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Lime Island

Started by Jeff, August 31, 2001, 02:41:14 AM

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Jeff

Going to do something different this weekend.  Tammy, Stacy and I are going to be taken over to Lime Island to help the DNR with several projects. From scraping and painting, to tree and plant I.D. on the Nature trails, to GPS plotting of the Island.

The Island is 3 miles out from Raber Bay in the U.P and is right next to the shipping channel from Huron to the Soo Locks. The Island is rustic. No power, no vehicles, But lots of critters and trees.

The Island was of Historical importance as a refueling point for the Steamship era of the great lakes.

Here is a map you can zoom in on. When you get to the last map, it is the little island to the near top, just left of center, next to the Canadian border

Map
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Kevin

That`s part of Manitoulin Island, the largest fresh water Island in the world.
Be sure to look for fosslis in the limestone while you`re there.
Speaking of fossils, how`s that old circ mill of yours?  :D  :D  :D

Ron Scott

I've been there back in the early 60's when it still was a refueling station for the ships. Use to know the Superintendent there and use to wreck hunt those waters.
~Ron

Kevin

Jeff, how was that second honeymoon and your cruise with the wife to the Lime Islands?

Jeff

Second Honey Moon?  :o

Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed Lime Island even though I could hardly walk monday due to the exercise of walking up and down its bluffs.

If you get a chance to go out and Stay, the cabins are great, and the view of the freighters is tremendous.

The Island has a rich history from Lime production (There are still lime kilns on the island dating back to the late 1700's) to more recent history (1900's) as a refueling station for great lakes ships with first coal, then bunker fuel.  The Bunker fuel facilities are still there. Bunker fuel was of almost tar consistency and had to be heated to flow.

Approaching Lime Island

Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Don P

You guys keep making me want to make a road trip. ;D

Now I'm curious though. We have lime kiln road near the house and I don't know what they are or what they did. As we have a bunch of old furnaces in the woods (blueberry forges, I've  also heard them called( a corruption of bloomery forge,for the iron "bloom" they produced)) and "coalings" where wood was burned to make charcoal. I assume they were for iron production, does anyone know their story?

Jeff

Road trip?  ummm... Don... ISLAND!! :D

As explained to me:

Lime kilns were used to process limestone into powder or aka cement.  The kilns were layered alternately with wood then limestone until full. The Kilns were lined with fire brick to protect them. They were then closed and the wood inside was burned, turning the limestone layers to powder. On lime island it was then contained in wood barrels. (There was an archeological dig on the island near the kiln area where they found the barrel coopers workshop.) Lime Island has, I believe, 17 identified kilns, or kiln ruins.
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Don P

What? That new truck can't keep up with the old Dodge? :D :D
I hate having to dive for the wheel locks though. ;D

Thanks for the info...had heard of burnt and unburnt lime, and then there's slack (slaked) lime,don't have a clue there.
Your furnace is very similar to some of the furnaces around here so I may have mistook some of these. We went by the Ravens cliff and Eagle furnaces about a week ago on the way home from fishing up on Cripple creek. The arch showing on yours is where the iron was tapped out twice a day on our iron furnaces. The main stream fed a bunch of small branch puddles off to each side. Looked like little pigs nursing on a sow, pig iron.

Alot of old masonry contains what we call high lime mortar, sometimes no cement at all just lime and sand. Then there was the horsetail plaster used inside. There must have been alot of these old kilns around. Hey, as long as I'm rambling, 16" on center framing came from a decree by the queen that every house would have a fireplace 2 bricks wide.She had previously decreed the size of bricks. This made the firewood 16" long. In order to finish the interiors of their homes the peasants would split firewood into lath in their "spare" time.  They began framing so that they could use their firewood. Not engineering, necessity. :)

CHARLIE

Sorta looks like my BBQ pit.;D

SLAKE: 1. To die down : ABATE  2. to become slaked: CRUMBLE:<lime may~spontaneously in moist air>~
             3. a) To cause (as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with water b) To alter (as lime) by exposure to                  air with conversion at least in part to a carbonate.

It's a good thing the bricks weren't 16" long.....hmmmm.....2 brick wide fireplace would mean the firewood would then be 32" and uhhhhhhhh studs would've ended up being 32" on center and uhhhhhhhhhh....:P the sheets of drywall would be too dang big and heavy. :D
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Don P

For some reason I dimly remembered it as a water process. Must be way back there where the 20 watt bulb doesn't touch :D
The high lime mortars had a unique ability to "heal". If lightly cracked moisture would carry lime into the crack and fill it. Compressive strength was quite low, but sometimes how strong is strong enough? It took shock better than modern mortar.
Look at Roman masonry if you ever get the chance. A unit was roughly 2' square. It was a one man brick. But then you needed another man to butter the work for you. In the period of the English size standard that finally gave us the "common" brick they wanted to be able to hold the brick in one hand and the trowel in the other. There were a slew of sizes none of which interchanged, hence the standard.
Dad still wants 32" plywood cause he isn't long enough to saw clean across a sheet safely.

L. Wakefield

   Oho, so that's how you make cement..I've heard of regular limestone, slaked lime, quicklime, and cement premix containing extra lime powder- burns holes in unprotected skin- nasty dust if it's dry- I guess I'll have to check into chemical changes these each go thru. ??? ??? ???  lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Don P

 :P
Modern cement, Portland Cement, is made by mixing substances containing lime,silica,alumina and iron oxide. This is heated until it almost fuses, then ground and mixed with a bit of gypsum.

Ancient Roman cement was ground volcanic rock from the Bay of Naples (Ma Nature to the rescue). This knowledge was lost in the middle ages and only rediscovered in the 1700's by an English engineer using a clayey limestone. In 1824 an english bricklayer came up with the recipe for modern portland cement.

My neighbor and I spent about 3 months rebuilding and re-chinking an old log cabin using a homebrew high lime mix from the best boyhood recollections of  the owner (Chestnut logs he remembered his dad skidding down with oxen in '28 ).  I bought a new pair of playtex gloves on the way in about every other day, but by the end my fingers were just raw meat and oh so tender. Lime makes mortar "plastic" and sticky.

A neighbor blinded himself for 2 days when pouring lime into a spreader and it puffed back into his face. An optometrist once told me that an alkaline burn in the eyes does much more damage than acid. Prior to that I had always treated lime way too casually.

L. Wakefield

   I had the same experience chinking a log cabin in about 1979- but just bare hands. Took about 4 hours to eat little pits into the skin. Fun til it started to burn. :(  lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Jeff

Not knowing when to say enough, I tend to say more. Well in this case more is by choice. Lime Island really took a hold of me while I was there.

Currently I have in my possession a 3 ring notebook plum full of Lime Island History, forestry surveys, fishery surveys, soil surveys, maps, interviews with past residents and ancestors of residents, so all of you that have come to know me should no where that's going to lead...

Temporary home:
https://forestryforum.com/limeisland

Home in a day or two:

http://www.limeisland.com

What can I say, I like this stuff.  Let me know what you think about my first draft of this site. Currently the links go no where.
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

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