Lake Washington 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Lake Washington 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Lake Washington 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall
Lake Washington 3D layered wood map in laser-cut Baltic birch, shown framed against a light wall

Lake Washington 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Depth Chart

$ 188.00
13.5 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.

Lake Washington in stacked Baltic birch, 13.5 by 31 inches: Seattle's great freshwater neighbor carved one depth contour per layer, in a long format matched to the lake's twenty-mile line.

Lake Washington is deep enough that bridging it conventionally proved impossible, so Seattle floated its highways instead: the Evergreen Point span is the longest floating bridge in the world, and the I-90 crossing to Mercer Island runs on the same principle, concrete pontoons riding a lake more than 200 feet deep. Every August, Seafair's hydroplanes thunder around their course off Genesee, a tradition since 1950. On the chart, Mercer Island sits in its channel with the floating bridges engraved across the deep basin, infrastructure and bathymetry explaining each other.

Each contour is a separate laser-cut sheet, stacked by hand and engraved, behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame.

Bridge commuters cross a small inland sea twice a day and mostly forget it. This chart un-forgets it.

The engraving spans the floating bridges, Mercer Island, Kirkland and Bellevue's shores, and the ship canal connection at the north. Companions: the Seattle chart and Puget Sound.

  • 13.5 × 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
View details