Glen Lake, Michigan 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Depth 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.
Glen Lake beside the dunes, cut in layered Baltic birch at 16 by 20 inches. Big Glen and Little Glen, the Narrows between them, and the water color people drive hours for, all rendered one depth contour per layer.
The M-22 bridge at the Narrows splits Glen into its two halves: Little Glen, sandy and shallow enough to wade far out, and Big Glen, dropping to about 130 feet of glacial clarity. Sleeping Bear Dunes rises immediately to the west, with Alligator Hill standing between lake and dune, which is why the view from the Empire bluffs makes Glen look like a pool of Caribbean water misplaced in Michigan. On the chart, Little Glen stays in the top sheets while Big Glen's basin steps steadily down, the two personalities of one lake side by side in birch.
Contours are laser-cut, stacked by hand, and engraved with local names, the relief protected behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame.
Anyone who has floated the Narrows on a July afternoon knows exactly which layer of this chart they were sitting on.
Glen Arbor sits just north between the lake and Sleeping Bear Bay, with Empire down the shore. The scenic route past it all is the M-22 chart, and nearby Crystal Lake continues the run of improbable blue-green water down the coast.
- 16 × 20 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
Live from the water