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RALEIGH (MCT) — Grady Hunter hammered every one of the nails in his coffin. He also cut the walnut tree, planed the wood, designed and built the box that looks like a fine piece of furniture.

Thursday, he took a blue ribbon for his woodwork in the crafts and hobbies entries at the N.C. State Fair.

"I'm tickled to death with it," he said.

Hunter's entry has an arresting effect on people who walk through the exhibit. One minute, they're admiring Christmas wreaths, hand-painted eggs, a gourd made to look like a lady bug. Then they get to the woodcrafts, where there's a rocking chair, a side table and — is that a coffin?

Hunter, 75, was a bricklayer until his joints wore out. Then he became a homebuilder. He says he's never lived in a house he didn't build, and he didn't want to be laid to rest in someone else's work, either.

With 30 or 40 years of experience playing around with wood, he figured he could design a coffin that was at least as good as the ones he had seen, with their paltry inch of padding in the bottom. His has three inches of foam at the thinnest point, rising to 12 inches at the head so that his body will lie on an incline. The case has decorative hard-rock maple and Brazilian cherry. Near the head, Hunter routed his signature into the wood.

On the inside of the lid, Hunter plans to pin pictures of his son, daughter and grandchildren, so he can take those with him.

His health is good, Hunter says, though he's had a couple of strokes, a heart attack, bypass surgery and has only one artery carrying blood to his heart. Mainly, he wanted to build his own coffin because it was an interesting project, and so his children wouldn't have to pick one out after he's gone. It took about three months, working at it between taking care of several rental properties.

Hunter has lined up the pallbearers for his funeral. He's writing his own eulogy, too.

After the fair, he'll take the 200-pound casket back to his home in Raleigh and put it in the den, with a blanket over it.

"I don't want to flaunt it," he said.