Cribbage Board with Peg Holder
Time to dust off the drill press again and start drilling holes! Also incorporated Forstner bits into the process for creating pockets, and added magnets to the mix. This is a gift for K's birthday. I picked Cherry wood for this project, and ended up going with a 1/4" piece of Padauk for the peg hole cover. Never heard of Padauk before, but the color looked like a good contrast to the lighter Cherry.
Here is the board with template ready to go, next to the oversized cribbage board I made for mom.
Here you can see the cut-to-size and routered corners of the board, along with a bunch of measurement lines for lining up where the peg holder will go. Thanks again to DD for the board prep and routing. We ended up with a little happy accident to land on a very sharp looking router edge.
This is the prepped and positioned template, ready to start cutting wood.
I used a 1-1/2" Forstner bit to first drill a 1/4" down, then another approximately 1/4" down in just the middle, where the actual pocket will be. After that, I chiseled out the rounded bits and used the router plane on the bottom of the pocket to go down another 1/8" or so, to remove the Forstner bit holes from the bottom. The two holes on either edge will be drilled down a shade to hold magnets.
All cleaned up and ready for fixing the template and get drilling holes. I also have added the magnet holes to the pocket area.
Drilling in progress, and then the final look before stripping off the template. Unfortunately, there is a bit of misalignment with some of the rows/holes. Not sure exactly what happened there, I think the template might not have been perfectly square. Not a terrible miss, but I can see it.
The reveal!
Here I've drawn some guidelines along the hole edges, and used a tiny v-gouge to add the lines between hole groups. Mostly happy with that result, although some sloppy looking ones where I tried to do a bit of an angle. I also added a small well around the winners hole.
Now the peg holder cover work begins. I ended up hand sanding this block of Padauck until it fit the pocket. 60 grit made it not too onorous, but I might stay away from big curved corners next time I do a cover.
And then added a 3/4" finger hole for grabbing the cover and taking it off.
Hand carved a little personal message.
Tried and True finish applied and some initial wipe down done. Again, I am finding this quite wet on the large piece of wood, but it is drying up not too badly.
The final result, after several days of wiping, buffing, and toothpicking every single hole (repeatedly) to get that oil out! M got some hardwood pegs and used nail polish to color the tops, what a great finish to the board those are. The magnet strength is pretty strong, that lid isn't coming off without some effort. Some great learning with this project, and added some Forstner bits to the workshop.
