Epoxy

Lake of the Woods

Kenora, Ontario, Canada

Also known as Kenora, Sioux Narrows, Rainy River, Sunset Country

This lake has more shoreline than Lake Superior, and it is a twentieth of the size.

Lake of the Woods covers about 4,350 square kilometres. Superior covers roughly nineteen times that. But Lake of the Woods contains more than 14,500 islands, and once you count every island edge the total comes to around 105,000 kilometres of shore. The outline alone, ignoring the islands, is about 40,000.

That is what the shape on this board is showing. The lake is not really a basin. It is a drowned landscape of Precambrian rock, with the high ground still standing above water as islands and the low ground flooded between them.

It sits where Ontario, Manitoba and Minnesota meet. Water comes in from the Rainy River in the southeast and leaves northwest down the Winnipeg River, eventually reaching Hudson Bay. Kenora is at the north end.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Walnut
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: August 2026

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the Lake of the Woods map by Keyway

How this one was made

Walnut, inset, with the dam following the waterline about half an inch out.

This is the most dam length we ever put on a board. Not the longest shoreline in real terms, but the most of it compressed into one piece. The lake is a scatter of hundreds of islands and channels, and each island is dammed on every side while each channel is dammed on both. The eastern half is where it concentrates, breaking into a lacework of bays and points down to the smallest features the engraving will hold. Islands come out as specks of walnut a millimetre or two across, ringed completely, and every one of them has to survive the flood and the sand back.

The southwest is the opposite. Big Traverse Bay is open water and reads as one long uninterrupted curve. Two very different kinds of work on the same board.

Two colours, the water and the black. The black does the lettering, the compass rose and the small heart at the end of the script line.