Making a Crokinole board

In preparation of gluing the outer rail on, I made about 40 little friction clamps out of plywood to keep the top of the two rails together since I don't have 50 spare clamps lying around. I probably spent too much time sanding them all but I'm glad I did since I was pushing them down with some force and I'll be using them in the future.



Gluing the outer rail on went much smoother than the inner rail. I test fitted it and cut it to length, then applied the glue in sections as I went along applying clamps. I did do a bad job of wiping off the squeezed out glue, but hopefully some sanding will take care of that.

I’ve been busy with other stuff lately so progress has slowed. I’ve been laying down poly coats on the base. I noticed some large humps in the gutter area and it turned out to be the nails I used to hold down the inner rail. They were too long and I did a bad job of nailing them in straight. I did actually break through with one of them that I noticed at the time. Didn’t realize how close I was to a bunch more. I’ve picked up some shorter nails for future boards.



I’m using 220 grit to sand in between coats like the directions say, but it is leaving scratches since I can’t use an orbital sander. So I’ll bump it up to 400 and see if that is enough to minimize scratching and a few more coats will cover the other ones. I’m not going to spend much more time on this part.
Next up is to screw the deck to the base and put a few coats of poly on the underside. Getting close.

Finally finished.




After letting the 10+ coats of polyurethane cure for about a month, I sanded the surface with 600 grit, 1500 grit, rubbing compound, then polishing compound. Then I waxed it to make it nice and slick. Can’t wait to play.

Of course I think it looks like hot garbage, but that’s okay! It was a learning process for me to make mistakes and I will correct them in the next boards I make. Mainly I feel the lines are too thick, imprecise, and messy. I put so much poly in those grooves and they are still not flush, but luckily it doesn’t affect the discs moving. I also probably need to use thinner coats to avoid small ridges that are difficult to sand out. Also, there's a reason I didn't post a picture of the underside.
Based on Sag’s comment about using a sharpie, I bought a paint pen and made a sample and it leaves a nice, thin, crisp line. I’ll have to come up with some compass contraption that wont smear the paint.

I’m going to take a break for now, but I have three more to make. I think I’ll do all three decks at the same time, and while they are curing I’ll make the bases. If I have the warping issues like I did with this one, I might just use some hardwood I have.
Until next time.

Looks great from here. Thanks for the thread!

Gorgeous.