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I was inspired by a post by Orum on godiscussions.com ( see the post here) to make my own goban this weekend. I ended up with a goban that is just as imperfect as my go game. To tackle the task, I imposed two requirements for this first prototype. … I had to make it fast and cheap. It had to be fast because I have two small children so I have no time. It had to be cheap to accommodate my vintage slate and shell stones I scored on ebay for only $92 (with the bowls! ). Fortunately, I lucked out a few months ago and found a nice pile of 3″ scrap wood at the local landfill. I am pretty sure it is pine but I am no woodworker so I am not sure. The board cost me $8.69 in materials because I did not have any satin finish polyurethane on hand. Since it was my first shot at making a goban, I used the least perfect two pieces of my dump-find stockpile to make this “club” board. Here is a picture of what I ended up with:

The side grains came out better than I thought (also on flickr):

I recklessly followed Orum’s guide on his website as a starting point. I did learn a lot in making this first board. here are some of the highlights:

I call this goban the two-eyed cliffhanger because:

1. The board has two knots on the surface that look like eyes. Maybe it will remind me to make two eyes once in awhile.

2. I did not make the board quite as wide as I wanted. I also laid the grid down slightly off-center so one border line is closer to the edge of the board then the other. The board is 2.8″ thick mini-cliff.

Some things I will change in the next iteration:

1. Find something better than a fine tipped sharpie for the lines. the line is a little too thick and too flat. I am thinking of trying some lacquer paint next time to see if I can get a raised, thinner line.

2. Scrounge up a hefty single piece of wood. I will make some more boards using the wood I found first to get some practice in though. Our club is short of boards so even imperfect boards will help.

3. Don’t screw up the lines. see a mistake here:

4. Don’t use gray wood filler to fill in an imperfection on the board (see photo above). The gray just popped right out once I coated it with poly. I may try to use a more traditional wax instead of satin poly too although the satin poly does look nice for this “club” quality board.

5. Start with a bigger board.

Overall, I am very happy with the new club-quality board. I will test it out a the Wesleyan go club this Friday night to see if it acceptable to others as well.

Join us at 5:30 PM at the Usdan Student Center. Bring a board if you have one. The Wesleyan Club is co-sponsored by the Central Connecticut Go Club and the Wesleyan Chinese Cultural Club.