How a sheet is made
- 01 — Sound
Twelve thousand depths, logged by hand.
- 02 — Contour
Lines drawn where the numbers agree.
- 03 — Name
Every rock keeps its local name.
- 04 — Print
Two colours, one plate, on cotton rag.
Survey / Drafting / Two-colour print
We chart the coast the way the tide remembers it.
Hand-surveyed charts of small harbours, sounds and skerries — drawn for the people who have to steer through them.
- Sheets in print
- 14
- Depths logged
- 186k
- Plate colours
- 2
Method
Every sheet starts as a list of depths, not a drawing.
I
Survey before style
We row the water with a lead line and an echo sounder before a single line is inked. Depths come first; the drawing argues with them later.
II
Fewer marks, read faster
A harbour master should find the channel in two seconds. Anything that slows that down — decoration, a third colour, a clever font — is cut.
III
Names from the quay
Place names come from the people who fish there, spelled the way they say them, checked against the parish records.
“A good chart is mostly the things you were brave enough to leave out.”
In the plan chest
Three sheets, one stretch of water.
Kelder Sound, north approach
1 : 12 500 · 2 colours · 2025
The Varra skerries at low water
1 : 8 000 · 2 colours · 2024
Hask Point to the old ferry slip
1 : 20 000 · 1 colour · 2026
Tell us where the water is.
We take on four commissions a year — harbour trusts, sailing clubs, and the occasional island that has never been drawn properly.
sheets@isobath.example