Epoxy

Lake Pend

Idaho, USA

Also known as Pend Oreille, Sandpoint, Bayview

The US Navy tests submarines here, three hundred and seventy five miles from the nearest ocean.

Lake Pend Oreille runs about 1,150 feet deep, fifth deepest in the country, and it is unusually quiet. Both of those matter. The Acoustic Research Detachment at Bayview has been running scale submarine models down this lake since the 1940s, measuring the noise a hull makes so the full sized versions can be built to make less of it. Fresh water helps as well, being far kinder to equipment than salt.

The models are named after the fish that live here. Kokanee, Cutthroat, Dolly Varden, Pike, Whitefish, Steelhead.

The depth is glacial. The Purcell Lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet pushed south out of Canada down this trench and dug it out. The same ice, a short way east, dammed the Clark Fork and held back Glacial Lake Missoula.

Details

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

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

The lake itself pours easily enough. The work is at the edges, where the Clark Fork comes in from the east and the Pend Oreille runs out to the west, both leaving the board as channels narrow enough to need filling slowly. A river meeting the edge has to be dammed as carefully as any border, with the added problem that there is almost no width there to dam.