My very own State of the State Address for 2008

It’s been an interesting year for selling cribbage and chess boards (and now plastic drilling templates as well). There were many firsts for me this year. 2009 will mark my 3rd year of selling cribbage and chess boards.

I sold my first Tournament Size Chess boards this past year.

I sold a Cribbage board for over a $100. Granted, this was a personally significant board, but still…for a guy who started selling boards for $3, this was a personal milestone. This board sold on esty.com, by the way. If you have handmade wares to sell, etsy.com is the way to go.

I stopped using my metal templates to drill with and now I drill boards with the plastic template clones (just like the ones I sell). There are a couple of reasons I did this. One, it’s a lot easier to drill a board with an 8 ounce plastic template mounted on it, instead of a 3 pound rolled steel metal template. It cuts down on tear-out on the board since I can get the template really tight against the board. And since I’m using clear plastic, I can position the template somewhat in case the board pattern/wood grain pattern nicely compliment each other.

I sold 33 plastic drilling templates in just 6 months. I now sell 12 different styles of cribbage board templates, done in various kinds of plastic (chemcast, poly-carbonate, and the blue plastic backed kind). Hopefully, I will increase the number of templates I sell to 19 different types in 2009.

My website started showing up on the first page of Google/Yahoo/MSN search results, when searched on the words, “Cribbage board(s)”. It doesn’t consistently show up on the first page – it’s more of an intermittent thing.

The number of unique (new) visitors per day to my website finally got out of the single digit range. In the month of December, I saw 30-50 unique (new) visitors to the website per day.

I started selling cribbage and chess boards on etsy.com with some success. I abandoned my first etsy handle (“19pointhand”) and went back to the more familiar "enumerocribbageboard". I would have added an “s”, but etsy.com has a 20 character limit on names.

I learned that people really, really like the 3 player continuous track style board and I will be making a lot more boards in that style (just a soon as I finish drilling the 80+ tournament style boards), I have the queue right now.

I’m finally started to feel (after completing about 200 boards) that my self-imposed apprenticeship in board making is coming to an end. I’m looking forward to taking what I’ve learned thus far and carrying it forward.

PolyCarbonate and Google Searches

It would appear that after 2+ years of selling cribbage boards on the Internet, my website is starting to show up on the first page of google.com search results under the very generic terms, "Cribbage boards" and "cribbage board". I've been as high as position #4 on the first page of google.com results. I wish I could say being in such a high position has sent sales through the roof, but it hasn't. I'm not surprised. I know from first hand experience my cribbage boards sell much better when the buyer can see them up close and personal, touch them, look at the different kinds of boards, rattle the boards and hear the metal pegs rolling around in the peg storage department. I will say that etsy.com has been helpful in selling boards. Buyers go to etsy.com looking for artisan quality hand made items.

On a different note, my little side business of selling crib templates is humming along. Making a board template involves little more effort than simply drilling the holes, so they are pretty straight forward to make. Right now I offer 11 different templates for sale (and counting).

I was fortunate enough to get a decent supply of Polycarbonate plastic from my local Tap Plastics. I now use 3 different kinds of plastic for cribbage board templates: resin cast (the blue plastic backed plastic), chemcast (the paper backed plastic) and now the "bullet-proof" polycarbonate plastic. The polycarbonate plastic seems pretty indestructible.

Chessboards 10-12 (in the series of 64) have been released.

Chessboards 10-12 (in the series of 64 Great Chess Games) have been released. These are tournament friendly boards. The squares measure APPROXIMATELY 2 1/4" x 2 1/4". There are still 6 boards (#13-18) that aren't quite complete and should be finished soon. All boards now come with a complimentary set of 32 wood chess pieces (Kings Measure 1 3/4" high) and a small hardwood box for chess piece storage.

• Board #10 has 147 distinct pieces of wood. This board is made up of the following 9 species of woods: Squares: IPE & Maple, Inlay Around Squares: Paduak& Purpleheart Border: Cherry, Mahogany& Walnut Bottom Strips: Poplar and Redwood.

• Board #11 has 146 distinct pieces of wood. This board is made up of the following 9 species of woods: Squares: IPE & Maple, Inlay Around Squares: Paduak& Purpleheart Border: Cherry, Mahogany& Walnut Bottom Strips: Poplar and Redwood.
  

• Board #12 has 91 distinct pieces of wood. This board is made up of the following 7 different woods: Squares: Walnut & Maple Inlay on One Sides of Squares: Purpleheart Border: Cherry, Mahogany& Walnut Bottom Strips: Poplar & Redwood.
  

The Sander is Fixed - More chessboards coming soon

Turns out the good folks at Woodmaster sent me the wrong size threaded rods for my broken Drum Sander. The ones they sent were too short. Of course I found this out AFTER I put them in the sander. But...much to my surprise, I was able to re-use the old rods. I spent the better part of my Saturday drilling for the new support brackets and putting the old threaded rods back in, but my beloved drum sander is working again. I tested my fix by cleaning up 3 chess boards and I'm almost ready to post those 3 boards for sale on the Website. I've also completed the initial face glue ups on about 95 cribbage boards and I've started on gluing up the bottoms for those boards. I have to say some the tournament size Cocobolo boards are pretty wild looking! The grain patterns of book matched Cocobolo are just amazing. The 10 most prettiest/most exotic looking boards (of the 35+ Tournament style Cocobolo boards) will be in a series titled "Favorite Comic Strips of the Past & Present". The 10 boards are named after my 10 favorite comic strips and each board will include a signed Anthology (collection of various comic strips) from my self-published comic strip, "The Help Desk".

The Saga of my Broken Drum Sander Continues...

The saga of my broken drum sander continues . I found out that the threaded support rods aren't the only stripped out part on the sander. It turns out that threaded rods thread through brackets that supports the entire roller bed-the part of the sander where you place an item to sand. Fortunately, I found this out AFTER I called the maker of the Drum Sander (Woodmaster Tools) and was told that I would likely findthat these brackets wouldhave stripped out as well. But all is not lost. Woodmaster sells a retro-fit bracket that should (hopefully) allow me to fix this problem and finish sanding up the 9 chessboards that have been sitting in the queue awaiting completion for the last several months.

Templates, Window Shoppers, A Broken Drum Sander and Gluing Like Crazy

"Templates, Window Shoppers, A Broken Drum Sander and Gluing Like Crazy" is kind of a funny title, but accurately reflects the status of EnumeroCribbageBoards at the moment. I see lots of Window Shoppers (in etsy.com) and to a lesser degree on my website, my beloved drum sander is broke at the moment and I'm gluing up new cribbage boards like crazy.

Templates

Crib board template sales seemed to peak in September, maybe due to the fact people are making crib boards for the Holidays? I'm no longer using the cheaper plastic for the templates. I'm using a material called Chemcast Acrylic Plastic, either in a 1/4" or 3/8" thickness. It costs me between $11.00 to $15.00 a square foot. It's expensive, but it's really nice stuff to work with. It drills nicely and is really solid - not likely to crack or chip. My templates are still quite a bit less than other vendor's who sell plastic drill templates and the material is really thick!

Window Shoppers

Etsy.com is a pretty neat site, since it caters to people who make "stuff" and gives them another outlet to sell their wares. I like it and it's very affordable. A quick count shows I've gotten about 1100 viewings on the inventory sitting on etsy.com at the moment, but no sales in the last couple of months.

A Broken Drum Sander

My beloved 38" Woodmaster drum sander has been acting odd of late, and I finally figured out why. Two of it's 4 threaded rods used to raise and lower the feed bed, are stripped out. Needless to say, you want things to be pretty level when sanding, and stripped rods cause the feed bed to list to one side and make for very inconsistent results. The replacement parts have been ordered. I'm not looking forward to replacing those rods.

Gluing Like Crazy

The large group of boards I'm working on at the moment (100+ boards) are all mostly tournament style (long, narrow, single pass). I've glued faces to about 50 them and I am humming along on the rest. The prices on these boards will be vary from anywhere from $19 on the low end to $53 on the high end. The board faces on the $53 board will be pretty amazing looking. They're made from 2 strips of book-matched cocobolo and the grain patterns are just out of this world! These 100+ boards will be divided into 15 new series.

Templates are Selling Well - Who Knew?

I offer cribbage board drilling templates for sale. They are made of 3/16" or 1/4" thick plastic cloned off my existing metal templates or made from scratch using my template maker. In a sudden and unexpected surge of interest in cribbage board templates, I've sold 3 templates this week and I am working on a 4th custom template as per a customer's request. I figured if I sold one template a year, that would be cool.

If I had one pet peeve in this universe, it would be craftspeople who make and sell cribbage boards with sloppy, misaligned hole patterns. We as humans, simply cannot drill several hundred very tiny holes in perfect alignment. I don't buy the argument that it makes the board look more authentic, more hand-made.

My wife wonders if I'm hurting my own cribbage board business by selling templates and I don't think so. There are an estimated 2 million people who play cribbage on a regular basis. To date, I've sold 8 templates.

Clawing My Way Up the Search Engines

Like the hundreds of millions of other people selling "stuff" in Cyberspace, my website suffers from the common malady of not being noticed. In order to be noticed on the Web, you have to be on the first page or second page of Google or Yahoo search results.

So then the question arises, how do people find my website? About half the time, it's from other Websites who have graciously provide a link to my site. And the other half of the time, people come to the website base on a link provided by the Search Engines from Google and Yahoo. When someone searches on the words "cribbage boards" on Yahoo, my website shows up on page 1 of the results. On google, I'm still stuck in the never world of page 2 of the search results.

On average, I get about 7 unique visitors a day or around 210 visitors a month. I'm still not convinced that a website is the best way to sell my cribbage boards. The couple of times I've sold cribbage boards at a local craft show have shown me that people like to touch and feel cribbage and chess boards, and thus my boards sell well at the local craft show.

In general, it takes about 500-700 unique visits to generate one cribbage board sale. The results are about the same on etsy.com, although buyers seem more focused when buying off of etsy.com, since it's a website dedicated to all type of handmade and hand-crafted items.

Go by Bike!

Stop by www.etsy.com

A couple of weeks ago I read an article in our local paper about an Ebay-like, Artisan friendly website called www.etsy.com. I checked the site out and saw that other folks sell their Cribbage and Chess boards on it, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I like the fact it’s only 20 cents to list (much cheaper than ebay) and works with Paypal. It’s simple to use and easy to browse on. Like Ebay, it has buyer based feedback system.

I’ve listed a couple of dozen boards on it and have gotten my first sale already. It’s especially easy to browse a given person’s listing, sort by price, etc.

My most expensive, beautiful board to date

If you take one glance at the picture of the Siarnaq board (Saturn Moon Series), you realize the grain pattern is quite striking. I feel it’s the most beautiful board I’ve made to date. This board set the bar pretty high in terms of how striking I can make a cribbage board.

Ironically, this was the first board where I stumbled onto the idea of re-sawing cocobolo strips and book matching them to make interesting and pleasing patterns. This particular board is triple book-matched for the 3 inside strips and double book-matched on the 2 outside strips. This is the only board that I ever made with this combination of book-matching. It is also the very first board I made with Cocobolo. So, in terms of my personal history of cribbage board making, it’s a very important cribbage board (to me).

Every time I come up with a new look or idea for a crib board, I’m smitten with that board for a short time, but then my infatuation fades and I move on. Not so with this board. I still love the way it looks and get excited every time I see it. But, I’m quick to remind myself that I make boards to sell and share with the world. If I’ve succeeded in making an exceptionally beautiful board, then of course I should charge accordingly, but still within reason.

A 52 Board Release - All At Once

I decided to go ahead and just release all 52 boards at once, instead of adding them ad-hoc. Doing so many boards at once made it easier when it came time to photograph the boards (although some of the pictures came out fuzzy and I will re-shoot them), if need be. 50 of the 52 boards are part of 6 new series and I FINALLY finished the Saturn Moon Series with the addition of the last remaining board and added the last board to the "7 Time Tour de France" Series. As always, I try and keep my prices reasonable and you get a significant break on shipping costs if you buy more than one board. You may notice that the purpleheart I use in my boards is quite "purple". I tried something new this time around. As soon as I finished the boards, I put them out in the sun for a couple of hours. This did 2 things. It let the oil/wax finish soak in nicely and it oxidized or turned the colors of the wood a little darker and a little richer. I also photographed all the boards with the pegs that are included with the board. I have added (4) 4 players boards - in the Mercury 13 Series. Of those 4 boards, the "Truhill" board is probably the nicest. With this board, I used a thicker cherry boarder and I think the proportions worked out better (given the large size of the board). And despite my best efforts to the contrary there are some "Postpono" or 'Factory Seconds" boards. There are 2 Postpono boards in the "A Seven Course Meal of Extinct Candy Bars" series and there 3 Postpono boards in the "Apollo Lunar Modules" series. As always, Postpono boards are significantly discounted.

In the Home Stretch...

It's been a busy couple of months. I've finished gluing up 50+ cribbage boards which will be in several series. The only thing left to do on these 50+ cribbage boards is sanding, drilling and tapping the cap holes and final finishing. The chess boards (10-18) are almost done as well. I was going to use IPE as the outermost edging material for these boards, but decided IPE is better for the chess squares than edges. The IPE boards are quite heavy as well. So for Chess boards 10-18, I will be using Walnut for the outer most edge. Chess Boards 19-27 will be similar in terms of the woods used in boards 10-18, but instead of Maple for the white squares, I will be using Curly Maple. I paid way too much for some Curly Maple scrap pieces, but I think those boards will turn out nice. I've been resisting the temptation to start gluing up new cribbage board faces until I completely finished this current batch of 50+ cribbage boards. The current batch is devoid of any tournament style boards, so the next batch will be mostly tournament boards. Also, I'm planning a special "19" shaped board (think of the classic "29" shaped cribbage board, but instead of being shaped in the number "29", its shaped in the number "19". ) These should be ready shortly before the Holidays. I made the template some time ago. It's a pretty big board, but I think it will be fun board to release around the Holiday Season.

Attack of the Clones - Conclusion

There are simply not a lot of places to buy Cribbage Board Templates. I give a few of the places on my website. I got most of my metal cribbage templates on Ebay several years ago. I looked into having a local machinist make metal clones of my existing templates, but that was way too expensive. So...I sourced some less-expensive plastic (1/8 to 1/4" thick). Now, I offer 2 different templates (in plastic) for $10 (price includes shipping). One template is for making more cribbage drill templates (sort of a universal template) and the other is for the classic 2-street 2-player cribbage board. The prices on the rest of the templates reflect the high cost of good, thick (1/8" to 1/4") plastic. All templates can be ordered off my website, just like the cribbage boards. I also have a FREE paper template that I borrowed from the Canadian Home Workshop. This is a PDF file that can be downloaded, printed to any size, and then glued on to your board.

Attack of the Clones - Part II

Still flush with success from actually rolling my own cribbage template, I think over the next few months, I will clone all my steel templates (into plastic) and if anyone wants to buy a cloned template from me (made in plastic), I will offer those for sale at a nominal fee - maybe $10-15. About 1/2 the price of what Rockler charges for their plastic templates. I've had 2 or 3 requests from Cribbage Enthusiasts looking for crib board templates. The plastic templates won't be pretty, but they should be functional. I've noticed that the plastic templates are easier to get tighter against the board (than the steel templates) which reduces drill bit tear out (the tendency of the drill bit to pull a little bit of the wood face out with it as it exits the hole). The cool thing is I can make a batch of say4 or 5 cloned templates in one drilling session, since I can just gang them together and drill them all at once.

Drilling My Own...and Attack of the Clones

A typical crib board can have anywhere from around 125 holes to 500 holes, depending on the board size, number of players, track pattern etc. Oddly enough, I have never thought of drilling as tedious or time consuming part of making crib boards. I can drill a smaller board in around 5 minutes (yes I'm bragging), a larger board in under 15 minutes. The point of this post is not to highlight my drill press prowess, but to note a recent change necessitated by a customer request. A very nice woman emailed me and asked for a 4 - Track board for her husband for her anniversary. Not a problem I thought, since I have a 4 Track template at home. Turns out the only 4 track template I have is for the big boards (i.e. The Drive-Thru Tree Series). Oops. I don't have any smaller 4 track templates. But I do have a crib board template maker template. The gentleman who sold crib board templates on Ebay back in 2003/04, sold this funny looking template with holes in different configurations: curves, straight-away sections, etc. I bought one thinking that I could make any template I wanted, if I ever needed to. I put it in the Crib template drawer and forgot about until I received the request for the 4 track board. Here was big chance to drill my own crib board template - except mine would be drilled in 1/8" inch plastic instead of steel. (( For the record, I only know of 3 places you can buy cribbage templates online and place sell a different kind of template: Rockler (plastic), Lee Valley (paper) and iasco-tesco (steel). Also any reasonable machine shop could also make steel templates for you out of 10 gauge steel. )) So after a little rough layout to make sure I would get all the holes on the size of plastic I was using, off I went. It took a couple of hours since I was taking my time and trying to be careful, but sure enough, when it was done I had drilled my own template. This new found confidence in template making will also allow me to clone my existing steel templates into plastic. I'd tried cloning templates before, but I think the plastic I used wasn't thick enough. 1/8" plastic seems to be about the right thickness.

Drilling My Own...

A typical crib board can have anywhere from around 125 holes to 500 holes, depending on the board size, number of players, track pattern etc. Oddly enough, I have never thought of drilling as tedious or time consuming part of making crib boards. I can drill a smaller board in around 5 minutes (yes I'm bragging), a larger board in under 15 minutes. The point of this post is not to highlight my drill press prowess, but to note a recent change necessitated by a customer request. A very nice woman emailed me and asked for a 4 - Track board for her husband for her anniversary. Not a problem I thought, since I surely have a 4 Track template. Turns out the only 4 track template I have is for the big boards (i.e. The Drive-Thru Tree Series). Oops. I don't have any smaller 4 track templates. But I do have a crib board template maker template. The gentleman who sold crib board templates on Ebay back in 2003/04, sold this funny looking template with holes in different configurations: curves, straight-away sections, etc. I bought one thinking that I could make any template if I ever needed to. I placed it in the Crib template drawer and forgot about until I received the request for the 4 track board. Here was big chance to drill my own crib board template - except mine would be in 1/8" inch plastic instead of steel. (( For the record, I only know of 3 places you can buy cribbage templates online: Rockler (plastic), Lee Valley (paper) and Iasco-tesco (steel). Also, I suspect any reasonable machine shop could also make steel templates for you out of 10 gauge steel. ))

Geodes

Flush with cash from selling my biggest board (Wawona) and arguably my prettiest board (Titan), I did a quick (and expensive) shopping trip to Tropical Exotic Hardwoods of Latin America. I found this place on the web and I can only say Wow! Beautiful, amazing wood on a whole different level. I will be a customer for life. Sam Maloof buys wood from these folks. Anyway...I bought a block of turning stock (Cocobolo) and promptly re-sawed several sticks. Re-sawing cocobolo is a lot like cutting open Geodes . I'm always amazed at what grain pattern I get after I resaw that first piece. Depending on the orientation of the cut, I either get very fine intricate lines or very wide open grain lines with lots of wild and beautiful knot patterns. And the colors are amazing - reds, orange, purple and everything in between. Fun stuff. The only downside (for me) when re-sawing cocobolo is I have to wear some serious dust protection, turn the air-filter on in the shop when I'm done and leave the shop for awhile, otherwise I sneeze like crazy! With these sticks and some other pieces of nice wood I've been picking up, I have board faces for about another 70 boards or so, including another 3 1/2 foot long board. I'm still plugging along on the 38+ boards (as per my website) and I've finished all the squares glue-up on the 9 tournament friendly chessboards. The chessboards still need their bottoms and borders.

Tools...Tools...Tools

I tend to go through tools. I buy 'em, try 'em and if I don't like 'em, I get rid of 'em. Recently, I received a new planer. It is my 4th stand-alone planer. The first planer was a 12" Dewalt portable planer. It was VERY loud, kind of under-powered and would bog down from time to time. I sold it to a co-worker. Planer #2 - now that was a planer. A vintage (made before I was born), 1200 pound 16" Powermatic planer. The entire thing was cast iron. I think it was made sometime in the 1950's. That machine could plane anything and not break a sweat. I really liked that planer, but quite frankly, it was overkill for my little shop. I eventually sold it to a local lumber yard. Planer #3 was a Hitachi 12" Planer I bought from an estate sale. Very, very nice planer. I sold it on Ebay, to make room for Planer #4, another Powermatic planer with a Helical Cutting head. I think the helical cutting head is a concept long overdue in woodworking. Instead of separate elongated knives mounted on a cylindrical shaped head, the helical head has dozens of carbide tipped square shaped cutters arranged in a helical (or spiral) pattern around the cylindrical cutting head. The helical head cuts by shearing off pieces of wood at an angle, similar to the way a hand plane might shear wood off. The results are very pleasing. OK, the results are amazing. This planer looks like a keeper.