64 Great Chess Games - Board Numbers 10-18

Series Title: 64 Great Chess Games (Chess Boards)

Background:

Boards 4-9 are all done with glue and clamps and just need to be sanded and finished. Any board I make, whether cribbage or Chess always looks a bit "rough" until it gets cleaned up. Once a board goes through it's inital clean-up sanding, it starts to reveal what it's going to really look like, and to me, this is the most exciting part of the whole process. I seem to be getting some traction selling Chess boards on Ebay, so I will try and sell boards #4-9 (6 chess boards) on Ebay before the conclusion of the 2007 Holiday Season. Cribbage board sales have been slow to non-existent this Holiday Season despite advertising on Google AdWords, Yahoo, and actually getting the meta-tags right on my WebSite, which in turns allows the WebCrawlers to correctly index my web site.

As mentioned previously, starting with Board #10, the boards will Chess Tournament Legal, with the squares measuring around 2 1/4".

Coming up, boards 10-18 will lay out something like this:

10-12: Hard Maple/IPE for the squares
13-15: Hard Maple/PurpleHeart for the squares - with Paduak inlay around each Square.
16-18: Hard Maple/Walnut for the squares - with Purpleheart inlay around each Square.

Board #3 in this series had some Purpleheart Inlay around the squares, but only on 2 sides. I would like to try the inlay around all 4 sides of the square.

I still have no idea what to charge for a chessboard. Ebay at least helps me get a feel for what is a fair price since I start the auctions at a very reasonable price and let the buyer determine the final price.

Some of the chess boards are turning out pretty heavy. Especially those with Ipe in them. One board weighed in at around 8.5 pounds. The lighter Chess boards weigh in around 3-4 pounds.

64 Great Chess Games - Board Numbers 4 thru 9

Series Title: 64 Great Chess Games (Chess Boards)

Background:
Having finished boards 1-3, it was time to turn my attention to boards 4-9. Naturally these will be a little different than boards 1-3. :-> Boards 4,5,6 are PurpleHeart/White Maple for the squares and boards 7,8,9 are Mahogany/Walnut or Ipe/Mahogany for the squares. The purpleheart/white maple combination is turning out quite nice. I will probably use this combination in the not too distant future.

Ipe is a really, really hard, dense and heavy wood. It's at the top of the chart on the Janks Hardness scale. Ipe adds some real weight to the board too.

As you might imagine, chess boards involve a lot gluing. Each Chess board I make goes through 8 separate glue-ups. Glue ups #1-4 are for gluing the 64 squares. Glue up number 5 is the bottom of the board. I don't put felt on the bottom of my chess boards. I use another hardwood for the bottom, typically cherry, oak or mahogany, that is pretty light in color. I do this so I can write a bunch of stuff on the bottom, specifically all the chess moves from the board from the Famous Chess Game your board is named after. Glue ups #6-8 are for the 3 borders that are found on each board. Each border is glued up separately and is successively thicker than the previous border. The outer most border is mitered (45 degree angles) on the corners.

Starting with board #10, I will start making the Chess boards tournament legal. Currently boards 1-9 are made with approximately 1 3/4" squares. Starting with board #10 in the series, I will make the squares 2 1/4" inch.

How to tell if you just bought the 100th Enumero Cribbage Series Board

Hopefully, the person who purchases the 100th series board will notice that instead of conventional brass pegs, their board has come with a set of Austrian style Cribbage Pegs. They have finally shipped and should be arriving at the Enumero Cribbage World Headquarters soon. They will be included in lieu of the normal cribbage pegs at no charge. I will also write a little something on the bottom of the board as well to denote this milestone as well.

We picked up a new link - Cribbaholics Unanimous.

If you check out the FAQ (question #4) you will see I have made or will be making (eventually) 19 types of Crib and Chess Boards. Chess boards only account for 2 types of boards, the other 17 types are cribbage boards.

Just for fun, I added a new section highlighting some very interesting Cribbage Patents.

My inbox is catching a lot more SPAM these days. Google mail is really good at automatically filtering out the junk mail, so my inbox stays clean and I can eagerly anticipate incoming board orders.

If paying with Paypal is not your thing, I will gladly accept a Personal Check or USPS Money Order. Just email with what you'd like to buy and I will set your board(s) aside. And don't forget - I will gladly ship outside the US of A.

The Apollo Lunar Modules - 9 Boards

Series Title: The Apollo Lunar Modules - 9 Boards

Background: I did a series on the Apollo Moon Landing Missions, so as a follow up, I'm doing a series on the Lunar Modules, the very thing that carried 2 astronauts to and from the moon. The full LEM was actually quite heavy. The ascent/descent modules together weighed over 32,000 pounds. The most famous of the LEM's was probably Aquarius (aka LM-7) from the Apollo 13 Mission. Aquarius was the life raft that enabled NASA Engineers to get the 3 astronauts home by sling-shooting them around the moon and back to earth.

9 Boards:
LM-3 Spider, Apollo 9
LM-4 Snoopy, Apollo 10
LM-5 Eagle, Apollo 11
LM-6 Intrepid, Apollo 12
LM-7 Aquarius, Apollo 13
LM-8 Antares, Apollo 14
LM-10 Falcon, Apollo 15
LM-11 Orion, Apollo 16
LM-12 Challenger, Apollo 17

8000 Meter Peaks Series II

Series Title: 8000 Meter Peaks Series II

Background:
The original 8000 Meter Peak Series I had 12 boards and were all made from a single piece of wood. I wanted to make all 14 boards from this single piece of wood, but I simply ran out. So...I finally got around to finishing the peaks with these 2 boards.

2 Boards:
K2
Gasherbrum II

A Seven Course Meal of Extinct Candy Bars

Series Title: A Seven Course Meal of Extinct Candy Bars - 7 Boards

Background:
The title of this series is probably a little confusing at first glance so allow me to explain. These are pretty big (and heavy) boards. They are Pedalis style boards made from at least a board foot of cherry or walnut lumber. The pegs for these boards (Miller Dowels) that come with the boards are made from the same woods as the board is - Cherry, Walnut, Purpleheart, Ipe & Mahogany. Before I drilled the holes, I thought they looked quite a bit like a big chocolate bar. So...I thought of Candy Bars. But not just any Candy Bars. I chose extinct Candy Bars (those that are no longer manufactured), that you could make a 7 course meal from.

7 Boards:
Brown Pudding
Chicken Dinner
Club Sandwich
Cold Turkey
Denver Sandwich
Lobster Patty
Milk Shake

Updates & Changes as I Approach the 1 Year Anniversary of Selling Boards

There are a few updates & changes as I approach the 1 year anniversary of selling boards on the Web. I'm really close to my 100th series board, so to celebrate the milestone, I will be doing something a little special for that board (assuming the Austrian Jeweled Cribbage Pegs I ordered ever show up!)

A quick summary:

• Curto Style Board Introduced (a very small board with a small price- $10.00). See the "Fictional Elements of the Universe Series I".
  
• I've settled on 19 styles of Crib and Chess Boards. (see FAQ - Question #4). Not all of them have been made yet.
  
• I accept checks or USPS Money Orders. Not everybody likes to use Paypal and other forms of payment, such as a Check or USPS Money Order are fine. Hopefully, the Nigerian Scammer crowd doesn't play cribbage. Email if you want to pay Check or USPS Money Order and I can set your board(s) aside till payment arrives.
  
• I now charge a reasonable amount for shipping/handling and packaging of boards. $6.00 for 1 board, $8.00 for 2 boards, $10.00 for 3 boards, etc.
  
• I ship internationally.
  
• Paypal now supports a myriad of different shipping options. Shipping will NOT show up in the cart, unless it's a Chessboard. Shipping charges will show up at the final checkout, similar to the way 99.9% of other Web Vendors work.
  

Fictional Elements of the Universe - 10 Boards

Series Title: Fictional Elements of the Universe - 10 Boards

Background:
I usually make big and/or fairly heavy cribbage boards. This series is a slight departure and is a series of smaller boards that are fairly small and fairly light. This series is also a new type of board, "Curto", which is a Latin approximation for shortening or abbreviating. So you can play a very abbreviated game of cribbage if you want! I considered naming the boards after small sub-atomic particles, but that seemed a little heavy handed. I came across "Fictional Elements of the Universe" on Wikipedia and that just seemed right!

10 Boards:
Bazoolium: Doctor Who - A gold-coloured metal that can predict the weather.
Beerium: From the movie "Young Einstein"
Froonium: Farscape - A substance created by series producer Richard Manning while he still worked on Star Trek to represent any esoteric material. Appeared in Farscape as an in-joke in several episodes. Manning's Fandom nickname is "Froonium Ricky".
Handwavium: From bad science fiction
Impervium: Donald Duck [Magic: The gathering]
Jumbonium: Futurama
Kryptonite: DC Comics
Nitrium: Star Trek
Randomonium: Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Unobtanium: The Movie The Core (2003)

64 Great Chess Games (Chess Boards) - 64 Boards

Series Title: 64 Great Chess Games (Chess Boards)

Background: I play chess and I enjoy chess, but I'm not a competive player. I made my first chess board for my wife, Tanya. At her suggestion, I am now making and selling chess boards alongside my cribbage boards. Keeping in line with my charter to make my boards unique and give each board a unique name, I chose a big series to name the boards after. Usually, I don't sell a series until the series is complete. But since this is such a big series and chess boards take a considerable amount more time to make than a cribbage board, I will offer them as they come off the EnumeroCribbageBoards.com Factory Floor. These 64 matches represented so many of the modern Grand Masters of Chess and since I'm not a chess expert, I humbly rely on the opinions of others. The about.com article states: "these are considered by many experts to be among the best chess games ever played".

3 of 64 Boards:

1. 1834 - London: McDonnell A. - De La Bourdonnais L.
2. 1851 - London: Anderssen A. - Kieseritzky L.
3. 1852 - Berlin: Anderssen A. - Dufresne J.

The Mercury 13 Astronauts - 13 Boards

Series Title: The Mercury 13 Astronauts

Background: This series celebrates 13 Woman who passed the same rigorous physical and psychological testing as the seven men who became the Mercury 7. None of them ever got the chance to fly in space.

These thirteen women passed the same physical examinations that the Lovelace Foundation developed for NASA’s astronaut selection process (although the original number of male candidates was much larger, fewer men passed the tests).

There are several books written about these courageous women. Also, there is a website dedicated to the surviving Mercury 13 complete with bios for each of the women, pictures and lists of their amazing accomplishments (most were highly skilled pilots).

13 Boards:

Myrtle "K" Cagle
Jerrie Cobb (Jerri Truhill)
Jan Dietrich
Marion Dietrich
Wally Funk
Janey Hart
Jean Hixson
Gena Nora Stumbough (Gena Nora Jessen)
Irene Leverton
Bernice "B" Steadman
Sarah Gorelick Ratley
Jerri Truhill
Rhea Hurrle Woltman

7 Time Tour de France Winner - 7 Boards

Series Title: 7 Time Tour de France Winner - 7 Boards

Background: All proceeds from selling these boards are going directly to the Lance Armstrong Foundation when the series is SOLD-OUT. The price for each board will be $10.02 . Each board is named after one of Lance's 7 Tour Victories. Lance Armstrong and the Lance Armstrong Foundation promote Cancer Survivorship and give hope and support to individuals (and their families) fighting cancer.

7 Boards:

1999 Tour de France Winner
2000 Tour de France Winner
2001 Tour de France Winner
2002 Tour de France Winner
2003 Tour de France Winner
2004 Tour de France Winner
2005 Tour de France Winner

Named Lunar Modules - 9 Boards

Series Title: Named Lunar Modules

Background: The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program to achieve the transit from moon orbit to the surface and back. The module was also known as the LM from the manufacturer designation (yet pronounced "LEM" from NASA's early name for it, Lunar Excursion Module).

The 6.65 m³ module was designed to carry a crew of two. The total module was 6.4 m high and 4.3 m across, resting on four legs. It consisted of two stages — the descent stage module and the ascent stage. The total mass of the module was 15,264 kg with the majority of that (10,334 kg) in the descent stage.

9 Boards:

LM-3 Spider Apollo 9 March 3, 1969
LM-4 Snoopy Apollo 10 May 18, 1969
LM-5 Eagle Apollo 11 July 16, 1969
LM-6 Intrepid Apollo 12 November 14, 1969
LM-7 Aquarius Apollo 13 April 11, 1970
LM-8 Antares Apollo 14 January 31, 1971
LM-10 Falcon Apollo 15 July 26, 1971
LM-11 Orion Apollo 16 April 16, 1972
LM-12 Challenger Apollo 17 December 7, 1972

California Ghost Towns Series II - 5 Boards

Series Title: California Ghost Towns Series II

Background: The first California Ghost Towns series was mostly California Ghost towns in the southern or Desert part of California. This series highlights ghost towns in Northern California.

5 Boards:

1. NAVARRO BY THE SEA

The town began in the latter half of the 19th century and was abandoned due to floods. Navarr by the sea was once a shipping port utilized by the near-by logging industry. This site was flooded out in a series of floods throughout the years leading to it's demise. The largest was in 1954 I think. At the turn of the century there was a couple dozen buildings, a pier, and beachfront. Today only the hotel remains.

2. ROUGH AND READY

The only mining town to "secede" from the Union and the Territory of California then to vote itself back in.

3. POKER FLAT

The town of Poker Flat had its beginnings in the early 1850's. It is reported that only twelve families were living in the camp of Poker Flat in 1856, but 400 miners lived within two miles. Henry Cohn, who had a store here from 1857 to 1863, described Poker Flat as a "Miserable ...". The town, like most early California mining towns wnet down in 1859 and again in 1876

4. DEADWOOD (the other Deadwood)

Deadwood was founded in 1852 when gold was found in the area.It had 500 people living there
in its heyday.Deadwood was also for a time the home of gun maker Sam Colt. Deadwood was in decline by 1855, although mining with moderate returns was carried on in the vicinity for many years.

5. LAST CHANCE

It was a booming town in the late 1800's boasting an OddFellows Hall, a Masonic Lodge and numerous saloons as well as private residences. All that remains today are the cellars and wells and one cabin as evidence that there once existed a thriving community. The Eldorado Mine is on the outskirts of the town and was a major commercial operation from 1890 until 1982. There are purported to be over 40,000 feet of tunnels radiating from the beginnings of the the diggings.

The town is a now stopping place for the Tevis Cup Endurance Ride.

How Not to Make Money Re-Selling Wood

I get weekly email updates from one of my favorite wood dealers, www.woodworkerssource.com in Arizona. In early August, I receive a notice that they're shelling purpleheart shorts (smaller pieces of wood about a foot long and maybe six inches wide), for $1.00 a piece. Wow! Purpleheart is normally $4.50 a board foot + shipping. So, I promptly ordered 100 pieces, figuring I'd maybe get half or a third of that. Turns out they had 100 pieces and sold me a 100 pieces. Now here's the part where they may lost money on the deal. They base their shipping prices on the cost of the order. For my meager $100 purchase, the entire order shipped from Arizona to Northern California for a whopping $12.00. Unfortuately, the total order weighed almost 200 lbs. It came in (4) 48 pound boxes via UPS. Our UPS driver doesn't quite understand why he has do deliver wood to our house.

Chessboards Coming Soon to EnumeroCribbageBoards.com

At the suggestion of my wife, I will soon be adding chessboards the line-up as well. They require quite a bit more wood than my typical crib board, but I think I got the hang of lining up the squares for the "checkerboard" pattern. Unlike my typical crib board, the chess boards are solid wood throughout. A chess board is a little fussier to work with, especially when dealing with 64 little square pieces of hardwood. Like my typical crib board, they will have an inlay type border and an outer border(probably the Purpleheart/Bloodwood combo), and will have either a Mahogany or Purpleheart bottom. Each board will include a set of chess pieces and possibly a little knick-knack box to hold the chess pieces. The typical chess board will be made of 4-5 species of wood. Right now the 3 boards I'm making have reclaimed walnut/white oak for the checkboard itself, mahogany or purpleheart for the bottom and a purpleheart/bloodwood border. I came up with kind of fun (and big series) name: 64 Famous Chess Games, which I found on ask.com (Wikipedia is my usual source). Each board will include the chess moves of that famous game either on a laminated card or actually written on the bottom of the chess board (or both).

Re-design on the Web Site is Complete

It's all done. It's cleaner, snappier and just a little bit easier to naviate. Still some minor tweaking to do, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the results. It should make adding new pages MUCH faster, since it's a very simple, standardized format. Also, all the verbiage that used to be on each page with crib boards (describing the boards, the history behind the boards, the materials, etc.) will be in the Blog.

Complete Re-Design of the Web Site is Nearing Completion

The complete redesign of the web site is nearing completion. I'm making 2 big changes. The first change is reducing the size of the photos, in some cases by a factor of 10. This should make everything run a little snappier. The second, is the overall look of the website. I wanted something cleaner, easier to maintain and little bit more subtle. When I first put the web site up in the Fall of 2006, I didn't have a good feel of how I wanted it to look. Now I do, and that's what I'm executing.

Celebrating My 100th Series Board

A quick internal count here at the EnumeroCribbageBoards.com factory floor, reveals that I've sold 92 "Series" boards to date. Series boards are those boards that belong to a series and have a unique name. To celebrate the 100th board, I would like the screw cap to be something special, possibly a screw-cap made from ebony, inset with an Austrian style crystal peg. The board would include Austrian style crystal pegs as well, instead of my normal brass pegs.

Upcoming Board Series (38 Boards)

There are several series coming out soon, about 38 boards, give or take. I'd planned to release the "7 Time Winner of the Tour de France" Series (7 Boards) and 8000 Meter Peak-Series II (2 Boards) in July, but the refacing of the Kitchen Cabinets took predence. All proceeds from the "7 Time Winner of the Tour de France" Series will be donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. There are still 2 unfinished boards in the "Saturn Moons" Series (35 Boards Total).

Upcoming series include:

• California Ghost Towns - Series 2 (5 Boards).
  
• The Mercury 13 Series (13 Boards). The "Mercury 13" honors 13 women who, at the dawn of the U.S.-manned space program, passed the same rigorous physical and psychological testing as the seven men who would go on to become America’s first astronauts, the Mercury 7. None of them ever got the opportunity to fly in space.
• Lunar Module (LEM) Series (9 Boards)

EliminatingTear Out When Drilling Hundreds of Holes

When I started making cribbage boards, I noticed an annoying and common problem inherent in woodworking. I would get "tear-out" or tiny extra bits of wood being pulled out along with the wood from the hole I was drilling. This would result in unsightly little gaps next to a drilled hole. I tried various approaches to reduce or eliminate this problem. But as often happens in woodworking (and in life) , the solution to problem of "tear-out" was right in front of me. Literally.

In order to eliminate "tear out" when drilling hundreds of 1/8" holes in a piece of wood with a metal template on top of the piece of wood, you have to eliminate the gap between the metal template and the piece of wood. This gap causes tear out because there is extra space for the drill bit to pull wood fibres out. If there is no gap, then the drill bit goes in and comes out "clean".

At first I tried blue painters tape, which worked OK. I like the tape since it doesn't get in the way, but it doesn't get the template as flush as I'd like against the board. Then I tried various clamping schemes, none of which worked because they clamps made it clumbsy to drill. Next, I tried home-made hold-down clamps made from Ipe. These worked well, but still got in the way a little bit.

Then one day, I happened to notice a small box of #6 size wood screws laying in a corner. I layed the template on the board, I took the screw and screwed it though a hole in the template and into the wood. Right away I was impressed by how tightly it held the template against the board. I added a few more and found that 6 or 7 of the screws on 2-street drill template held the template tight and eliminated tear out completely. For the larger 3/16" hole templates, I use a standard #8 screw. After I finish drilling the holes, I "unscrew" the template and drill the holes where the screws had been.

The real test of this approach is on "California Ghost Towns Series - 2", where I'm using really crooked twisted wood (Catalina Cherry) and the holes are coming out clean.

I've resisted the temptation to Blog...

I've resisted the temptation to Blog until now, but in order to continue to promote my cribbage boards, I thought I'd give it a whirl. My biggest success selling boards to date has not been on the web site, but was at a small Craft Show over the 4th of July weekend. I sold 2-dozen boards in one afternoon. Needless to say, my wife and I had a very nice dinner and I made a sizeable (to me) contribution to the SaveSereneLakes.org Foundation.