I make a lot of chess boards, and sometimes a really nice piece of wood will have a very small split or crack in the grain. I try to put those pieces on the bottom so that if I make a repair it won’t look as bad, and in most cases someone that doesn’t know […]
I make a fair amount of backgammon games and other boxes that use mitered corners. I like to add decorative keys using a dovetail bit after the box is assembled, but to do that the corners need to be really tight and square. In a past blog post I demonstrated how I do that on
Cutting Mitered Corners on a Radial Arm Saw Read More »
I decided to try a new dice shaker for my backgammon games, instead of doing ovals, I decided to do round using the lathe. The blanks start as square stock, not necessarily square or smooth. These can be rough blanks, the only limit is the blanks has to be no less than 1 7/8″ square.
Turning Dice Shakers Read More »
This blog post is ultimately about surfacing end grain wood with a power planer. The project begins with a blank being made from Ash, and the final project is a CNC engraved baseball game that uses dice to move players around the board in a “baseball game”. The blank is planed on the faces to
Using a power planer on end grain surfaces – successfully Read More »
I did a previous post on my first CNC linear rail upgrade, that was on my Y axis which has two drive motors. That upgrade was so impressive that I decided to next do an upgrade on the X axis, across the gantry. When I first made my machine I used the suggested aluminum angle
Another CNC Rail Upgrade Read More »
I sell a few Mexican train domino sets on Etsy, and the complete set requires a full set of 12/12 dominoes, (that’s 91 tiles) and eight small train tokens which I obtain from Amazon, a center hub for the domino paths to start from and a nice wooden box to put all the handcrafted parts
Making Dominoes Using a CNC machine Read More »
I have a few games that I make for online sale that features an engraved lid on thin plywood. I usually use Baltic birch for these panels as they have very few voids and carve well on my CNC. Here are a couple of examples… The one on the left is a finished box, the
In the backgammon posts I show doing the miter joint case and some pointers there that will also be included here, but this may bring to light some extras too. One of the first things I look at when putting the backgammon board case together is to show or display the best parts, and hide
Miter Jointed Case Construction Read More »
I make a lot of chess boards for my Etsy Shop, I’ve been able to sell them all over the U.S. and in other countries. My boards are fairly simple yet have an elegance that apparently people desire. I’ve been asked too many times to count about how hard it is to get all the
Chess Board Construction Read More »
This section shows sanding the laminated panels made for backgammon, but fits anything you’re using a drum sander on. I also use this method for sanding other larger panel projects like chess boards or cutting boards. Trying to get multiple species of wood level is sometimes difficult, and using a random orbit sander, even for
Backgammon – Panel Sanding Read More »
