Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Inside Passage, Alaska 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall

Inside Passage, Alaska 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Nautical Chart

$ 346.00
Size
Frame
13.5 x 43 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 Inside Passage in a 13.5 by 43 inch panorama of stacked Baltic birch: Southeast Alaska's sheltered sea road carved one depth contour per layer, the long format made for the long route.

The Inside Passage is North America's great protected waterway, a thousand miles of channels threading between mountainous islands, and Southeast Alaska lives entirely on it: Juneau remains the only state capital unreachable by road, Ketchikan stacks itself on pilings over the water, and the ferries of the Marine Highway serve as the region's actual highway. Glacier Bay calves its ice into the northern reaches, humpbacks work the channels in bubble-net teams each summer, and Misty Fjords walls its inlets in three-thousand-foot granite. On the chart, the deep engraved channels wind between island layers for four straight feet, the route every cruise and ferry follows rendered in birch.

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.

The road is water here. This is the road map.

The engraving spans Ketchikan to Glacier Bay: Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau, and the channels between. The whole state runs on the Alaska chart; the route's southern half on the BC Coast chart.

  • 13.5 × 43 in, the longest chart we cut
  • 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
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