Epoxy

Beach Pond

Connecticut, USA

Also known as Voluntown, Exeter

Beach Pond is named for a sand beach that Rhode Island farmers rode to every June, not to swim, but to collect sand for sharpening scythes.

A rifle was a sharpening tool, a grooved stick packed with tallow and rolled in fine sand. Cheap scythestones had not arrived yet, and the sand on the Rhode Island shore was reckoned particularly good for the job. Families rode over on the last Saturday in June, before haying began, and made a picnic of it.

Word spread. By one account the picnic grew into a full fair, with horse racing, wrestling and sprints, and rum sold from tin cups at three cents a drink. The custom is long gone. So is the swimming: the state beach closed in 2008 and has not reopened.

The state line cuts through the water. About a third of the pond is in Rhode Island, which means the beach the place is named for sits on the other side of the border from the name engraved on this board.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Walnut
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: February 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

Two colours here, blue for the water and white for everything else, so each had to be dammed off and held in place while the other went in. White is the unforgiving one. Laser engraving leaves soot in the grain, and in a white pour that soot comes back as a dirty yellow-brown, so the board has to be spotless and properly sealed before any resin touches it. Walnut is tighter grained than cherry, which helps, but it does not get you out of sealing.