Houston, Texas 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.
Houston in laser-cut Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: the Bayou City's path to the sea carved one depth contour per layer, from the dredged channel to Galveston Bay.
Houston willed itself into a port: Buffalo Bayou was dredged into the Ship Channel a century ago, and the fifty-mile waterway now carries one of the busiest port complexes in the country past the San Jacinto Monument, where Texas won itself at the battleground beside the water, the battleship Texas moored in attendance. Galveston Bay opens beyond, wide and shallow and working, with Clear Lake on its western shore hosting NASA's astronauts and one of the largest concentrations of pleasure boats on the Gulf. On the chart, the channel's engraved trench runs arrow-straight through the bay's soft layers, ambition rendered in bathymetry.
Contours are laser-cut sheet by sheet, stacked by hand, engraved, and finished behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame in Dark or Light.
Bayous, battleships, and mission control share one watershed. Charted.
The engraving spans the channel and San Jacinto, Clear Lake and Kemah, and the bay toward the island. Companions: Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico.
- 24.5 × 31 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