Oja's Handcrafted Furniture

This is the story of a log that was retrieved from the shores of Thunder Beach, in the north end of Tiny Township, in the Midland Penetanguishene area of Georgian Bay.

At the turn of the century there was a sawmill on the west shore, that was owned by the Potvin family. It had the logging rights to Christian, Beckwith and Hope Islands, which were a few miles off shore. The logs were cut from the islands and banded together in large rafts, and towed to the mill. As the logs sat in the water, waiting to get milled, some would get waterlogged and sink. The area in front of the mill has a high concentration of logs for the present day divers to retrieve.

In August of 1921, the mill caught fire, under rather suspicious pretenses. The Potvins had just sold the mill to a Mr. Manley Chew of Midland. He had a state of the art sawmill in Midland, and was apparently not interested as much in the aging Thunder Beach mill, as in the rich logging rights it had. As the story goes, it was a Friday, and all of the workers were sent home a few hours early. As they headed down the road, they noticed the smoke coming from the direction of the mill, and hurried back. With the mill burning, the men did what they could to try and extinguish the blaze and save what wood they could.

This effort included rolling the logs that were on the gangway back into the water.

We have a log that was scorched on its side, as a result of fire. The burn marks are consistent with burns that would have been caused while the log was in a horizontal position. Given the history of the area, we believe this log was on the gangway of the sawmill, and rolled into the water at the time of the fire.

The log was original growth oak, about 11'6" long, and about 30" diameter, and known to be under the water for at least 81 years. It has been quarter sawn into 4/4 boards, and dried to 6-8% moisture content, and is ready to be made into a special piece of furniture. It yielded 174 board feet of quality lumber, which would be enough to make a beautiful buffet and hutch. The cost of the log alone is $3,800.00.

If you have a special piece of furniture you would like to commission Oja's Handcrafted Furniture to build for you using this log, please let us know. We would be happy to meet with you, and make your plans reality.