Project:Crokinole

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Crokinole is a 2-4 player dexterity board game with the goal to get as many disks as close to the center as possible. For the detailed game rules check out the Crokinole Wikipedia page.

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Crokinole Board

Crokinole Spielen.jpeg
Status: done
Release Date: 24.12.2021
Initiator: Patrick
Materials Used: Wood (beech), Coloured MDF (Valchromat)


Design

The playing area of a Crokinole Board is 660mm in diameter. Dimensions for the other measurements were a bit harder to find and I took them from the blog of Stephen Houser.

Playing circle 660 mm
Outer line 610 mm
Middle line 406 mm
Inner line (with pegs) 204 mm
Line width 3 mm
Center hole 35 mm
Center hole depth 6 mm
Ditch width (area around playing circle) >51 mm
Disks 32x10 mm

I decided to make the board in the shape of an octagon, which allowed me to save some material as only the center area needed to be made from a solid piece. The ditch and border were made from 8 identical pieces of scrap Valchromat while the center is made from an old Ikea beech tabletop.

Crokinole Drawing Top.pngCrokinole Drawing Section.png

CNC-Routing Pieces

Given that the outer pieces are identical and needed more or less precise angles and arcs I routed them on our Workbee CNC Router. The blanks were cut to width on the table saw and trimmed to size with the chop saw. On each rough cut piece I glued a printed template to help with drilling the locating/mounting holes, while making sure the screw heads are counterbored deep enough that the CNC router won't hit them.

Center Piece

Routing Circle

The center playing area was cut with a circle-cutting jig for our router. The 8mm bit needed 4-5 passes to cut the complete circle. Please ignore the slot in board. This is were the legs of the Ikea table used to be mounted. This will be the bottom of the Crokinole Board.

Routing Step

On the bottom there was also a step cut out to increase the gluing area and allow for some screws to fix the outer segments onto the playing area. MDF/Valchromat is not as strong as solid wood therefore I wanted to make sure it doesn't break when lifted from the edges.

Lines

Arguably the lines are the most important feature for playing, therefore I wanted to make sure they were as solid as possible. Firstly they were routed out with a 3mm bit and then filled with black epoxy. I was worried that some of the epoxy would seep through the grain of the wood and stain areas that should not be stained. Coating the slots and the area around it with some wood glue worked ok for sealing, though in some areas there was bleed though that could not be removed by sanding. Next time I'd use 3-4 coats of wood glue (or lacquer) before applying the epoxy. Nevertheless the pitch black lines look quite nice in the end.

Center Hole

The center hole was also cut with the handheld router in combination with a 3D-printed jig. The jig had the holes marked for the pegs, which doubled as screw holes in the meantime.

Jig-hole-diameter = router-base (88mm) + final-hole-diameter (35mm) - router-bit-diameter (8mm) => 115mm

Assembly

Assembly time!

Essentially wood glue and screws...

Sanding

All top surfaces were sanded to 400 grid. The bottom to 240.

Coating

The finish on a Crokinole board needs to be as smooth as possible otherwise the disks don't slide too well. I used some acrylic-based spray clear coat. Though in hindsight a brush-on PU coat would have beed cheaper (took around 5-6 cans between all the sanding and polishing). Due to the cold temperatures at that time I needed to wait 2-3 days between major coats and sanding with 800/1200 grid.

The last step was to polish the top to a mirror finish. Before playing the surface needs to be lubricated with powder (e.g. starch) or silicone oil (what I used).

Drilling and Installing Pegs

The holes were 'drilled' by plunging a 6 mm router bit and the pegs were pressed into those holes.