Epoxy

Great Lakes

Ontario, Canada

Also known as Laurentian Great Lakes, HOMES, Lake Michigan-Huron, Georgian Bay

There are five Great Lakes on this board, and hydrologists count four.

Michigan and Huron sit at exactly the same elevation, 176 metres, joined by the Straits of Mackinac. The strait is about 5 km wide at the main channel and 90 m deep, which is enough water moving between them to hold both at the same level. Every other connection in the system is a river running downhill from one lake into the next. This one flows in either direction depending on conditions. Push the level up on one side and it comes back on the other.

Treated as one body, Lake Michigan-Huron is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. Superior is the largest only if you keep them apart.

The split is convention rather than geography. Two basins, two names on every map since the French were here, a border running through one of them, and a schoolroom acronym that needs five letters.

Details

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

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

Maple, and not wall to wall. The dam follows the waterline about half an inch out on every lake, so the flood runs along the shore and the rest of the face stays bare.

This is five separate water pours in one board, and the shorelines are some of the the more complex we have laid down. The north shore of Georgian Bay comes apart into hundreds of small islands, and every one of them is a piece of wood that has to survive both the flood and the sand back. Superior and Michigan are more forgiving through the long open runs and then break up again at every bay.

The black is the harder half. The state and province lines are single engraved strokes running the width of the board, some of them following a river, and a line that fine cannot be dammed. Same with the lake names, which are small enough that the letters are cavities rather than areas. All of it goes in by syringe, ahead of the water, and every one of those runs has to be filled without flooding the wood on either side of it.

Maple is the least forgiving wood we use. It has the smallest sanding margin and shows staining more readily than walnut or cherry, so on a board carrying this much fine black work over this much bare surface, the seal has to hold everywhere before anything goes down.