What was Huck thinking?

A series of occasional notes about things we find at the camp and how we try to understand the quirky engineering genius that was in my father's handiwork.
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The kindling box in the sauna contains scraps of wood, mouse-chewed newspapers dating from 1973, and this.

It's a thick piece of copper wire sticking up from a hole in the bottom of the box (which is also the floor of the sauna). It made enough sense for him, but not for us.