Catalina Island, California 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Nautical Chart
How the Water Becomes Wood
A chart is a stack of flat sheets until the water's real soundings tell it what shape to take.
- SurveyReal bathymetric sounding data sets every contour line before a single cut is made.
- CutEach depth band is laser-cut from its own sheet of Baltic birch, up to nine layers deep.
- StainWater layers are stained by hand, reading darker the deeper the water runs.
- StackThe sheets are registered and stacked in sequence, and the bed's true shape rises out of the wood.
- EtchDepths and place names are burned into the grain itself, never printed on it.
- FrameA solid Baltic birch frame and acrylic glass finish the piece, ready to hang.
Catalina Island in laser-cut Baltic birch, 16 by 20 inches: the island twenty-two miles off the SoCal coast, carved one depth contour per layer with its coves, its isthmus, and its improbable residents.
Catalina runs on charming anachronisms. The Casino at Avalon, a 1929 art deco ballroom that never hosted gambling, still commands the harbor. Glass-bottom boats have worked the kelp coves for over a century. And the interior belongs partly to bison, descendants of a herd shipped over for a 1924 film shoot and never shipped back. At Two Harbors, the island pinches to a half-mile isthmus with anchorages on both sides. On the chart, the steep drop-offs that make the diving famous fall away fast in the birch, deep blue water close aboard nearly everywhere.
Contours are laser-cut sheet by sheet, stacked by hand, engraved, and set behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame in Dark or Light.
Twenty-two miles across the channel and a century back in time. Both distances are on the chart.
The engraving spans Avalon and its casino, Two Harbors and the isthmus, and the coves between. The mainland shore runs on the LA to San Diego chart.
- 16 × 20 in
- Solid Baltic birch frame in Dark or Light
- Acrylic glass front, ready to hang
- Free next-business-day shipping on orders placed by 2 PM EST
- 14-day returns
Live from the water