Hawai’i Claro Walnut Coffee Table
We are working hard on transforming a nearly 64-inch long solid slab of Claro Walnut into a Coffee Table top that features the entire state of Hawai’i - from the Loihi underwater seamount east of the Island of Hawaii to Ni`ihau in the West - showing the land mass of the islands without water.
Making this table is an idea that I have been working on for over twenty three years. I first became aware of this magnificent dataset in the year 2000 when I was a volunteer intern at the US Geological Survey ‘s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in the summer of 2000.
At HVO, I worked extensively with Hawaiian DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data in ArcINFO, which was a command line interface at the time. I was fascinated by shaded relief maps made showing the terrain under the ocean, and how they showed the true size and breadth of the enormous volcanoes in this island arc chain.
The underwater (bathymetric) dataset was produced by the University of Hawai`i School for Ocean Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) all the way back in 1993 via ship-towed multi-beam remote sensing. At the time, I tinkered with trying to merge this data with the DEMs for the islands themselves, but the two datasets were totally disparate; the over-land data, was of a much-higher resolution.
A couple of years ago, I recalled this idea, and started tinkering in ArcGIS and with Python coding language to figure out how to re-process and merge the two different datasets of the over-water and under-water digital elevation models to get them to the point where they could be converted into one seamless 3D model.
During the massive winter of 2023, I spent some snowy nights working towards this goal and finally managed to create a DEM that has both datasets mosaiced seamlessley in high resolution. Once this was done, I was able to generate 3D model over a few days of computer processing time.
The next step was toolpathing the 3D model and creating cut files for the actual walnut slab, flattening ti with a fly cutter, and then doing the actual model carving on the ShopBot in 8-hour chunks of time around all the other users in the Roundhouse over a week.
The results are simply stunning, and we feel like we have created an incredible work of art that finally does justice to the majesty, enormity, and beauty of Hawai`i nei.
Check back in the coming weeks as we post updates on the finishing process of this map.
I plan to search around in the old pineapple fields of Lana`i when I visit my family and my childhood home later this month to reclaim some steel from the old Lanai Dole Pineapple plantation to machine into posts for the glass table top.
Grant shooting sunrise and the “East Pond Vent” at Pu`u O`o crater, Kilauea summit, as the science liaison to a National Geographic photography expedition in 2000.