Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri 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.
Lake of the Ozarks in stacked Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: Missouri's serpentine giant carved one depth contour per layer, all the dragon's bends included.
The Lake of the Ozarks has more shoreline than California, roughly 1,150 miles of it folded into a winding body locals call the Magic Dragon for its shape on the map, a shape this chart renders in full coiled glory. Bagnell Dam closed on the Osage in 1931, at the time one of the largest projects of its kind, and the lake it made became the Midwest's great water playground: coves by the hundred, the mile-marker system standing in for street addresses, Party Cove's flotillas earning national notoriety, and the quiet arms holding crappie docks and morning skiers. On the chart, the Osage's drowned channel snakes through every engraved bend.
Each contour is a separate laser-cut sheet, stacked by hand and engraved, behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame.
Everyone here gives directions by mile marker. The whole dragon, marker to marker, is on this chart.
The engraving spans Bagnell Dam through the Gravois and Niangua arms to the upper Osage.
- 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
Live from the water