Cribbage Board

Ok so my wife LOVES to play Cribbage. She's been wanting to go out and get a new board, but there's so many places to go and so many different boards available she was having a hard time deciding. So seeing how her birthday is coming up on the 24th, I decided to make her one :D

I started with 2 layers of red and 3 layers of green. I put 2 layers of green on top (you'll see why later) and glued it all together

Then I cut a leftover piece of carbon fiber from Rockin Case to the same size as the acrylic parts

I got a generic board template online, and traced it onto the acrylic. Then I sanded down the acrylic and carbon to the rough shape

The carbon piece I intentionally made about 1/8" narrower all around than the acrylic. I wanted to mill out the acrylic and set the carbon fiber into it (hence the reason for 2 layers of green). Here I traced the outline of the carbon onto the acrylic.

Then I started the milling process. I used the drill press. It has a lockable depth gauge which works nice. I also used a dremel side cutting bit. I started by doing a small spot to check the depth. You can see here I used a small piece of carbon to check it

And a few action shots :D

And a broken bit. The first of 3 actually lol.

Back on track

And approximately 3.5 hours and 3 drill bits later, we have this. You'll see in a bit why I left a space at the bottom.

And after some fine tuning of the edges, the carbon is laid in for a test fit. Fits nicely :D

I used the 2-part epoxy I had laying around to glue the carbon into the acrylic.

Now for the space on the bottom. I decided to mill it out as well and use it to store the pegs.

First pass

All done

I then drilled and tapped 2 holes on the sides of the pin box

I whipped up a quick acrylic "door", and used 2 aluminum thumb screws I had laying around to secure it

At this time I taped the paper template I printed out over the carbon

And my ShopSmith abruptly decided to seize something inside...grrr So I went and bought this :D

All setup and ready for drilling

Drilling away

397 holes, 4 drill bits, and 2 hours later - its done

Now unfortunately the drilling left the holes quite rough

So I used a cone-shaped diamond studded grinding bit to smooth them out

A little better

I ended up using a round one as well. Then I sanded the whole thing with 320 grit to smooth out and loose strands and smooth out the surface of the carbon, and sprayed it with some triple-thick clearcoat glaze

Then a quick sand and polish of the edges

Then I cut a piece of black felt roughly to size, and used some 3M spray adhesive to attach it to the backside of the board

Weights on it to help it adhere well

Then I trimmed the excess with a hobby knife

And this board is ready to play!

Oh...wait...we need pegs to play with :D I decided to make those too. For these I used my dremel as a lathe of sorts. The dremel stand I bought rotates 90º so it worked nicely. I cut 6 1-inch pieces of 1/8" acrylic rod I had leftover from Rockin Case. I made the tips pointed and also used a flathead screwdriver to make some accent marks in the pegs so they didn't look so plain.

And a quick sand and polish to finish them off

Then I used some Testors model paints and dipped the tops of them. 3 in red and 3 in green

Now it's ready to play :D

That is sweet. Each and every mod I am getting more and more jealous. =P

I pretty much gave up trying to do anything in this apartment. 1 hour of work for 3 hours of cleaning the place just burns you out. Wish I could find a storage unit that had electricity and let you work in it.

Anyway, that is just sweet. She should love it.

thanks :D

yea I wouldn't be able to do any of this if the apartment my wife and I live in wasn't attached to my parents house, and if my dad didn't have all sorts of cool woodworking tools in the basement :D

This is an awesome cribbage board. If you are still following this thread shoot me PM or drop a comment at my cribbage board collectors lens at squidoo; Cribbage Board Collecting .I'd like to add some pics and quick description of your board and the process to my lens.

Moderator if he's on board I'll put a link back to this page... this was a great project!

Yea man feel free to link here and put up a few pics! Nice site you've got as well

i'm not a cribbage fan, but that's sweetest cribbage board evar!