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Concrete Floor for Curlers

Detroit Free Press * November 4, 1909

Detroit Curling Club Plans to Lay One Before the First Frost Comes to Town.

Plans are being made by the Detroit Curling Club for the laying of a concrete floor in its clubhouse.  It will benefit the club and its members in two ways.  With a concrete floor it will enable the curlers to get under way with the first freezing weather, make possible more curling days, and do away with the necessity of waiting for the ice to build up.

The second reason is, when the curling season is over, it will make the club desirable as a roller rink, for which purpose it would be rented by the club, following the plan now in use by the Windsor Curling Club.

When this floor was installed they made ice by waiting for cold weather and then they opened the windows.  About 15 years later this floor was torn up and a new floor was installed that contained piping connected to a steam powered compressor for ice making – possibly the first compressor installed in a curling club in North America. 

 The above photo was taken about 1910.

(Ed. Note:  I have not yet found an article that indicates if The Club did rent the place out for roller skating.)

The History of Pebbling

When?  Where?  Who?  These are difficult questions to answer.  How?  Is the question we will try to answer.  Pebbling the ice is not something a person does to outdoor, natural ice.  Once curling moved inside, the pebbling became a necessity.  Therefore, pebbling began in Canada and the USA.

 

The earliest reference we have found is in John Kerr’s book Curling in Canada and the United States published in 1904.  Mr. Kerr writes:  “Pebbling is the final finishing touch for making ice for curling.  Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, in this final process hot water is used; and when the mercury indicates a near approach to zero the water may be almost at boiling point, the objective being that the heated water may melt a seat for itself in the ice-sheet before freezing.  … In all the best rinks it is now applied by means of a “sprinkler”. 

 

Another member of this 1902 Scots tour wrote:  “The surface of the ice is either sprinkled or corrugated.  In the former case a watering-can with a very fine rose is used, and hot water is sprinkled sparingly over the whole surface.  This, of course, makes no pattern on the ice.  In the latter,  small streams of water issue from a pipe about 5 feet long, with a pin-head aperture an inch apart, the pipe being fed from a tank attached to it containing hot water.  This is rapidly run diagonally across the ice first from one side and then across so as to make a diamond pattern.  This gives a certain texture to the ice surface, so that the stone answers more readily to the turn of the hand than it possibly can do on perfectly smooth ice.”

 

Try to imagine a 5 or 6 foot pipe with small holes drilled in one straight line an inch apart the entire length of the pipe.  The pipe is connected to a six or eight foot hose which is then connected to a large tank of water.  Now imagine a three man team to work this contraption.  One fellow would lay the pipe on the ice near the hack on sheet number 1.  The other two gents would handle the tank of water.  When they are all ready, someone turns on the water and it flows out of the small holes onto the ice.  The man starts dragging the pipe across the ice in a diagonal ending up at the far end of sheet number 4.  They repeat the process until the entire arena is covered in one diagonal direction.  Then they start again at the near hack on sheet 4 going diagonally to the opposite end of sheet 1.  This new pebble crisscrosses the first pebble. The result is long ridge pebbling in a diamond shape instead of the individual ‘dots’ that we see today.

 

What would this pebble look like?  The picture below was taken at The Detroit Curling Club in 1949 during the Scots Tour.  The players stacked brooms for a photo-op.

When the photo is enlarged the diamond shaped “ridge” pebbling is easy to see.

This type of pebbling is normally done only once per week.  Even at the Canadian Brier they only made ridge pebbling at the start of competition.  No more pebbling during the week.  As the week progressed the ice would become more “swingy”.

Curling in the Olympics

Curling made its first appearance on the Olympic program as a medal sport in 1924 in Chamonix, France then returned in 1998 at the Nagano Games.  The 1924 games saw teams from Great Britain, Sweden and France.  Great Britain (Scotland) won the gold medal in 18 end games.  Yes – I said 18 ends!

Curling was a demonstration sport five times: in Lake Placid in 1932, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, in Innsbruck in 1964, in Calgary in 1988 and in Albertville in 1992. Since its re-introduction in 1998, curling has been made up of one women’s and one men’s tournament.

At the 1932 Winter Olympics the venue was the Olympic Indoor Arena in Lake Placid, New York. Eight teams from two countries (4 American teams and 4 Canadian Teams) competed in this event. Only men's curling was contested at these Olympics. The matches were held on February 4 and 5, 1932. Each of the Canadian teams played against each of the American teams – only 16 ends this time.

One of the American teams was from The Detroit Curling Club.  They represented Michigan.  Unfortunately, they lost all four games:  Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and Northern Ontario.

Skip: George Lawton
Third: Don Fraser
Second: E. R. Palmer
Lead: W. Herb Morley

1932 - Michigan vs. Quebec

The three men facing the camera are the Detroiters

The patches given to the contestants

The "D" is for Demonstration - not Detroit