Rich Lands

Headlamps were developed around 1900. Thomas Edison developed a lamp for miners around 1914-15 that had extra safety features to prevent any internal sparks from igniting gas in the air around them. Early lamps were powered with acetylene gas, called carbide lamps, that included a water reservoir that dripped water into the gas to control the flow, and therefore the brightness of the lamp and the longevity of the fuel. Carbide lamps declined in popularity after the 1932 Moweaqua Coal Mine disaster, a methane gas explosion in Illinois that killed 54 miners. Battery-powered lamps were developed, but they were not as bright and did not last as long without recharging.

This headlamp dates to the 1950s and was likely used by Mr. Ben Smith during the construction of the Massey Tunney between 1957 and 1959.

Steam shovels were the earliest examples of a power shovel or excavator, designed to excavate and move rocks and soil. They were used around the world, from Australia, to Russia, to coal mines in China. They were used to excavate mines, create quarries, in construction, and road construction. Usually built on railway chassis, with a boiler and movement engine, power was driving to the wheels by a chain drive to the axle. With the advent of rail lines, cities boomed, and the resulting skyscrapers phenomena meant that the demand for powerful steam shovels to excavate away material grew. 102 steam shovels helped to create the Panama Canal. When diesal powered shovels entered the market in the 1930s, steam shovels fell out of favour.

Main components include steam boiler, water tank, winch, main engine, boom, dipper stick, crowd engine, wheels, and excavator bucket. The house contains and protects the works, a rotating platform which allows the bucket to rotate and swing. They were usually operated by the three-man crew: an engineer, firemen, and ground man.

  Scales have been used for weighing for thousands     of years. The simplest scales consisted of a rod on a   string with two pans attached. The object that   needed to be weighed would be placed on one pan,   then on the other side pre-measured weights would   be added until the pans were perfectly balanced.   Early weights were uniformly sized rocks or pieces of metal, such as the one in our collection. This basic scale design was in use for most of recorded history. In the late 18th century Richard Salter developed the spring scale, which used the amount of pressure exerted on a spring to determine the weight of an object. Nevertheless, weights that required counterweights such as this one were commonly used to measure things like gold.

As long as humans have been fishing, they have been creating nets to fish with. While it’s hard to find many surviving nets because they were traditionally made from materials like willow bark, grass, flax, or even human hair, net weights made out of rocks have survived as evidence of early net making. Nets, no matter what they are made of, often rip and develop holes that are too big. It is cheaper and less time-consuming to mend a net than make it, so knowing how to mend nets was a very important skill. Typically, this was a skill that many people in a fishing community would know how to do. The men on the boast would be able to make quick repairs at sea, and the women at home could mend nets when their husbands were on land. Nowadays it is not a very common skill because most people choose to buy a new net if their old one rips. However, the skill is still being practiced in fishing communities all over the world and they use menders very similar to these, although modern day needles are made of plastic. These mending needles are of a European design.                To learn more, check out this news article.

A picaroon is a tool for handling cut logs. The point is driven into the log, which can then be dragged or flung to where it is needed. This minimizes the need to bend over or touch the woods as much. A picaroon is also a tern for a pirate, but it is unclear how it became the term for a log-handling tool. Similar to the picaroon is the hookaroon. The picaroon and hookaroon are very similar, but the shape of the head is different. The picaroon has a wedge with a spike at the end that is straight or slightly bent. The hookaroon has a more curved end, often with a serrated edge. Because of the shape of the picaroon, it is better for handling smaller pieces of wood, while the hookaroon can handle larger pieces of wood as they are less likely to fall off. The design of picaroons and hookaroons remain largely unchanged and the tools are still used to this day, mostly by those who chop a lot of firewood.

Wood veneer is made by slicing a thin layer of wood from a log in a uniform thickness. Veneer can then be used for decorative purposes and/or to place overtop of a material that is not wood to make it look wooden. The same technique applies to making plywood. The earliest examples of veneer dates back nearly 4000 years in Ancient Egypt. Veneer was cut by hand with a saw or knives. In the 1820s a special lathe wass invented to cut veneer that was more unifrom and precise, but the practice of cutting veneer by hand continued in many places.

This statue was presented to Warren Fenton in 1990 “for distinguished service to the Canadian forest industry” by the Canadian Wood Council. Fenton specialized in making wood veneer.

The origin of the word “pickaxe” or “pick” comes from the Latin picus, which means woodpecker. In prehistoric times the pickaxe was made from door antlers. As humans learned metallurgy, they began to fashion them out of metal. Originally, they were used as a farming tool, prior to ploughs being invented. In medeival times they were used as weapons (war hammers). Pickaxes traditionally used by miners have one end that is pointed and one end that is blunter. These serve different purposes, as the pointed end is used to break up harder material and the blunter end if used for softer material.