Charlotte Harbor, Florida 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.
Charlotte Harbor in laser-cut Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: one of Florida's great estuaries carved layer by layer, from the Peace and Myakka river mouths down to the pass that made it famous.
Boca Grande Pass, at the harbor's gulf entrance, is the tarpon capital of the world without much argument: every spring the silver kings stack in its deep hole and the guide boats stack above them, a ritual more than a century old. Behind the pass, the harbor spreads wide and productive, Gasparilla Island with its old phosphate-port lighthouse, Cayo Costa keeping a whole barrier island as state park wilderness, Punta Gorda facing the open water. On the chart, the pass reads as a dramatic deep cut in the birch against the harbor's broad shallow layers.
Contours are laser-cut sheet by sheet, stacked by hand, engraved, and finished behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame in Dark, Light, or White.
Tarpon anglers speak of the pass in tones normally reserved for cathedrals. Here is the floor plan.
The engraving spans Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, Boca Grande and Cayo Costa, and the river mouths at the head. South lies Sanibel and the Fort Myers coast.
- 24.5 × 31 in
- Solid Baltic birch frame in Dark, Light, or White
- 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