Recent woodworking [2 of 3]: cribbage board

Continuing on from my last post, I wanted to post some pictures of another recent project. I made my first cribbage board for a friend of mine's birthday and was really pleased. I played cribbage with my father-in-law over Christmas and got the idea to make him one for his birthday (which I will). My very, very good friend showed some interest in cribbage shortly after while were were talking about it and, I thought I'd get my feet wet by making him one first for his birthday. I looked around for some ideas and got most of my ideas from the designs of a guy named Minnesota Mitch.

I created a pattern using LaTeX and TikZ and designed my dimensions around that. When playing with my father-in-law, we were actually playing four handed cribbage, which is where you play on teams of two. My wife's grandma and I were on the same team, and my wife's siter's husband (brother-in-law-in-law?) was playing with my father-in-law. There were a couple of instances where I couldn't believe how far ahead we were and it made me wonder if grandma had started pegging the wrong direction (when playing on a board with two tracks of 30 holes each, you go down and back twice -- if you were supposed to be doing down and suddenly think you're on your way back already... you can suddenly have quite the advantage!). Due to this, I decided to put in some helpful yet decorative inlays to indicate track direction, up the outside, down the inside.

Without further adieu, here's the final product:

The middle inlay was completely unfinished and rough on top when I glued it in. I was incredibly pleased at how figured it ended up being when I sanded it down!

I made an end cap and threaded receiver on the lathe and inserted into the end of the board. There is a deep drilled hole behind it for peg storage:

I need to make special mention of the pegs here. I got them from tchristy0 on ebay. I just searched for "cribbage pegs" on ebay and found some called "Irish crown-top" pegs and just loved them. They come in a set of six, three brass and three stainless steel and just look amazing in the board. Better yet, they were only $5.00!

A peg close up:

They are tapered and probably fit down about 3/8" of an inch, leaving about 3/4" of an inch above the surface.

I got started on the board kind of late and had to make the holes and peg storage "chamber" pretty much "blindly" since the pegs hadn't come in the mail yet. I can now report that all six fit into a 31/64" diameter hole that was 2.5" deep. To make it, I actually drilled a 3" deep hole 31/64" in dia and then used a 5/8" end mill to counterbore it 0.5" deep. The counterbore then received the metal insert I made via woodglue (after using a punch to mar up the outside of the metal a bit for some texture for the glue).

Anyway, the board turned out fantastically and the pegs were just an awesome touch at the end. I don't play much cribbage, nor have I surveyed the cribbage peg landscape before this. I had no idea you could get such cool looking pegs for one's projects! I highly recommend tchristy0's selection -- he has quite a large one (Christy's Cribbage Supply). I was also incredibly impressed that he included a handwritten note in my package, wishing that 2011 would be my "29 year". I'll be buying a lot more pegs from him in the future!

Lastly, thanks to where I work... I happen to have access to a CO2 laser which came in quite handy :)

Maybe I can sell these for money for all the books I want to read. That and solid state hard drives, tools, and whatever else :)