Lake Superior, Michigan 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.
The biggest lake on Earth, cut into birch. This chart holds all of Superior at 24.5 by 31 inches, from Duluth to the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, with every depth contour a separate laser-cut layer.
Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, holding a tenth of the planet's fresh surface water, and it could swallow the other four Great Lakes with room to spare. Its bottom lies 1,333 feet down, and on this chart that immensity is what you notice first: the layers keep going, shelf after shelf of birch dropping toward the deepest engraving on the map. The water that inspired songs and swallowed ships reads here as depth you can trace with a finger.
Layers are cut one contour at a time and stacked by hand, so the relief is structural, not painted on. Names and soundings are engraved into the wood, the finish shows the grain, and acrylic glass keeps it all clean on the wall.
People who love this lake tend to love it fiercely: the cold, the fog, the ore boats on the horizon. Their stretch of shore is on here.
The engraving carries the places that define Superior: Isle Royale far out in the northwest, the Apostle Islands off Bayfield, the Keweenaw Peninsula reaching halfway across, Pictured Rocks east of Munising, and Whitefish Point at the entrance to the bay where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in 1975. Superior also anchors the top of the full Great Lakes chart if you want all five in one piece.
- 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