Door County, Wisconsin 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Door County, Wisconsin 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Door County, Wisconsin 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall

Door County, Wisconsin 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Depth Chart

$ 375.00
24.5 x 31 in
Baltic birch, hand-stained water
Up to nine laser-cut birch layers
Carved bathymetric relief, laser-etched labels
Soundings: NOAA nautical survey data
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.

  1. SurveyReal bathymetric sounding data sets every contour line before a single cut is made.
  2. CutEach depth band is laser-cut from its own sheet of Baltic birch, up to nine layers deep.
  3. StainWater layers are stained by hand, reading darker the deeper the water runs.
  4. StackThe sheets are registered and stacked in sequence, and the bed's true shape rises out of the wood.
  5. EtchDepths and place names are burned into the grain itself, never printed on it.
  6. FrameA solid Baltic birch frame and acrylic glass finish the piece, ready to hang.

The Door Peninsula in stacked Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: Green Bay on one side, open Lake Michigan on the other, and the strait at the tip that gave the county its name, every contour a laser-cut layer.

Door County carries some 300 miles of shoreline, more than almost any county in the country, strung with harbor villages and eleven lighthouses. At the peninsula's tip, the passage to Washington Island is Porte des Morts, Death's Door, named for the ships and canoes the currents claimed, and the chart shows why: shoal water and islands crowd a narrow, deep-cut channel. Down the peninsula, the Sturgeon Bay ship canal slices clean through, letting freighters skip the Door entirely. Bay side and lake side each get their own character in the birch, sheltered shallows against open blue water.

Contours are cut sheet by sheet and stacked by hand, names engraved into the wood, acrylic glass over the relief, solid Baltic birch frame.

Fish boil regulars, gallery crawlers, and everyone who has taken the ferry through Death's Door in a chop: your harbor is engraved here.

The names run up the bay side through Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, Ephraim, and Sister Bay to Gills Rock, with Baileys Harbor and Cana Island on the lake side and Washington Island across the passage. The big water beyond is the Lake Michigan chart.

  • 24.5 × 31 in
  • Solid Baltic birch frame
  • Acrylic glass front, ready to hang
  • Free next-business-day shipping on orders placed by 2 PM EST
  • 14-day returns
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