Crokinole Board
 and this put me out for the rest of the project sadly.jpg){kind=link}
Board games are great, and modern board games are awesome, but they have some major drawbacks. Finding people who are committed enough to learn a complicated (and therefore rewarding) board game can prove difficult, and teaching it even more so. That's why the most popular board games (apart from chess) are so simple; that's their appeal. Crokinole appears to be both incredibly rewarding, simple to teach and quick to play. I have wanted to get a Crokinole board since watching this video in 2019. A Crokinole board, however, is definitely not cheap and is very awkward to store. I was hoping to make one to play with family over Christmas and so I drew the tournament specifications for the board in CAD and made a model to work from. Not drawn are the thicknesses of the boards. It is typical that the board is 1/2" thick and sits on a base of a similar thickness. The rim should sit 3/8" above the playing surface as should the pins. The centre hole should be roughly 1/4" deep (5 or 6mm are also suggested). The pins should be about 10mm but this size is not clearly specified. Now that I had a plan, I had to get to work persuading my dad!
At the start of the my christmas break my dad and I got to work on the crokinole board. The plan was to cut the circles and bend some dark wood (for contrast) to the outside of the base to make the rim. The rim is typically made from flexible ply which makes it much easier to attach but for me the dark wood contrast is worth the stress. It is an ongoing debate in my head as to whether the centre should have been plugged with a dark wood or green-painted disc (feel free to help me settle this in the contact me form below). The two circles for the playing surface and the base are cut from 1/2" A grade birch plywood. The rim, plug-disc and bowl are made from kiln dried iroko. In my case the pins are 6mm brass rod with a sleeve of 8mm OD clear PVC tubing. Our central hole was cut with a 35mm forstner bit because we didn't have an imperial set and there's only 0.075mm difference (much smaller than the uncertainty on the cut). The playing surface was finished with spray lacquer, then the lines were drawn with Sharpie brand permanent marker, and topped with more spray lacquer applied very thin to avoid blotting or bleeding of the sharpie ink (see images 13-16). This was sanded before paste wax was applied and very fine steel wool was used to buff the wax. After some test games, some jelly carnauba wax was applied and this was buffed with a cloth. A stripe of "poker table green" gloss paint was applied to the trough area of the base (multiple coats, sanding between each) because the board looked strange without contrast and we did not like how dark stains looked on this wood. The rest of the board was finished with danish oil and elbow grease. After a few weeks, this top coat was sanded back with 1000 grit sandpaper and multiple coats of fresh carnauba wax. This resulted in a very fast playing surface which came with its own issues: the discs would float on a cushion of air and always go too far, but once they stopped they would stick to the board with a suction cup effect making them very difficult to move. To fix this, gliss powder (a lubricating wax powder) is applied to the discs before each shot. The result is nearly as good as air cushion glide but without the stiction issues once the discs come to a stop. The discs were simply bought from Woodestic via ebay. They are 10mm thick where some suggest they should be 3/8" but that's basically the same.
The board plays really well, looks great (in my opinion) and was incredibly fun to make. I am upset about the injury that meant I couldn't see it through to the end but am very grateful to my dad for finishing it for me. The bowl he made is an amazing accompaniment which receives as many (actually more) compliments as the board itself! After showing the board to my family members and several friends after the lockdown eased a bit, not a single person hasn't enjoyed the game (as much as they may dislike losing the game... but that's another matter entirely 😈) which means it's an absolute success!