Game boards

[Mike Henderson]

I was asked by a friend to make some game boards for their family. They've played a game called "Wahoo" for over 40 years, using a game board that was made by one of the family members. Wahoo (also called "Aggravation") game boards are available commercially but the layout is a bit different, including the number and location of the holes, than what they play so they needed the boards custom made. I made six boards, two of ambrosia maple, two of figured cherry, and two of walnut. I hadn't finished one of the walnut boards when this picture was taken. The boards are all the same size, 17" square, but the picture makes the ones on the ends look larger.

It's played with marbles as game pieces.
GameBoards01.jpg

Here's a close-up of one of the ambrosia maple boards and one of the walnut boards. The figured cherry boards really came out nice but don't show well in the pictures.
GameBoards02.jpg GameBoards03.jpg
I did the holes with a plunge trim router and a 5/8" core box bit. The sides are raised to keep a marble from rolling off the board. If I counted right, there are 81 holes per board, or a total of 486 holes in the six boards.

Mike

[Jim Becker]

They look great, Mike!

[Allen Jordan]

Looks great. Did you have to use a template to align the holes?

[Mike Henderson]

Looks great. Did you have to use a template to align the holes?

Thanks for your question, Allen. I figured out the spacing for the holes and the distance between lines and set dividers to those spacings. I put blue tape on the dividers with a label so I wouldn't get confused as to which was which.

I drew the lines where the holes would go first. That's mostly geometric and pretty easy.

I then used the dividers (with a rule for the first offset) to step off the location of the holes and made an indent where each hole was to go. I also put a pencil mark over each hole to make sure I'd see it.

Then, I figured the offset from the side of my DeWalt plunge trim router (DW611, I think it is) and clamped a guide board that distance from the line where a set of the holes are to go. When plunging, I eyeballed the router bit into the mark/divider hole where each hole was to be drilled. Of course, I had set the plunge depth on my router to give me the indent I wanted.

Then it was just manual labor and making sure I didn't move the router when plunging and lifting so that the hole is round and clean. I had a couple of holes where I burned the wood in the hole because I didn't retract the bit fast enough but I quickly learned.

I should have taken some pictures of the process.

Mike

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Nicely done Mike! A lot of focus on detail in this project!