Epoxy

Eels Lake

North Kawartha, Ontario, Canada

Also known as Eel's Lake, Apsley, North Kawartha

Eels Lake is not named for eels. It takes its name from Eel Cow, an Ojibwe chief who held the country here in the early 1800s.

The lake south of it is Jack Lake, and by local accounts Jack Cow was his brother, known as Handsome Jack. Jack held the country north of Stony Lake, and Eel's family used the ground beyond it.

Eels Creek runs into the lake and out of it again, south toward Stony. Beyond the height of land north of here the water turns the other way, toward the Ottawa.

The lake runs about eleven kilometres with more than fifty kilometres of shoreline, most of it broken into bays and islands. It is a Trent-Severn reservoir now and drops two or three metres over a season. Ice fishing is not permitted; the lake is a sanctuary.

Details

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

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

Not a wall to wall board, so the dam follows the waterline about half an inch out and the flood runs along the shore rather than across the face. That keeps the epoxy where it is wanted and holds the staining exposure inside a narrow band, which matters more on maple than on anything else we use. Eels Lake makes that band hard work: the outline is nothing but bays, points and islands, and the narrow water between them is where air lodges with nowhere to go. The pin and the compass sit out on their own in the bare wood, each with its own dam.