Cape Cod, Massachusetts 3D Wood Map | Laser-Cut Birch Nautical 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.
Cape Cod carved in full relief: the flexed arm of Massachusetts in stacked, laser-cut Baltic birch, with Cape Cod Bay inside the curl, the open Atlantic outside it, and every depth contour cut as its own layer.
The Cape is a glacial deposit that decided to become a place, forty miles of sand hooking into the sea and curling back on itself at Provincetown. Three waters give it three coasts: the calm bay inside the arm, Nantucket Sound warming the southern beaches, and the outer Atlantic shore that the National Seashore keeps wild from Chatham to Race Point. The canal severs the wrist, and on the chart it reads as a clean engraved cut between the bay and Buzzards Bay, while Stellwagen Bank's shoal water rises in the birch off the fist where the whale boats go.
Every contour comes from a separate laser-cut sheet, stacked by hand into true relief, names engraved into the wood, acrylic glass over the face. The solid Baltic birch frame comes in Dark, Light, or White.
Everyone's Cape is a different town and a different water. All of them fit inside this one arm of birch.
The engraving runs from the canal through Barnstable and Hyannis, out to Chatham's elbow, up the back shore past Wellfleet and Truro to Provincetown, with Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in the sounds below. Companion charts: Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the touchable Cape Cod UV map.
- 16 × 20 in or 24.5 × 31 in
- Solid Baltic birch frame in Dark, Light, or White
- 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