate of new steel roof of 44 pieces 15 feet long weight 850 lbs, to save maybe $100 on delivery was not so smart, but using Egyptian lever and roller methodology got it off the trailer and stowed inside.
What started out as the following day of survey turned pretty readily into resigned belly crawling in the 24 inch sand crawlspace, cutting away someones' misguided ambitious project of running 10 runs of romex through individually drilled holes, presumably to offer a semblance of code compliance. In order to position new joists for sistering along the old ones, a Bolivian jungle of old PVC water pipes also had to be hacked away.
A cleaner hole is left. One with better defined margins. The next steps seem a little more obvious. I look forward to next weekend.

Previous post on this project here.

OSB is Oriented Strand Board, or chipboard in your common parlance. I can't understand why it's called 'oriented', to me it looks more like disoriented strand board.

He sent me the coordinates, so I thought I'd use Google's StreetView to take a look at the place. Surprise, Streetview doesn't go down Miner Avenue. It looks like a perfectly good street so I don't know why it hasn't been recorded. Could it be that Google is getting lazy?

Lake Muskegon, Michigan, looking East

The cabin is about a mile from the ferry terminal on the South shore of Lake Muskegon, which reminds me that I put up a post about a ferry running across Lake Michigan. Could it be the same ferry? No, it's a different one.

Uniberp's Latest Project

Big Bag O' Skunks

Uniberp reports on his latest project:

I'm rehabbing a tattered 19th century cottage a block from Muskegon Lake, in a decent neighborhood of modest homes. I bought it for about $30 a foot, plus an oversized 28x30 garage on a double lot. I am 3 weeks into demolition. Triage demolition is a couple weeks to completion. It will require total replacement of the rear sill, which a 10x10 beam, notched for joists. I'll figure out how that will go together when I see it. Prep is supporting the back wall top plate, supporting the joists, then removing the wall pretty much entirely.The garage, although with a good slab and heavy fiberglass door, has severe roof rot, although the trusses are intact. I replaced 10 sections of decking( need 15 more), and will put a $1200 steel roof on it. Colonial Red, I think. 

I bought it because I am bored and bitter on weekends. Now, instead, it is all so familiar, as I drag myself to my old truck full of tools and drive a half hour to the job site. Once there it is fairly automatic. If I am strong and fresh I tackle an improvement. If not, I shovel and sweep mindlessly. I last about 6-7 hours, then confusion and tiredness forces a stop. 

The dump is 13 miles away and $25. I have 10 steel barrels on a 10x5 trailer that I fill and 2-wheel up the ramp. I fill them as best I can on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and make it to the dump by 1 pm the following Saturday. Monday morning I go into work feeling stiff, but already knowing I did my own work for the week.  

It has real potential, as a flip, or a cottage, or for retirement. Space for a big garden, although very sandy. 2 block walk to the marinas, parks, bars and restaurants, but as yet I am too filthy to go anywhere but straight home to the shower.  

I should have the thing together with basic plumbing in a few weeks. I ripped it all out, since it was what rotted the back sill and floors. I have an electrician installing a new service and panel this week.  

Once that is in place, it will be functional, and design can begin. I have lots of extra time during the week to plan the engineering and layout. and that helps, because I am so sore I can only move slowly. It takes me a couple of days to recover fully, even though I use all the safety equipment: gloves, goggles, real respirator, hardhat, Still some gets through and gagging on dust is exhausting. 

I don't even want to talk about the skunk abatement, suffice to say that I believe I took out the entire regional population.

Previous Uniberp reports here.