Lake Starnberg bathymetric chart

Finished product

I made another bathymetric chart, similar to the one posted here earlier: http://imgur.com/gallery/nerDf.
Instead of seven layers of 3mm plywood, this uses 27 * 1mm, resulting in a lot more detail.

Creating the cutting files

I got my hands on a very detailed depth chart of Lake Starnberg, just south of Munich. It has depth lines for every 5m of this very deep alpine lake (max: 127m).
I manually traced all the depth lines in Inkscape, a free vector graphics software and added some of the surrounding features based on maps and aerial photos.

A couple of weeks later

I had the 27 layers of birch plywood laser cut and engraved. Here you can see the first few layers being stained.

More staining

Here I'm staining one of the intermediate layers. you can see some of the others in the background. I stacked them on top of each other to stop them from warping too much from the stain.

Putting it all together

Using plain old wood glue to assemble the layers...

Spreading out the glue...

Putting the collection to good use

People liked the Whisky collection last time, so here it is again, helping to ensure good contact between layers

Detail - applying glue

Detail - spreading out the glue

I used a foam roller for this. It soaked up lots of the glue, but also gave a nice uniform layer.

Green stain for the penultimate layer

Details of the finished product

Sub-surface structure

Plenty of rocks and shallows here.

Island

This is the only Island in the lake, the "Roseninsel".