OGDEN, Utah (ABC4) – Standing at 11,749 feet, Mount Timpanogos is the second-tallest summit of the Wasatch Mountains, and maybe one of the most iconic peaks in Utah.
It is also the focal point of one of the most recent projects from Ogden’s Zac Crosby, the man behind Topside LLC.
Crosby has been making wooden maps and laser engravings since 2018 on a homemade CNC router.
“In April of last year, once my full-time job building speaker cabinets with a friend of mine slowed down I started selling these on Facebook marketplace, which later moved to my Etsy shop,” Crosby tells ABC4.
One of those pieces is a 5″ by 7.5″ model of Mt. Timpanogos made out of walnut. Crosby shared photos of the piece on his Instagram, topside.llc.
Crosby says the wood he uses comes from MacBeath’s in Salt Lake City or Ellis Planing Mill in Ogden.
Visiting his Instragam, you will find numerous topographic pieces, like prototypes for a Utah keychain, a model of Fish Lake, a relief map of Massachusetts, a cut of Mars where the Perseverance Rover landed.
SLIDESHOW: Some of Crosby’s pieces
“In the past year I’ve probably made 70 custom pieces, everything from little keychain maps to a 2 foot by 3 foot map for a customer in Oregon,” Crosby says. “There really hasn’t been a huge about of repeat maps, each one is custom in its own way.”
Crosby is more than just a woodworker – his experience in film helps him great mesmerizing timelapse videos, like the one below, of a piece being carved.
VIDEO: Time-lapse of Mt. Timpanogos model being cut
Note: This video, courtesy of Crosby, has no sound.
He explains this piece above of Mt. Timpanogos was cut from a 2-inch thick piece of walnut and measures about 7×5 inches. The roughing pass, which requires a larger bit to cut away most of the wood, took an hour. The final pass, using a smaller bit, took about five hours to complete.
So far, Crosby says his largest piece has been the map for an Oregon customer. He even commissioned another woodworker friend from Salt Lake to make a coffee table to house the map.
To see more of Crosby’s work, visit his Instagram or Etsy pages. You can also find Crosby at some vendor shows in Ogden, like the upcoming yART on Thursday, July 15.
