Crokinole Boards - New techniques

[reubenjames]

This is much better. I always forget about guide bushings because I don't have one. Time to go shopping! Always good advice, Ed, thanks.

[reible]

I don't know what kind of routers you have but if it takes the Porter Cable style you might want to find ones with all short barrels they are a lot more handy then the ones Porter Cable sells which were sized for jigs they made.

Look for a barrel length of less then 1/4" so you can make nice thin templates.

Ed

[reubenjames]

Made some kind of progress on this the past couple of days.

Since I got the new bandsaw table setup and aligned, I used the circle-cutter to cut the boards. I also cut one board using the flush cut bit on the router, which I had used on my first two boards to compare. The router-cut board was a *little* cleaner, but not enough to remove the need to sand with the disc sander, and it makes a huge mess. So I was overall pleased with the bandsaw method and I think I will use that again in the future.

Per Ed's suggestion above, I purchased some router bushings for template work. Since I already have the Milescraft turn-lock baseplate mounted on my router (as I had been using their circle-cutting jig and straight edge jig before), I went with their bushings, which, as the name suggests, turn and lock into their baseplate. Very easy to work with, and short barrels to boot, as Ed suggested.

That being said, I managed to mangle the entire operation. Some thin MDF for a template probably would have been ideal. I did not have any thin MDF lying around. I did have 3/4" particle board which I wanted to use up. Let's count the ways that went wrong:

1.) Routing particle board is like routing a graham cracker. So, on two of four lines (one more than the other), the channel wasn't tight enough for the bushing not to wander. I ended up using two of the channels, then stopping mid-way and re-aligning the template to use the same two channels again, but not until after botching two boards with it as-is.

2.) I gave myself some necessary wiggle room on my 4" long channels, to accommodate slight variance in where the 8" and 12" radius lines are on any particular board. That being said, I thought it would be easy to sight my beginning and end point, especially since my router has a convenient bright LED feature (its one and only charm, I assure you). I believe that would have been true with a thin template, but the 3/4" template was too deep to see. So I had to go by feel to get it started in the right spot, then route half the line. Then pull it out and start at the other circle, going by feel to find out where to start, and then meet in the middle. Due to the loose nature of the particle board, as mentioned above, meeting in the middle wasn't always as nice as I had hoped.

3.) Another problem with 3/4" thick template stock: I don't know if you've ever seen a 1/16" wide plunge cut bit, but they are short. Like really short. They are all shank, because when a cutter is that thin, the longer you make it, the more you are just asking for it to snap off. This made getting my depth of cut extremely difficult. I only needed about 1/16" deep, but my plunge base wouldn't go down far enough. So I had to swap the Milescraft base plate, putting it on my fixed base, and even then I couldn't seat the bit as fully into the collet as I felt comfortable with.

Other than that, conceptually, it worked like a charm.

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How badly the miffed lines will end up making the final product remains to be seen. I should be able to do a fair amount of correcting when I am filling them in (and the flaws will be less obvious then, as well).

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Next up: disc sand the edges so I can put on some edge banding. Then sand the surfaces and prep two for pre-stain. The other two in this batch I think I am going to leave a natural maple, though I may put down some dewaxed shellac before filling in the routed lines, in order to give me some buffer when sanding the filled lines flush.

[reubenjames]

Started sanding the boards. Had to pause to pick up my son. I'm waiting in the parking lot now for him so thought I'd post this. I liked the idea and ease of using the lathe center mounted on an auxiliary rip fence per PTWFE, but my circle wasn't that big. So I modified the instructions and came up with this. Only on a ShopSmith! Table support on both sides and rotating pin with lathe center in the middle! Works great.

[JPG]

What is supporting the 'upper tables' other than the fence and the connecting tubes?

[greasemonkey2275]

What is supporting the 'upper tables' other than the fence and the connecting tubes?

I think he might be using "The Force".

[reubenjames]

What is supporting the 'upper tables' other than the fence and the connecting tubes?

I think he might be using "The Force".

Ha ha. Well, the fence isn't supporting the upper tables, though it looks like it is from that angle. The connecting tubes are higher than the fence, though barely.

The floating table was, well, floating--connecting tubes were connecting it to the extension table mounted in the end of the SS. After sanding two boards, however, I realized there was a little flex in the floating table and that I should have put the telescoping legs on the floating table end, next to the disc sander. Once I did that, stability greatly improved.

[JPG]

What is supporting the 'upper tables' other than the fence and the connecting tubes?

I think he might be using "The Force".

Ha ha. Well, the fence isn't supporting the upper tables, though it looks like it is from that angle. The connecting tubes are higher than the fence, though barely.

The floating table was, well, floating--connecting tubes were connecting it to the extension table mounted in the end of the SS. After sanding two boards, however, I realized there was a little flex in the floating table and that I should have put the telescoping legs on the floating table end, next to the disc sander. Once I did that, stability greatly improved.

Humph! Imagine that!

[reubenjames]

Almost a month since my last post on this, and so you might think no progress was made. Though many a cold day was had around here, I did, nevertheless, make progress on this project. Actually, what happened, was that my wife convinced me to donate one of the crokinole boards to our church auction for the parish dinner / auction that we hold the Saturday after Easter.

I agreed and then immediately regretted it. It gave me a deadline that was probably too close for comfort, especially considering the weather which did not cooperate well. I ended up taking two of the four boards and focusing on those two, scrambling to complete them. I chose two, in case one of them took a nose dive during one of the steps. In the end, as things got closer, I focused only on a single board. I will only talk about the board that made it all the way through, as the other board will re-appear when I get back to the rest of them.

After disc sanding the edges per the above contraption, I applied pre-glued veneer edge banding to all four boards.

The board I ended up completing then went to the in-laws basement for finishing work (temp was too cold / inconsistent for the garage here, and my wife can't tolerate weird smells, especially when pregnant). I applied two coats of dewaxed shellac on the board. Then I filled in the routed lines with two-part epoxy which was dyed with Minwax Red Mahogany wood stain. The application of epoxy into lines that are 1/16" wide and approximately 1/16" deep proved rather difficult. I was using a children's Tylenol dosing syringe, but it proved to lay down too wide a bead of epoxy. Also, it was nearly impossible to control the flow--it was pretty much all or nothing, probably because of the consistency of the epoxy. After the first round of epoxy dried, I needed to do another layer, as some had soaked into the wood and the epoxy wasn't crowned above the surface of the wood surrounding the routed lines.

That second coat was fatal in two ways: 1.) I was rushed and ended up with too many air bubbles that I didn't have time to remove because I had to apply and leave for an engagement; and 2.) I crowned it *too* much, to the point where it was heavily overflowing the routed lines and ended up pretty thick on the board. Once that cured, I was faced with the arduous task of epoxy removal. I finally settled on cabinet scrapers, which worked like a charm, but it still took me over 2 hours to scrape the epoxy down flush with the wood and to smooth out the entire board. It was extremely smooth, however, and no sanding was needed at that point (though I did run 320 over it, anyway). It also looked awesome--the lines looked like the synthetic gym floor at my first school. I was quite pleased with how the dyed epoxy turned out, all in all.

After scraping and sanding to 320 grit, I drilled the 8 peg holes using a template I created in Photoshop and printed out, as well as the center hole. I use a drill guide on my DeWalt drill, as the throat capacity of the SS drill press isn't great enough to reach these. Next, I began a series of aerosol spray lacquer coats. I used Minwax glossy spray lacquer for this. I wish I would have gotten more coats in; I lost count, but probably ended up with 8 to 10 coats.

Meanwhile, in the interest of time, I purchased a select 1x6 and 1x2 pine boards from the local Menards. I put a 3/4" rabbet on the 1x6 with the dado blades, ended up having to smooth it out on the jointer, and then I glued the 1x2 as a rail to the 1x6. I wanted to do this prior to cutting the octagon, so I didn't have to cut *two* octagons out (one for the base, one for the rail) like I had in previous boards. The upside to this approach is only cutting one octagon and having grain patterns flow better. The downside is that you can't make as efficient use of material.

The other downside turned out to be some rogue glue squeezeout that didn't get fully wiped down and reared its ugly head when it came time to stain. I cut the octagon as a pinwheel, rather than making the standard regular octagon. This, I think, added some visual interest, but is probably going to be slightly more of a pain to store and to play with, with the protruding edges. Anyway, I cut the 45 degree angles using the SS MiterPro and then I had a stopblock setup to make the 90 degree cuts and keep all the pieces the same. After cutting the octagon, I assembled using pocket holes and screws on the bottom. This has been my method in the past, and speed was the real determining factor here.

After constructing the base, I stained it using the same Red Mahogany used in the epoxy lines. The aforementioned superthin layer of glue caused some places where the rail meets the base to not take the stain. It wasn't heinous, but it wasn't beautiful, either. I used a blend of artists markers to actually darken those areas, which worked pretty well. After the base was stained, I gave it a couple of coats of spray lacquer. Semigloss for the base.

I went back to the deck after giving the lacquer time to cure (as much as I could afford!) and I rubbed it out. Wet sanded 500 grit, 1000 grit, 1200 grit, followed by automotive rubbing compound, followed by automotive polishing compound, followed by automotive wax (Kit wax, which has high carnauba content). This left the deck with somewhere between a satin and semigloss sheen (I would have needed to go 1500 and 2000 grit to get a gloss) and the deck played quite well. It was reasonably fast, which is the modern preference in crokinole for most people.

After the lacquer on the base had dried, I used 0000 steel wool and paste wax to smooth it out and give it a satin finish.

I mounted the deck on the base and secured it with two-part epoxy, as well as with screws from the bottom in counterbored holes. I have used solely the screws in the past, but I didn't want to risk any issues on this board. This was the only point that I took time to snap a few photos, which are below.

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The final steps included spray painting the bottom with a red wine colored spray paint (mostly just to give it a bit more of a finished look) and adding three cork pads to act as a sort of tripod in case the board or the table it rests on has any leveling issues. I also installed the pegs, which are simply robertson drive screws with a half-inch piece of silicone fish tank tubing slid over top of them to make "bumpers". The screws are screwed into the 8 holes that were already predrilled a while back. I also decided to hand paint the center hole with some acrylic paint that roughly matched the red wine paint on the underside of the board. I thought the center hole looked too unpolished otherwise. I did add some wood filler in the pilot hole caused by the forstner bit first and sanded it down.

That acrylic paint was literally drying on the way to the auction (thankfully it dries fast!). However, it was a big success! I was given the opportunity to get up and explain a bit about the game before they live auctioned the board, and it ended up auctioning for $275, which is respectable, in my opinion. Another member of the church came up to me and offered to donate another $275 to the church if I made her a board, so I have added that to my list, though thankfully there is no hard deadline for that.

All in all, the first board in the batch was a success, and a learning experience. I'm excited to tackle the others now. If you stayed awake reading this update--good job!