Wood Map Of NS With A Twist

…Actually a few twists in this map of NS to arrive at the finished project. Makes things interesting. We got a request for a map of NS from an American gentleman wanting a surprise for his wife. I like him already.

He was browsing our “For Sale” page and came across this “lobster trap” map of NS.

He said he wanted it bigger so he could hang it on the wall. All of our maps come with a hanger on the back for hanging, the picture above was just to show another way of displaying it. But…bigger it shall be. We settled on 24 inches across for the finished project.

For the first twist… he asked for the map to be painted with the flag of NS on it. My favourite one.

Jim did his magic on the computer, making sure everything was sized in proportion.

Then we printed out 2 copies, one for cutting out the wood map, and one to transfer the pattern onto the map once it was cut out.

We decided to divide and conquer on this project. Jim would make the “lobster trap” back board and I would take care of the map. I have lots of practice on all the tools in the workshop except for the table saw and the planer. I just see fingers going missing on the table saw, it sounds like an airplane taking off, so any project that involves that machine requires Jim’s 10 digits.

In the workshop, we took one of the paper patterns and secured it with tape onto a piece of 1/8th inch thick plywood. Then Jim drilled a pilot hole around the Bras d’Or lakes so that the interior part could be cut out first.

I got to work scrolling around the coast of NS.

As I made my way around the western coast of NS, I found I was having to really apply a lot of pressure to get the blade cutting, that’s when this happened…

Jim changed the blade for me. What a difference in cutting with a sharp spiral blade. In no time the map was ready for paint. I used the second copy of the pattern to transfer the maps details onto the wood using tracing paper.

I painted 2 coats of white, then 2 coats of blue.

The red was next, and finally the yellow, both done with a very fine tipped brush.

While I was busy painting, Jim was busy building our neighbor a box for him to keep his generator in.

Back to our project…next up was building the backer board to resemble a lobster trap. For the “net” Jim used copper wire which got bent around a jig he made just for this project.

With the net complete, it was time to cut, dry fit, and sand the slats.

The lobster trap slats got nailed to support slats that are in behind.

Once we were happy with how things lined up, Jim cut out a 1/8th inch thick piece of plywood the same size as the project for a backer.

The backer needed some paint so I used grey for the body…

Then added a bit of black and brown to take the newness off.

Pretty straight forward so far…second twist was a request for the project to be lit up. We usually add the lights in behind the map which will be attached with little spacers to raise the map off the backer board giving it more dimension. We threw the idea around of putting the lights behind the slats…so inside the lobster trap instead of behind the map.

Decided to go directly behind the map so first we added spacers to raise the map up off the lobster trap. These were glued in place. Once the glue was dry Jim added the lights. The string is 6 feet long and got woven around the spacers so they wouldn’t be seen but would project light from around the map.

With that complete, it was time to glue the map to the spacers.

We weighed it down and left it overnight to fully dry.

Ready to see?

And with the lights on…

This was a really fun project. You can get a map built specifically to suit your taste. Stay tuned to see what we are working on next. Hint…another map using the parts left over after cutting out this NS map.

Later.