How to Permanently Stain Maps into Wood

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For our bar top, we picked out National Geographic Recreation Maps and chose our favorites, probably around 15 to cover the whole bar. We burned edges of the map with a lighter, squashing the flame right after it burned each edge. This way, the burnt edges would go with the rustic stain. After burning every edge we stained the bottom layer of the wood.

I recommend using PolyShades Stain- like this, to start off your wood with the right shine.

Quickly before it dried, we arranged the maps by the order we wanted. Clumping roads together, and pushing the ocean towards the edge of the bar. After positioning them we began completely staining over every map, working the paper and stain to be one with the wood.

I was originally worried that the stain would cover up all the fine map detail. After Devin explained to me that stain doesn’t cover, but fuses, he was proven to be correct. You can still read every last location on the map.

Depending on how your map fits onto the bar top, you may have to glue some edges down to shape it. We used liquid nail to permanently glue the map to the edges of our wood. When finished, the maps were unable to be lifted.

The edge-burning and pecan stain created the rustic, traveled, treasure map look we wanted. The next few steps are a culminated effort to preserve the maps and bar as long as possible! Decades, hopefully. Read about it in our next blog!