Long Beach Island, New Jersey 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.
Long Beach Island in laser-cut Baltic birch, 13.5 by 43 inches: eighteen miles of island, one causeway, and the inlet with the famous lighthouse, carved one depth contour per layer.
LBI runs on its own arithmetic: one road on, one road off, eighteen miles of towns strung between Barnegat Light and Holgate, and no boardwalk anywhere, which is precisely how the island likes it. Old Barney, the 1859 lighthouse, stands over Barnegat Inlet's shifting shoals at the north end, one of the coast's trickiest passages and best fishing grounds. Ship Bottom carries its shipwreck-era name at the causeway, Beach Haven runs the social south, and the bay behind holds the sailing camps and crabbing docks of everyone's childhood. On the chart, the island's long thin line divides ocean shelf from bay shallows for four straight feet of birch.
Contours are laser-cut sheet by sheet, stacked by hand, engraved, and finished behind acrylic glass in a solid Baltic birch frame.
LBI people measure summer in causeway crossings. Here is what the crossing leads to.
The engraving spans Barnegat Light to Holgate with the inlet, the causeway, and the bay behind. The full coast runs on the New Jersey Coast chart.
- 13.5 × 43 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