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

Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin 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 Winnebago, the largest lake lying entirely within Wisconsin, carved in Baltic birch at 13.5 by 31 inches: thirty miles of water from Fond du Lac to Neenah, every contour a laser-cut layer.

Winnebago spreads across some 132,000 acres but rarely deepens past 21 feet, a vast shallow bowl the Fox River flows through on its way to Green Bay. That shallowness makes the lake's signature spectacle possible: each February, thousands of shanties go out on the ice for the sturgeon spearing season, chasing one of the largest self-sustaining lake sturgeon populations in the world, fish that can outweigh the people spearing them. On the chart, the whole broad basin sits in a few generous top layers, the honest portrait of a lake that is all surface and sky.

Each contour is cut from its own sheet and stacked by hand, names engraved into the wood, acrylic glass over the face, solid Baltic birch frame.

Spearers, sailors out of Fond du Lac, and Friday fish fry loyalists up and down the shore: this is the big water of the Fox Valley, in birch.

Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Neenah, and Menasha ring the lake, with High Cliff State Park on the ledge above the northeast shore. Wisconsin companions include Green Lake just west and Mendota and Monona at Madison.

  • 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
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