5 Best-Selling Wood Charts
Some charts we make sell steadily, year in and year out, no matter the season. They are the ones people return to when they want a piece of water on the wall that means something. Below are five of Woodchart's best sellers, each one a laser-etched relief carved in Baltic birch, and each one earning its place for a reason. Here is what they are, where they come from, and why they keep leaving the workshop.
The five that keep selling
- Salish Sea, Washington
- The Great Lakes
- Lake Tahoe Clock
- Lake Winnipesaukee Cribbage Board
- Chesapeake Bay Serving Tray
They cover a lot of ground: two coasts, an inland freshwater sea, and a New England lake, in formats that range from a full wall chart to a cribbage board you can carry to the dock. What they share is real survey data, honest depth, and a shape you recognize the moment you walk past it.
1. Salish Sea, Washington 3-D Nautical Wood Chart
The Salish Sea is the network of inland waters shared by Washington State and British Columbia, taking in Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It covers roughly 6,500 square miles and threads past more than 170 named islands, the San Juans chief among them. It is orca country, the summer range of the Southern Resident killer whales, and the reason people plan whole trips around a ferry schedule and a pair of binoculars.
The Salish Sea chart is a favorite because the water here has so much to say. Every channel, strait, and bay is cut to its true depth, so the drowned valleys and steep-sided passages read as real relief instead of flat lines. We even etch the international boundary running through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the line that separates the United States from Canada out on open water. For anyone who has kayaked the San Juans or watched a humpback surface off the bow, it is the closest thing to standing on the deck again.
2. Great Lakes 3-D Nautical Wood Chart
The Great Lakes chart is a perennial best seller, and it is easy to see why. Together, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, holding about a fifth of all the surface fresh water on the planet. Superior alone is the deepest, plunging past 1,300 feet, and cold enough at that depth to feel like a different world. Scattered across the five are something on the order of 35,000 islands.
Each lake has its own character, and the chart shows it. Superior is vast and severe, Michigan long and dune-lined, Huron broken by the great sweep of Georgian Bay, Erie shallow and quick to storm, Ontario compact and deep. Carving all five as a single connected system, with the seabed of each rendered layer by layer in birch, turns a familiar map into something you can read with your fingertips. It is a chart for anyone who grew up on these inland seas, or who wants the whole freshwater kingdom on one wall.
3. Lake Tahoe Clock
People say you are not quite the same after a trip to Lake Tahoe, and the numbers back up the feeling. Straddling the California and Nevada line high in the Sierra Nevada, Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America and the second-deepest lake in the United States, reaching about 1,645 feet. It formed over two million years ago, and its water is famous for a clarity that lets you see stones far below the surface.
The Lake Tahoe Clock takes that shoreline and puts it to work. It is a full bathymetric chart of the lake set into a twelve-inch wall clock, so every hour brings back a day on the water: a morning paddle at Sand Harbor, an afternoon on the Rubicon Trail, an evening watching the light go pink on the peaks. It stays a best seller because it does two jobs at once, telling the time while keeping one of the most beautiful lakes in the country in view all day long.
4. Lake Winnipesaukee Cribbage Board
Lake Winnipesaukee has been New Hampshire's quiet summer favorite for generations. It is the state's largest lake, about 72 square miles of water dotted with more than 250 islands, and its name is often read as "smile of the Great Spirit." Families have been coming back to the same coves for decades, which is exactly the kind of place that earns a keepsake you can actually use.
That is what makes the Winnipesaukee cribbage board such a steady seller. The lake's shoreline becomes the playing surface, with the peg track worked into the chart itself. It travels with you for a game on the dock and goes back on the shelf as decor when the cards are put away.
What comes with the board
- Metal scoring pegs
- A standard deck of cards
- A portable, sized-to-carry design
- Full skunk and double-skunk scoring lines
- A hidden storage compartment for pegs and cards
It is a small object that carries a whole summer in it, and it is a good introduction to the cribbage board collection if your lake is not Winnipesaukee.
5. Chesapeake Bay Serving Tray
The Chesapeake is the largest estuary in the United States, running roughly 200 miles from the mouth of the Susquehanna down to the Atlantic, fed by more than 150 rivers and streams. It is blue crab and oyster country, a working bay with a deep culture around what comes out of the water, which makes it a natural fit for a piece that lives in the kitchen.
The Chesapeake Bay Serving Tray keeps selling because it earns its keep. The laser-cut outline shows the bay's depths and shallows in Baltic birch, with landmarks and points of interest etched right in, and then it goes to work carrying steamed crabs, oysters on ice, or a round of drinks out to the porch. It is decor that sets the table, the nautical vibe of the Bay brought straight into the room.
Why a best seller stays a best seller
These five sell for the same underlying reason. Each starts from real bathymetric and topographic survey data, gets cut layer by layer into Baltic birch, and ends up as honest depth you can trace with a finger, not a flat print of a coastline. A wood chart holds a place the way a photograph never quite manages, because you built a summer there and now the shape of the water is on your wall, or your table, or your card game.
If one of these is your water, it is waiting. If it is not, the shape you are looking for probably is. Start with the full best-sellers collection and find the lake, bay, or sea you know by heart.