Archive for the ‘Go Gear’ Category
Two Eyed Cliffhanger: My First Homemade Goban Experiment
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.
Goboard PinCushion
Check out this nicely crafted Goboard Pincushion at www.etsy.com. The artist is from Germany. It is certainly more beautiful and rugged than the little magnetic set I have.