Saveitforparts

Some of the feedback I get on my Funter Bay History posts involves people wanting to buy or collect old “stuff” (engines, artifacts, etc). In general I believe historic artifacts should be left where they are unless seriously threatened by decay, development, or vandalism. So for example, I’d like to see things like Funter’s big gas engines remain cool lawn ornaments, but the various steam locomotives upside down in creeks and ditches around Southeast Alaska would be better off in museums somewhere.

Artifacts from Funter Bay have made their way into a variety of museums, historic collections, and scientific archives over the years. Here are a few that I’ve come across during my research.

A rock sample from the Willoughby Mine, “Shore Group”, from a private collection:

A rock core sample from Borehole U-18 at Funter Bay, stored at the Alaska Geologic Materials Center.

Three pieces of Funter Bay Clay were exhibited in the Alaska Building at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition as part of James Lathrop’s private mineral collection.

The Alaska State Museum holds a number of mineral and rock core samples from Funter Bay, as well as a fossil ammonite and a stone pestle (native grinding tool) found there.

The Juneau-Douglas City Museum has a number of items from Funter Bay, including a gGrape soft drink bottle, a soda water bottle, a Pelton wheel part, and a small motor. They also have a number of Funter Bay documents, including  cannery and saltery applications, a canned salmon label I’ve previously mentioned, and various invoices and receipts for things like dynamite, transportation, and jury duty.

In addition, a number of research papers and scientific studies have involved Funter Bay:

In 1903, the Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross collected seabottom samples around Alaska, including near Funter Bay. Some data from these samples appears in several articles over the following decade. Many of these appear to have been found in a single dredge sample of mud hauled up from about 300 fathoms in Lynn Canal, just off Funter Bay.

In 1905 and 1908 articles on Polychetous annelids (marine worms), author J. Percy Moore noted many such worms in the seabottom mud near Funter Bay. These included plentiful specimens of Lagisca rarispina (Sars) Malmgren (now known as Harmothoe rarispinia), as well as specimens of Nephthys ciliata, Goniada annulata Moore, Ampharete arctica Malmgren, and Melinna denticulata Moore. The latter species was observed for the first time at the Funter Bay sample location. The distribution of this species is listed as “Funter Bay, Alaska”, and a specimen is held by the Smithsonian Institution.

Another creature first discovered near Funter Bay (collected by the same Albatross expedition) is Koroga megalops Holmes, a type of arthropod commonly known as a “sand flea”. This particular species has later been found all over the world.

A smaller arthropod known as Holophryxus alaskensis Richardson was also found in the Funter Bay samples, named after discoverer Harriet Richardson in 1905.

Also collected by the Albatross were a variety of fish and plankton including Stenobrachius nannochir (Commonly known as a Garnet lanternfish), Lycodapus grossidens Gilbert (Bigtooth eel), Holomesiella Anomala (a type of tiny shrimp),

A 1910 Bureau of Fisheries inventory collected 12 specimens of Pallasina barbata (tubenose poacher) from Funter Bay. These are frequently found in eelgrass and around dock pilings.

In 1921, the USDA’s Microbiological Laboratory collected samples of seawater at Funter Bay, and found Bact. aerogenes present (link, pg 85-109). It was assumed to be widely distributed through the region based on other samples. (While I am not an expert on microbiology, it appears this organism is now known as Enterobacter aerogenes and is a common gastrointestinal bacteria in animals and humans).

Researchers from the University of British Columbia visited Funter Bay in 1957 while conducting  a fisheries study. Several specimens were collected around Funter Bay, including Oligocottus maculosus (Tidepool sculpin), Pholis laeta (Crescent Gunnel), and Anoplarchus purpurescens (High cockscomb). When I was younger we would commonly catch these small fish in tidepools and under rocks.

Speciments of Agarum cribrosum Dumortier (a type of seaweed) were collected by the University of British Columbia at Station Island, in the mouth of Funter Bay, in 1980.

There is a type of soil classified as the “Funter Series” or “Funter Peat” under a 1991 soil classification survey. It is described as “very deep, very poorly drained soils that formed in fibrous peat underlain by loamy mineral materials. Funter soils occur in muskegs on floodplains and stream terraces. Slopes range from 0 to 5 percent”. This is found mostly in the meadows around Funter Bay.

Blackeye Goby and Kelp Perch were sampled at Funter Bay in 1998 by biologists at the Auke Bay Laboratory.

A specimen of Enypia venata (variable Girdle Moth) was reported at Funter Bay in a 2012 paper.

During my research on Alaska’s forgotten railroads, I came across a few incidents of shipwrecked railroad cars. While such events don’t really fit my railroad page, they are interesting enough to document here.

Because the Alaska Railroad is not connected to the rest of North America’s rail network, there is a regular traffic of rolling stock on rail-equipped barges to and from Pacific Northwest ports (more info and photos here). Various other communities and industries have experimented with such service, with stub rail yards appearing in Sitka, Ketchikan, Saxman and Valdez, connected to the outside world by rail barge docks. (This arrangement is also common at BC lumber mills).

As with other ocean-going vessels, these rail barges sometimes suffer casualties. The following are a few such incidents:

February 26, 1947: The barge PT&B Co 1651 ran aground on Louis (or Lewis) Reef, just North of Ketchikan. Rail cars bound for the Alaska RR were salvaged, but the barge was a total loss.

April 1964: Five freight cars of pulp from the Ketchikan mill fell off a barge during heavy weather off Dixon Entrance. Loss was estimated at $50,000 plus the value of the freight cars, which were owned by various railroads.

September 27, 1965: The train ship Alaska ran aground in a storm and sustained bow damage, but was able to refloat under its own power and reach Vancouver for repairs. This was a roll-on, roll-off train ferry rather than a barge. A photo of the ship is here, and more information is here.

December 13, 1967: The “Hydro-Train” barge Valdez towed by the Sea Witch was driven ashore West of Yakutat during a storm. The tug (another source says it was the Sea Giant) sought shelter in Yakutat Bay but the towline snagged on the bottom and the barge was driven ashore. Heavy waves smashed the barge and 42 loaded rail cars bound for Whittier were lost.

February 19, 1970: The tug Intrepid capsized and sank during a storm, with loss of 3 crew (5 survived in a life raft for several days before rescue). The tug’s tow was the 400ft barge Cordova carrying 40 railroad cars. The barge went aground near Yakutat and was later salvaged (photo of salvage operations here)

September 1975: Crowley Barge 414 went aground near Yakutat and was refloated by the Salvage Chief (Source and photo here)

October 20, 1987: The tank barge Seattle hit a reef while carrying chemicals to the Sitka pulp mill. In addition to on-board tanks of chlorine and caustic soda, the barge had rail cars filled with sulfer, ammonia, and sulfuric acid. Despite the potential for a hazardous spill, the barge was pulled off the reef with only minor damage.

January 1, 1997: The tug Blackhawk departed Whittier with a barge of empty rail cars, and arrived in Ketchikan a few days later with only half the barge. A passing boat informed the tug of the damage, as the crew could only see the front of the barge they were unaware it had broken in half. The Coast Guard located the back half drifting intact southwest of Valdez and it was towed back to port with no rail cars lost. (Some details from the Daily Sitka Sentinel of January 6, 1997).

Unknown Date: The rail car barge Griffco went aground near Yakutat and was re-floated.

Groundings near Yakutat are somewhat common in this list. The stretch of coast from Cross Sound to Prince William Sound is less protected than the rest of the route to the Gulf of Alaska. There are no sheltering islands to break up ocean wind and waves, and few harbors where vessels can seek shelter. It is sometimes called “Alaska’s Lost Coast”, due to the scarcity of settlements. Boats are frequently driven ashore by strong winds, but the relatively soft sand beaches help reduce damage in many cases. Some examples of wrecks in the area can be seen here and here.

The information here is from various sources as noted, as well as alaskashipwreck.com and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Alaska Shipwreck Table.

No, it’s not more Funter Bay History this time, just some local website archeology! I dug up a few horrifying old versions of this very website, from back when I actually pretended to know what HTML was for and didn’t just coast on WordPress! (I totally recommend WordPress to everyone now, it is way easier!)

First off, a proto-website, from the murky days of High School.

Those were the days when teachers encouraged you to share far too much personal data! “Hey teenagers, why not put everything about yourselves online! Throw your home address and phone number on there! Why not some high school transcripts? How about your birth certificate, mother’s maiden name, SSN, and blood type? It’s The Wonderful Internet, the more you share the better you’ll network and get jobs and no one would ever misuse such information!”. Even today people are shocked about how much I share about myself online (or at least, they’re shocked that I do it on an old fashioned website and not more quickly and efficiently with Facebook!)

The proto-website “portfolio” never made it onto saveitforparts.com, although I did have it linked until my high school eventually dumped that server in an old WWII hangar like they usually did with old tech (100% true).

Saveitforparts.com in early 2000 (Oh noes the frames and the animated GIFs they BURN MY EYES!)

It got better pretty quickly, although by late 2000 it kind of looked like a website designed inside a comic book…

By 2003 I seem to have gone with a more toned-down theme:

This look remained into at least 2009, by which time I was only a decade or so behind in moving towards this newfangled blogging style thingy.

And um… here’s some recursion into the current look so that I can come back to this post in another 14 years and say “Oh noes look at these awful templates and headers! This shouldn’t be on the NeoInterTubes! How could I have been so foolish to share photos of myself and enable identity theft cloning!”

It’s always interesting to look at the search terms that bring someone to a site. For my website I often assume that most of my visitors are friends and family, with maybe a few hobbyists drawn by my projects or research. It turns out there’s a wide range of searches that lead people to saveitforparts.com! Here are a few interesting ones (per my stats page).

“redneck sailboat” (71 visitors)

“free kayak plans plywood” (lots of visitors from variants of this, maybe I should put some actual plans online!)

“bayliner buccaneer 240” (again, lots of traffic from variants, hopefully Pagoo is interesting/useful to these people!)

“rusty 1994 honda accord” / “worlds crappiest car”

“airboat with wheels” (and variants on the small airboat theme)

“dont do drugs” (I have no idea what page matched this, but 6 people got here with this search!)

“messy basement” and “messy garage” (Thanks, Internet. Now I have to clean my place:-P)

“redneck raft”

“is course hero worth it” (No)

“how to steal notes from coursehero” (just Google it, that’s all they do to get content in the first place)

“umn advanced gis geog 5563” (see, this guy knows how to cheat without paying a fee for it!)

“design to withstand mine subsidence” (Your design would have to withstand falling into a massive pit, can your house fly? I would suggest getting a map of your local mines and not building over one. For the price of a custom design you could probably pay for some ground penetrating radar or exploratory drilling on your property instead)

“fishing jokes” (yeah, I have exactly one so far :-P)

“define:rustmobile” (OK)

“potato gun plans” (and some variants, I’m glad the spud guns are at least kinda popular)

“monarchmobile” (not mine, but I still see it around town sometimes, I passed it on I-94 the other day).

“redneck casemods” (the redneck theme keeps showing up 🙂 )

“how are mine shafts filled in” (sometimes with bed springs)

“platja des caragol” (apparently this means “Beach from Snail” in Catalan? Somehow 3 people found my site from this…)

“does a cat like to swim” (sometimes, but experiments are not advisable)

I recently sold the rustmobile! The fellow wanted to know surprisingly little about it, the entire transaction reminded me of a certain meme. Hopefully it treats him well and all the little annoyances aren’t too annoying!

By request, here’s a link to the Craigslist ad, the ad is pasted below for when it ends/expires!

Awful car for your awful driver! (Beater 1994 Honda Accord) – $500 (St Paul)

 

Is your kid pestering you to buy them a car? Do you or a friend run into things a lot and need a car that can take a beating? Get this one! It’s cheap, runs pretty well, won’t be a great financial loss if you crash it, and will teach you or your child valuable repair and maintenance skills (like how to use duct tape). Plus, it looks so bad that your kids won’t want to be seen in public with it, and will spend more time doing homework and duct taping parts back on instead of cruising around!

The quick overview:
-1994 Honda Accord LX
-2.2L 4-cylinder
-Automatic transmission
-???,??? Miles (Odometer stopped working 3 years ago at 215,000, so who knows).
-Have owned for ~5 years
-“Mostly” blue (“Sage Green” according to the colorblind guys at Honda). Hood is black-ish and there’s some rust and bondo highlights.
-Lots of “personality” / minor problems (will attempt to list them all below)

The GOOD:
-Engine works, brakes work, and wheels turn (it drives!)
-Lights work (you can drive at night!) Both high and low beam.
-Wipers work (you can drive in the rain!)
-Heater works and heats up quickly (you can drive in the winter!)
-One of the windows still rolls down (you can drive in the summer!)
-Blinkers mostly work (hopefully you know how to use these, unlike many drivers).
-No cracks! (Brand new windshield)
-Front brake pads recently replaced.
-Battery is pretty good, I’ve left the dome light on overnight and it still started.
-Newer starter
-Newer radiator
-New ignition wires, spark plugs, distributor cap and rotor.
-High-performance air intake. I don’t know why, it was just there when I bought it.
-I’ll include some spare parts like new rear brake pads, new fuel filter, set of new spark plugs, and color-matched touch-up paint. Can include a beat up, oil-stained Haynes manual too.
-Despite all the problems, it has been pretty reliable.

The BAD (and the ugly):
-Sometimes it loses power and backfires/stutters when first starting, or when accelerating. No pattern or reason to it. Not a huge deal as you can pump the gas and maintain speed, and it goes away after a while. Sometimes it does this every day for 10 minutes at a time, sometimes it will go weeks without doing it. Mechanics are mystified.

-Fuel line has been replaced with flexible rubber fuel hose where it goes through the engine compartment, and fuel filter has been moved (Honda originally designed it to require 37 rare and custom tools plus two helper monkeys and a double-jointed circus contortionist to change it). The filter is now somewhere you can actually see, which is good, but the line is not stock, which might make your insurance agent cry if they find out.

-Pushbutton start! Why is this bad? Someone was dumb enough to steal the thing (out of a parking lot full of nicer cars) and broke the ignition. Thanks to Ax-Man there’s now a hidden switch/button starter instead of a keyhole. It works fine, but is a little weird.

-It leaks oil. I’ve had it in to various shops and they can’t find the source, it just keeps coming out. I have to top it off once a month or so. Put some cardboard down or expect your driveway to be spotty.

-Exhaust is mostly gone so it’s super loud. This could be a plus if you want to sound like a high-performance racer or something, I’ve had teenagers try to drag race me a few times. The muffler is new, but the pipe between the catalytic converter and muffler keeps rusting away and/or falling off. I’ve repaired/replaced it 3 times and finally gave up. I’ve only been pulled over for it once, and that was because the muffler itself was visibly missing and I was the ugliest car in a yuppie suburb with bored cops.

-As mentioned, the odometer doesn’t work and is stuck at 215k. As a wild guess it’s “probably” between 250k and 300k now, but no way to guarantee.

-Rear windows don’t roll down anymore.

-Driver’s side window opener broke. You can push it up by hand and wedge it in place (wedge included!)

-Power locks are haunted. You have to manually lock/unlock it, but sometimes it will randomly start trying to re-lock itself repeatedly for no reason. Driver’s side lock is… complicated.

-No stereo (stolen) and no speakers. Power radio antenna is jammed half-out, still works fine if you put a radio in. I can include a CD stereo, but you’ll have to figure out the wiring and get speakers.

-Front driver’s side blinker on the bumper is not quite the right size. I ordered one for this model from Amazon and they sent something else, so I made it fit with zipties and science. It has a loose wire and doesn’t always work, haven’t had time to fix it but should be simple. There are still turn signals up next to the headlights (which work).

-Speaking of zipties, the headlights are mostly held on that way. The lenses have a few cracks. They all work though!

-Some bent and damaged parts of the front frame (ran into some stuff). Again, zipties save the day. Nothing really important is damaged and you can’t tell unless you open the hood and look close.

-Front bumper is held on with screws and zipties. If you pull too close to a curb it gets stuck and falls off sometimes.

-Hood doesn’t pop from inside, the cable is jammed. Have to pull on the ziptie sticking out of the grill (see a theme yet?)

-NO A/C. Not your normal “No AC” car that just needs freon, this one is basically unrepairable The compressor seized up, the freon went away, the fan relay is dead, and I ripped out a bunch of the pipes since they were in the way. I bypassed the compressor completely after it seized, the alternator has the shorter belt now.

-Rear passenger side seatbelt doesn’t want to retract. Might be fixable.

-Various body rust, typical for this model with MN road salt. I used to care, so I fixed some areas with bondo and bought the matched color from the dealership. Now the rust is coming back in the same spots and the Bondo is falling off and I don’t care anymore. I’ll include the can of matching spray paint and a smaller color pen in case you want it to look less trashy for some reason.

-Running boards on the passenger side is falling off

-Passenger side mirror is cracked and held on with a bolt. Still works fine, power-adjust still works.

-Minor dent in rear door from high-velocity cherry tomato (There was a potato gun involved and we were like “tomatoes just go splat, right?” WRONG).

-Hole drilled in trunk lid for ham radio antenna. Radio got stolen, so there’s just a mounting bracket there now (doesn’t leak).

-Secondary fan relay is shot (The second fan is supposed to be for the AC, but AC doesn’t work anyway). The fan is supposed to also kick in at higher temps but I’ve not really needed it. The fan itself works and has a switch on the dash in case it gets really hot.

-Speaking of fans, the main cooling fan likes to come on about 30 seconds after you park, and runs for a few minutes. Doesn’t seem to be a problem.

-Below ¼ tank, if you brake hard the car will want to stall since the gas sloshes away from the intake or something. It will start up again afterwards as long as there’s some gas in the tank.

To summarize, it’s ugly, it’s jury-rigged, and it’s got loads of “personality”, but will get you from point A to point B, and possibly meets at least several safety and road-worthiness standards!

Edit: Ad will be taken down once it’s gone, so please don’t email just to ask if I still have it. Email is preferred, I have fewer times when I can make phone calls. Thanks!

This is my new coffee table!

Made to look like an antique mine cart, and it actually works! I had to put bumpers on the tracks to keep it from rolling all the way off, but it’s fun to roll back and forth on the rails.

All the materials are salvaged and scrap, so after time and labor, this was essentially “free”! The glass came with a desk from a garage sale and we didn’t want it on the desk, so even that was basically a freebie. I did pay $5 for some flexible rubber bumpers to help keep the glass from sliding around, but those were optional.

I was tempted to run tracks into the kitchen so we could load up the table with food and then wheel it out to the living room… but the tracks would be a terrible trip hazard as well as difficult to clean around!

Here are some pictures from the construction process:

The salvaged mine-gauge rails and mine-size spikes, along with weathered lumber for the ties. I assembled the track section using the spikes for an authentic look.

Early fit-testing the wheel truck and rails.

The spikes originally looked pretty bad from sitting outside for 100  years (left). On the right is a spike after wire-brushing and cleaning to remove loose rust, then coating to prevent more rust from forming.

A close-up of the rails, before and after getting the same rust removal treatment. The finished rail is still pitted and rust-colored (which I think looks cool), but doesn’t have that annoying flaky rust falling off it.

Early assembly of the mine cart box.

We have a chicken named Pei at our house. On warm days she gets to come out in a mobile open-bottomed coop known as a chicken tractor (when they’ve pecked over all the grass in one area, you can move it to the next). Recently she had an interesting visitor.

A Red-tailed Hawk, about as big as the chicken. Oddly enough, she seemed unconcerned about him perching on top of the tractor and flying from side to side. Usually she would be upset about nearby predators. The hawk has been back a few times, but can’t seem to figure out chicken wire!

Some things I semi-collect: Local and interesting cups/glasses:

Some local-history and regional-interest beers. Grain Belt is a local favorite, Hamm’s and Schmidt’s are good local-brewing-history related although the beers themselves may be a bit meh. Keweenaw Brewing has an excellent selection of historically-themed beer from Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula mining area, Alaskan Amber is brewed in Juneau, and Kronenbourg is a favorite among French catacomb-goers. The Cheese Cave glass showed up at a thrift shop, and I got a whole slew of the Captain Morgan glasses at a garage sale.

A few from Psycho Suzi’s (I liked the old one better), and elsewhere.

Ha, no wonder they didn’t look too hard… this is straight from the Minneapolis PD’s description of my car after it was recovered, not anything that I told them 😛

(It still mostly runs by the way, and the next person to try and steal it will get a “surprise” 🙂 )