Inlay rare and expensive woods using the rings to like topography lines, also guild the outside in precious metals and gems! Sorry you map and idea are just so good it seems like the start of the description of some famous item from a fantasy novel lending itself to that sort of thing. Ilanthar's idea was very good.
Looking really good. Are you going to do something like stain the wood to differentiate the land and sea even more when it's done? It's hard to tell how good the contrast would be irl from pictures...
lots of great ideas in here! But the best is of course making this coffee table at all! I am so looking forward to seeing it finished.
…And now I really want one for myself with middle earth on it. Or better yet, my own world.
And that's with great detail like "A COMPASS tells you which direction is north!"
Also has anyone here ever done any pyrography? Like using a special soldering iron to burn/draw on wood? I just found a ton of stuff about it online, and I think I know how I'm going to do labels and mountains.
I had the same wood burning tool everyone seemed to have when I was a kid, not sure that counts. We'd heat up an old junk knife on an industrial burner at one of the places I worked to carefully inscribed a baseballbat with the words "complaint department" and an artistically rendered head of garlic, but I'm not sure that qualifies any more than the child's wood burning kit. I can say that its fun to draw on wood with hot objects and not overly difficult if you do some practice on something less loved beforehand.
And I thought labeling was tedious in Photoshop. The dremel rivers are looking good, what tip did you use to do that? I have one but am terribly inexperienced with it so its nice to get an idea of what does what.