al ladd
08-26-2022, 10:36 AM
I'm a lifetime competitive runner (my PR's were all set 40 years ago...) and this spring I was asked to make the awards for my beloved local marathon, the New England Green River Marathon. The course follows the Green River from up near its source in the Green Mountains of Vermont, down an idyllic narrow wooded valley into Greenfield, MA. It's a beautiful, (downhill!) course, a really special race. The race directors are fellow running friends, so I really wanted to go all out on this one. I made 23 boards for them of differing sizes, all with the same inlaid image in sapele, birds-eye maple, koa , quilted maple, and araracanga. The borders for the large boards are eucalyptus (that came on a pallet of koa many years ago), and cherry for the small ones The inlays are 3/32" thick. The larger boards have tapered dovetail bread board ends. The video link shows how I round-over the edges, climb feeding with my Little Proteus power feeder. The project was a perfect synthesis of conventional woodworking techniques with my shop built CNC router doing things that otherwise would be impractical if not impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_rSRF9Xj0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_rSRF9Xj0s