Sacramento, California 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.
Sacramento in laser-cut Baltic birch, 24.5 by 31 inches: the river city carved one depth contour per layer, where two rivers meet and California's inland water world begins.
Sacramento grew at the confluence, the Sacramento River meeting the American right at the old embarcadero where the Gold Rush landed its hopefuls in 1849. Old Sacramento's wooden waterfront still faces the river beneath the golden Tower Bridge, and downstream the water fans into the Delta, a thousand miles of sloughs and levee channels winding toward the bay, the state's great boating backcountry. On the chart, the two rivers' engraved channels join and bend exactly where the city's story starts, with the Delta's maze beginning at the frame's edge.
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.
River cats, Delta loops, and gold-rush ghosts share this water. The chart holds the whole confluence.
The engraving spans the confluence and Old Sacramento, the Tower Bridge, Discovery Park, and the river reaches toward the Delta.
- 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