Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Enumero Cribbage Boards State of the Union 2012


2012 Board Count and other Notes of Consistency

102 Boards Sold, 14 Series Sold Out, Total Number of Boards Sold to Date: 531

It was a little scary how consistent Nov 2012/Dec 2012 were with Nov 201/Dec 2011:
Nov 2011: 24 Boards                       Dec 2012: 24 Boards
Dec 2011: 40 Boards                        Dec 2012: 39 Boards

Mistakes will be Made or “15 for 2”

Every year, I think this is the year where I won’t have boards with boo-boos or mistakes or sand thru issues on the board face inlay. And every year I have about a ½ dozen boards that have boo-boos or sand-thru mistakes.  I always denote these boards as having “cosmetic” flaws and sell them accordingly, at a greatly reduced price. True to the fact I’m a human being and I make mistakes, I think I will always have a few boards every year that fall into this category. I’ve struggled a little bit to come up with a nickname for these types of boards. I’ve tried Latin (“postpono”),  “Factory Seconds” (after the mall by the same name) and this year decided to call these boards, “15 for 2”. The name also describes the price and the number of boards you get. 2 boards for $15. Selling them 2 at a time also satisfies my desire to these boards find a new home as quickly as possible.  Who likes to be reminded of their mistakes?

Timing is Something (but not everything)

So after a couple of years of selling on etsy.com, I can pretty much predict my sales cycle amazing accuracy.  I don’t sell much on my web site anymore. It’s gotten so slow on my website, even my 2  sponsored links (online gambling websites) have pulled their advertising dollars. That said, I typically sell between 6 and 8 boards from Jan to August or approximately 1 board a month.  I usually get one inquiry regarding a specific board per year. Someone wants a board similar to one I’ve made in the past. I produce such a board, let the interested party know that it’s ready and usually I never hear another word from them. And just like clock work, sales start to pick up in mid-November and are brisk till around mid-December.  So with the timing of sales pretty well worked out, I have been for the last couple of years scheduling my board building activities with the intent of having a batch of new boards ready by the end of summer.
By the end of July of 2012 I released 90 boards in 17 series. This year saw quite a few smaller (in number of boards) in a given series.  The next 3 releases are tentatively planned to be 91, 90 and 90 boards contained with 11, 11 and 8 series respectively.

Minimum Wage

As of this writing, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 hour.  I would LOVE to make minimum wage for the time I spend creating boards. Not quite there yet. After 7 years of making/selling boards, I’m still averaging somewhere between $4 - $6/hour.  And this doesn’t even count the time I spend packaging & shipping/doing website maintenance/answering emails/creating listings on etsy.com, etc. But therein lies the value of doing what I enjoy doing – I don’t do it for the money.

Standards

This year, I made a decision to try and quasi-standardize my prices on certain types of boards for 2012. I really don’t like trying to come with prices for boards, so standardizing some prices means I don’t have to worry about it so much.  For example, a nice looking tournament board is priced at $42 + shipping, but with the myriad of 29% OFF coupon codes available for Enumero Cribbage Boards (the worst kept secret on the Internet BTW), a nice looking tournament style board ends up costing just under $30 + shipping and it includes metal pegs, a new sealed deck of cards, COA, rules of cribbage, frig magnet, lifetime warranty and typically another 29% OFF coupon code towards a future purchase.

Wood Pegs

I bought a large handful of nice traditional unpainted wood pegs a few years back, thinking I would include wood pegs (instead of metal) with my Rustic style boards. I gave up on that idea. My inherent and irrational fear of a wood peg breaking off in a board hole is just too powerful. You can buy wood and metal pegs off the website, but peg sales are infrequent (maybe 2 or 3 sales a year). So what to do with a large handful of wood pegs? Well, rather than trying to pass them off as  very fat toothpicks, I found a much better use for them. They make excellent plugs for when I accidentally drill through the bottom of a thin board. I just tap the peg in, saw it flush, sand it and the whole is plugged from down under. No chance of the peg slipping out the bottom at some critical junction in the game, since we all know too well how pegs love to run away and hide.

Ebony and Ivory Shaped Money

Many moons ago, approximately 120 or so, I bought a “billet” of Ebony. I seem to remember paying around  $100 for it. About 30 or 40 of the 2012 boards have inlay point separators. In making the inlay separators, I  finally ran out of ebony strips, so I went to the enumerocribbageboards.com offsite “really, really expensive lumber storage facility” and lifted the 70# hunk of  ebony wood into the shop and started carefully cutting it up. I took off about ¼ of it and returned the remaining piece to its temperature controlled hermitically sealed storage area (under the roll around tool box).
Imagine my surprise when I looked at the current prices of Ebony and realized this $100 billet piece of ebony was probably worth $400 or 500. Yikes!
As I started to clean up the “hunk” of wood some more, I realized that the piece I’d cut off was wide enough for board faces. Right away I thought do I want to make boards out of this material?  In part because ebony is so INSANELY expensive and partly because I generally don’t like to make board faces out of solid colored woods. But then again, this is ebony we’re talking about. I’ve only done 2 ebony face boards (small boards BTW) before and thought maybe I’d like to do them again.
I made a bunch of inlay pieces from the ragged edge of my cut-off piece. After which I was left with approximately a 40” long x 4” wide by 1” thick piece of ebony.  This works out roughly to 1.25 board feet. Woodworkerssource.com had a similar sized piece for $166 (as of Feb 22nd 2012), which works out to approximately $130 board foot.
I ended up getting 10 board face pieces from the board. I cut a little too conservatively. I could have gotten more.  So 3 pieces were tournie size, so doing a little bit of simple math, the cost of the tournie material would be $22 per piece and $12 piece for the 16” long pieces. I was in Woodcraft not too long ago, and I noticed that they had nicely resawn cocoblo pieces (3” x 24” x 3/8” thick) for about $42 per piece.  This about the size I used for tournament size cocobolo boards.  My cost for such a piece is fortunately not $42. That’s what I charge for a complete board in 2012.
I roughly priced what ebony is going for per board foot (hard to do since not too many vendors sell it that way anymore) and woodworkers.
The other downside to ebony is that it is a bit finicky when working with reasonably sized pieces. 3 of the 10 boards in the series with ebony faces went into the “15 for 2” pile due to excessive tear-out, cracking and all around poor results. Suffice it to say, it may be few more years, before I tackle ebony again.  It’s too expensive and too easy to screw up.

Finishing up with Finishing (or the 10th time is a charm!)

Most woodworkers will tell you that finishing their project (i.e applying the stain/sealer/shellac/poly/oil) or whatever finish they choose is not their favorite thing to do. I am firmly in that camp as well, but this year, I feel like my finishing technique is FINALLY starting to mature and be more consistent.

This year, I kind of mixed things up (mixing and matching previous finishing techniques) and I made the 10th major revision to the way I finish boards. I also got braver about making my own home grown finishes and wasn’t afraid to use steel wool more intelligently (in lieu of sandpaper) in some situations.
I like the boards to have a hint of a mirror-type reflection, but not look or feel like plastic and still imbue warmth, show the color of the wood (especially the purple/yellow woods) very brightly, and show off a depth to its grain. All of these attributes are pretty hard to quantify in any sort meaningful way.  Suffice it to say – you know it when you see it.

The proverbial oil (linseed or tung)/varnish (or poly)/naptha (mineral spirits) formula I tried this time around is not by any means new. It’s a simple, goof-proof wipe on mix that is very popular and is also commercially available. This time around I went heavy on the linseed oil and lighter on the varnish/poly and mineral spirits, so the mix was “heavier” than the commercial wipe-on poly mixes.  This heaviness is what I think gave a bit more depth to the finish (that and several coats of the finish).  Cleaning up the surface with steel wool proved very straight-forward and then a light waxing on the buffers with a clean-up re-drill of the board in between, gave the face of the board that little bit of mirror-type reflection.  Other than some Fiddes wax and oil, I don’t do much for the board bottom.  Its left a little “unfinished” on purpose.

The First 568 Were Free (or Almost Free)

There is an old expression, “The first one is free, and the next one will cost you.” It’s surprising how many things that expression can be applied to. Having now sold over 531 of boards in a 7 year period, I feel it’s time to apply that axiom to my own little corner of the World Wide Artisan Cribbage Board Market.
Traditional Apprenticeships of days gone by typically lasted 7 years.  I have been working under the guises of a self-imposed apprenticeship for the last 7 years (2006-2012). As such, my board prices have been a bit on the low side.  Ultimately, I’ve discovered that the cost of the board isn’t all that relevant (to me) since I essentially don’t make money anyway.  It’s never been about making money. (see earlier section about minimum wage).

What is relevant is the collective frustration of anyone who makes and sells a hand-crafted item would share. The real value for what we make doesn’t equal the value we sell the object for.  Having been to many a local Arts & Crafts Fair, you see this as well – but more seasoned veterans of these venues know what to ask and get for their wares.

Me…not so much. I usually tell myself the only thing missing in my pricing model is the number “1” in the front of the price. For example, a $31 board really should sell for $131. For $31 you can buy a generic cribbage board that will work perfectly fine but will be totally lacking in character, color or depth and will be like every other generic cribbage board on the planet.

I tend to think (to my detriment) that a Cribbage Board is a family heirloom to be passed down to family members. I have my grandfather’s board that I learned to play on when I was 7. I have my father’s board that we use to play on when we would go on our summer camping trips.
So in pricing boards, my single greatest struggle/problem/ongoing-anxiety is trying to find a price at which boards will sell. I’ve come to realize I could sell 100 boards for $1 (don’t laugh – I’ve come pretty close) or 1 board for $100. More than likely, I would probably sell 100 boards for $1. To that end, over the last seven years, I’ve emphasized selling boards over selling them at a fair or reasonable market value.
Raising the prices on any boards I make in 2013 and beyond will likely do several things:
1)      Greatly reduce the number of boards I sell per year from 100+ to much less.
2)      Challenge me to have greater faith in what I do, even if no one else does. At the end of day, belief in me is all that matters and the rest is merely cannon fodder.
3)      Allow me offer free shipping (in the US only, sorry Canada) on everything I sell. I’ve always wanted to make Free Shipping standard, but when you sell a board for $5 it costs $8 to ship, free shipping doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!
4)      Likely put off repeat customers who’ve bought boards in the past, return to the website to buy another board and then get a bit of Sticker Shock.
5)      Lessen the pressure (I put on myself) to make quite so many boards. I’ll probably make just as many boards, but maybe not feel pressured to do it since I know the sales will slow down significantly.
6)      Make the “15-2” boards look very reasonable (in terms of cost) when compared to other boards.


As to the number, 568, that number represents the number of finished boards made up through 2012. There will of course be some cross-over between that number and boards made in 2013 and beyond.  Boards released in 2013 will definitely be following a new pricing model.  So some boards, which may look similar, will be priced rather differently. And I probably won’t bother with etsy coupons until Mid-October and then run them through Mid-December, since this the only time the boards sell on etsy.  I’ve tried coupons around Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Graduation, all Summer, etc. I’ve tried etsy.com ad words and there to – saw little success.

Grass Roots Trophy Boards

I was approached by the President of my local Grass Roots Cribbage Club (Contra Costa Cribbage Club #374) – Adrian Levy.  He graciously purchased 2 tournament boards and gave both as trophy boards for the club’s past 2 year Points Tournament Winners. He had small brass plaques made and mounted on each of the boards.  Adrian gave me the idea of promoting Enumero Tournament Style Boards as trophy boards – which I now do. 

Proving Once Again - The Universe Secretly Knows What You Want

For those of you who are reading this and are wood-working nerds, you know that if you spend enough time searching for something, you might just find it.
During my wife and mine’s ongoing effort to re-locate to a house with property, we came upon an open house in a semi-remote part of the county we live in. 
When I go to an open house, I always look at 2 things – the foundation and the electrical supply to the house. Then I sneak a peek in the garage. I’ve come across woodworker’s garages before, but this one was a little unusual in that it had some really nice tools.  Long story short, I gave my name and number to the listing agent and mentioned that if the owner (an older gentleman who was downsizing and moving to our local retirement community of Rossmoor) had any interest in parting with a few of his tools, to give me a call. About 2-3 weeks went by and I forgot about it until he called.

I did procure the ¾ HP Baldor Buffer and all of his hardwood. I got a nice supply of wood  - a few various exotic pieces, some 2x6 redwood (which I used in cleaning up our deck railing) and a very nice variegated brownish wood (probably Shedua) which I got at least 50+ board feet of. The shedua was a bit rough as lumber went (lots of cracks/checks in the longitudinal direction of the wood), but if there is one thing I’m good at, it’s working around problems.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

The 500th commemorative board went to a customer in Oregon along with some other gratis 500th board commemorative schwag. The customer then gave the board as a present to someone else. I know this because the person who received the board as a present (from the original customer) sent me not one, but two emails, complaining about the hole layout of the board. Honestly…not sure why this person emailed me. It was gift that was re-gifted to her. I replied to her first email trying to assuage her confusion about the hole layout, but then gave up after receiving the 2nd email.  She was still confused.  I suspect a 3rd email from this person may come into my mail box in 2013. Maybe she’ll ask for a refund or a credit? If she does, I will have to confess that her friend received the board for free and that there simply is nothing to refund and/or credit. The whole experience was actually a bit of a drag on the 500th board. I was genuinely excited to give away the 500th board – but you can’t expect people to always appreciate a gift.

Final Thought for the Year…How Not to Make Money Re-Selling Wood Part Deux

Back in September of 2007, I had a short blog post titled “How Not to Make Money Re-Selling Wood where I described buying 100 pieces of 1 foot long purpleheart “cut-offs” for $1 per piece and then paying a mere $12.00 for shipping. (The entire order of wood weighed in at 200 pounds). Well, as history is in the habit of repeating itself, the late December Woodcraft Sales Flyer had Purpleheart pieces (5” wide, 36” long, ¾” thick) for $7.99 per piece.  A 60% discount from their normal price of $19.99 per piece.  So I waited patiently for the sale to commence on Dec 29th. I put my order in on Dec 28th, 9:30 PST  – figuring that the Woodcraft website was on EST (which it was) and ordered 50 pieces. The shipping came to a grand total of $20. And here’s the kicker. Woodcraft has brick and mortar stores in California – but I never get charged California sales tax, saving me about another $40 or so. This time, FedEx gets the privilege of delivering 257.3 pounds of wood to my front door. It’s only in 3 bundles this time.



Saturday, December 31, 2011

EnumeroCribbageboards.com State of the Union for 2011


State of the States Sold In

2011 saw me pick up four more states. I’m up to 45 states sold. I’m still missing these 5 states: Arkansas, Delaware, Nevada, Okalahoma, Wyoming. And I believe Enumero Cribbage boards are now in China as well.

A Documentary on Koa

I saw this really fun little documentary about Koa (a beautiful and very distinctive wood native to Hawaii) and I was quite impressed to see that a full size Koa tree (that had blown over and uprooted itself in a storm) had a street value of about $100,000. One single tree had a market value of $100,000! I think the guy was inflating the price a little bit, but still Koa is by no means cheap. It typically sells for $25 (or more)/board foot. Koa I’ve used, I’ve gotten from Bruce over at www.notablewoods.com. Bruce graciously sells me the miscellaneous pieces of Koa that Luthiers might not be able to use. Bruce has a very nice write-up about Koa at this link.  http://www.notablewoods.com/pages/koa.html. The last batch of 25 or so Koa slices I bought from Bruce, I made 30 boards from. I don’t waste Koa. I even made 3 of the boards (Famous Literary Rejects II Series) from the cut-offs from other Koa boards.  If you’re looking for beautiful luthier wood, Bruce is your guy! In the late summer/early fall I got another great box of Koa cut-off miscellaneous pieces. This time I went with the $50 box and I was not disappointed!  The new box should keep me busy for a while. When finished, Koa imparts a warm rich glow.

Calling All Cribbage Board Collectors

For those of you wanting to collect Enumero Cribbage Boards, I replaced my templates page with a page dedicated to Cribbage Board Collectors. Essentially the pages are a year by year inventory of sold boards with links to the picture of the board and the series the board belongs to. It’s similar to the Sold-Out page, but boards are shown in the chronological order in which they were sold.

Since the vast majority of my boards have been sold via the mighty and powerful Internet, I have, at the very least an email address of the person who bought a board. If you see a board you would like to add to your collection, drop me an email, and I will forward your request to the owner. If the owner is open to the idea of parting with their board, I will provide the owner with your email address, at which point I step out of the picture and let the two parties hash out the details and decide among themselves a selling price, shipping arrangements, etc.

If you are successful in pursuing your board, you can also let me know that you are the new owner and I will update my records to reflect this fact.

Speaking of Similar Sounding Domain Names…

When I first registered my domain, I also registered the non-pluralized version of it as well. Well I let the singular version registration slide (I didn’t renew it), partly because I’m cheap and partly because I wanted to see if someone else would grab it and try to resale it to me at some point.

Well that experiment only took 2 years to complete. In late June of 2011, I started getting emails offering me to the chance to bid on a domain name I previously registered.

They very kindly offered me first crack at buying back my own domain name like so:

“ENUMEROCRIBBAGEBOARD.COM has been flagged as a premium domain and we expect it to sell quickly. Since you received a priority notice from us, you will be given first chance to acquire this domain.”

I’m not sure when getting 5-8 hits a day (a dozen hits on a good day), qualified a website as premium domain. Personally, I think they’re setting the bar pretty low.  Keep in mind that it’s the non-pluralized version.

Playing Favorites

As long as I’ve been making boards, I’ve noticed a tendency that in any given series of boards, one board always seems to stand out just a little bit more than the other boards in a given series.

In 2011, I’ve decided to give into this urge to denote what I think is the standout board in any given series and started adding an inlaid circle (similar to the inlaid skunk marker dot) on the short edge of the board, on on the opposite side of the peg hole.

But you may ask, how can I, the discriminating cribbage board buyer know if a given board for sale, is in fact your favorite board in a series, since I only show the board face (top of the board) in the picture.

And my answer is “Easy, just look for the dot next to the board name on the “For Sale Page.” This will indicate what I think is the stand out board for that series.

For example, in the “Human vs Machine in Game Play – 6 Notable Examples,” there was a board titled “Cribbage” denoting Hal’s Crib vs. The Rest of the World and next to it is a little “o” in parens – like so: (o).

And since my selling prices generally correlates to how much I like a particular board, the favorite board will, in most instances, be more a little bit more expensive than other boards in the same series.

Why I Love Wikipedia

Back in 2008, I did a small series titled “Fictional Elements of the Universe – Series I” implying that there would be more elements. At the time, the list of fictional elements on Wikipedia was a bit short. Like the list of Saturn Moons, which was only 35 when I originally did that series, the list of fictional elements has grown significantly!  As of this writing, they have mapped 62 moons around Saturn and 100+ fictional elements.

I love Wikipedia because it’s an endless source of information and inspiration for series ideas and names.


Recycled Boards

I had about 15 or so old boards floating around the shop for the last several years. They were not sellable due to serious cosmetic flaws, blown out holes, badly sanded through inlay, etc. Not sure what to do with them, I kept them. This year, I found a new way to recycle old boards. Use the old board as a new board blank! It was a elegantly simple solution as to what to do with blown out boards. The net result is that the board is tad thicker and there is some extra inlay on the bottom side, but other than that, they look like a normal board.

New & Improved

I made some thicker boards in 2011. To keep the proportions nice, I started doing 1” caps.

Drill Templates

2011 saw me finally get around to doing a proper inventory of my templates. I got rid of duplicates, etc. and finally have a good handle on what I have. I got a bug up my butt and created about 15-20 new designs (mostly curves and street mixtures) and I’m up to 69 unique drill pattern templates. I suspect there are probably thousands of combinations for drill templates and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Needless to say, I’m pretty well covered in terms of being able to find a template for any size of board. My supply of inexpensive plastic finally really ran out and so I stopped selling templates again. I won’t say I that will never sell templates again, but it may just be a while before I circle back around to to selling them again.


Big Releases

A couple of years ago I did a big release of about 50+ boards in several series all at once. After I completed it, I said I’d never do that again. Well, apparently my own advice is fell on deaf ears and in July 2011 I did even a BIGGER release of 87 boards in 12 series.

Reward

A board called Banjo Guitar was sold to a client in Southern California. It went MIA off my mailbox – a first! It never even made it into the USPS tracking system. Consistent with the USPS laws on Postal Theft, there could be up to a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. More likely, it just got eaten by a USPS processing machine and/or stolen by a USPS employee. It’s likely it would not have gotten processed in the USPS system until it got to Southern California – based on the information I see for the replacement board I sent out. Don’t know. The USPS is BIG, BLACK hole, that happens to work really well, MOST of the the time. Where else can you can send a package for $5 (from your front door) to someone else’s front door 3000 miles away and know with 100% certainty that it arrived there (and in 3 days or less) After 5 years and shipping 600+ items off my mailbox, I had to come up with a new shipping strategy.

California Ghost Towns IV

Normally, I wouldn’t mention a specific series, but this one had a bit of bad luck associated with it, so it bears mentioning

When I was drilling out the holes for the “legs” on these boards, I was using a large ¾” Fortsner bit on a hand drill. For whatever reason (most likely stupid user error) the drill jumped and landed on my left thumb and in an instant, it cut/drilled/managled a ¼” square section out of the center of my finger nail. And yes, it hurt alot. Also, I broke about 6 or 7 titanium bits while drilling these boards. It seemed like every board broke a bit. This is notable, since I’ve literally drilled a 100+ boards using the sam drill bit, so breaking a bit is a very rare occurrence for me.

Varnish

Like many woodworkers, I have been somewhat terrified of trying my hand at a varnish finish – the exception being some of the California Ghost Town series – where I just slapped a couple of coats of varnish on and called it a day.

So I finally tried it and just like Mikey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Mikey), I liked it. There is some technique involved with the wet sanding in between coats, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. And it really makes the less interesting looking board faces, pop.

Shop Tour

A very nice gentleman (a Crib Enthusiast who’s currently working in China, but who has ties to the Bay Area) and his girlfriend stopped by the shop. While my shop is so small, giving a tour of it would prove challenging under the best of circumstances, they did procure a few boards and graciously bought my remaining supply of colored wood pegs.

10,000 Pegs Later

And speaking of China, I purchased 10,000 silver pegs directly from China – a minimum order when buying anything from China. These are nice functional little silver pegs, nothing flashy. I got a good deal on them and once they shipped, they got to my front door in 2 days (from China, over the New Year’s Holiday) courtesy of DHL Express.

And the final count for 2011 was…

I sold 118 boards and sold out 13 Series in 2011. Overall, a decent year. I broke my personal best of 99 boards sold from 2010 (previous highest count from last year). In the numerically ironic department, the last board sold for the year was “Apollo 13” from the NASA Moon Bible Missions Series.  It sold for $1.00. It also sold out the series and that series was the 13th series sold out for 2011.

Cost Cutting Measures

I’m getting away from including the nicer pegs with all of my boards. Most boards now come with the little silver pegs, which are perfectly nice little pegs. Only the higher end boards will get the good pegs and only the REALLY higher end boards will get the really FANCY pegs. Older boards are still coming with the nice pegs,simply because I’m too lazy to re-shoot the boards with the cheaper pegs.  My margins are just so small (or non-existent and/or negative for a lot of boards), I just can’t justify giving out $1.50 or $2.25 worth of pegs (my wholesale cost) on a $10 or $15 board. The little silver pegs are an order of magnitude cheaper than the good pegs. Costco gave me a break when they put their brick of Bicycle Playing cards on sale this year for about $12 a brick. I stocked up and when I went back to get more, they were sold out. During the NON-holiday season, I include a pack of cards on boards that cost $31 or more. During the holiday season, every board gets a pack of cards with it (plus a 29% off etsy coupon).

Final Random Thoughts for 2011

I got a few repeat customers (so that was nice) and I drove right past board #400.  I tried A LOT of new styles of drill patterns this year, so it was fun to mix things up. I didn’t really do that many tournament style boards this year. Right at the end of 2011 I released a series of ACC style tournament boards (some with 9/64” holes) – which didn’t haven't done much. I don’t advertise in the ACC newsletter or try and promote my boards with ACC players or local clubs.

Looking ahead to 2012

I would expect to see A LOT of Koa boards in 2012. I have about ~90 Koa board blanks glued up and in the middle of being drilled. They’re always a good seller. Zebrawood boards are in the works, along with a maple/cocobolo combination board. I have a TON of Cocobolo tournament boards I just need to finish. I will be releasing 3 new point count boards. “Manchester” style boards (90 point Crib Boards) and 7-Card Boards which come in 2 flavors: The 150 point board (American Version of 7 Card Crib) and the 180 Point (English Version of 7 Card Crib).

Chess Boards

With any luck I will finish the remaining 3 chess boards that have been sitting on the shop floor for 2+ years and finally start some new Chess Boards in 2012. The new chess boards will be made like the cribbage boards - pretty woods glued to stable substrates. Some of my early chessboards (made strictly with solid hardwoods, warped).

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

EnumeroCribbageboards.com State of the Union for 2010

State of the States Sold In

I’m up to 41 states sold. I’m still missing these 9 states: Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Okalahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming.

A Quick Note about NotableWoods.com

I sold a couple of old band saw blades to Bruce over at www.Notablewoods.com via Ebay. This is notable for a couple of reasons. It’s from his website, I got the idea to dump the stock motor on my Hitachi Resaw BandSaw and replace it with a REAL motor. I put a 5 HP Baldor motor on my Hitachi and I blogged about how I did it, how much cost, how to calculate the right pulley size to get the stock blade RPM, etc.

Anyway…Bruce is quite knowledgeable about the bands for the Hitachi Bandsaw, unlike me. I thought the bands were OK and could be sharpened and used again. Turns out, they weren’t. So upon hearing this, I gladly gave him his money back. Bruce genuinely appreciated this and sent several beautiful pieces of Koa cut-offs my way. Notablewoods.com sells beautiful Koa (and other species of wood) to Luthiers all over the world. They also sell their cut-offs (small pieces) at very reasonable prices. I in turn made the “Variation on Theme – Series I” out of the pieces he sent over and sent him a complimentary crib board.

The boards sold well, so I contacted Bruce in November of this year. He provided a Box-of-Koa (shipped in band saw blade box of course). It’s a nice selection of Koa shorts/cutoffs that for Luthiers, might be too short/small. But just like the third bowl of Porridge in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it’s just right for cribbage boards. I got a beautiful box of 25+pieces in various sizes and have delineated them for 4 new series (about 28 or 29 boards): Variation on a Theme Series II, III & IV and Famous Literary Rejects II (cutoffs).

An Annual Tradition I would like to Avoid – Double Booking

As it crept ever closer to the 2010 Holiday season, sales picked up, which is a good thing. The bad thing was I thought I’d repeated a mistake I’d made the year before. I thought I’d sold a board off the website and neglected to pull the board off of etsy.com. Fortunately I didn’t and the customer was very cool about a flurry of confusing emails I sent to her, and she got her board.

Money vs. the Cribbage Board

I sold a board for $1 in 2010. Such a deal! The great “secret” to my pricing structure is really quite simple. The more I like the way a board turned out, the more I charge for it. That’s not to say I don’t like the $1 board. I do. I like all my boards. But, for whatever reason, not every board turns out as well as I would like. Some boards simply turn out better than others. A $5.00 board is board that might have a mis-aligned drill pattern
http://www.enumerocribbageboards.com/images/guttenberg.JPG or maybe I drilled it freehand and the alignment of the holes if off a little bit: (http://www.enumerocribbageboards.com/images/resonator.JPG)

When I first started selling Crib Boards, I would sell my cheapest boards for $1.00 on ebay (http://www.enumerocribbageboards.com/images/apollo16.jpg) or (http://www.enumerocribbageboards.com/images/ChoOyu.jpg).

A lot of the boards are now ranging between $15-31 per board. The slightly nicer ones creep into the $40 area and the REALLY nice ones are in the $50-$60 range. I sold one board for $121 a couple years back. My highest board purchase to date. I suspect it will be a while before I venture back into that price range for a board. (http://www.enumerocribbageboards.com/images/siarnaq.jpg)

This board is REALLY significant (too me) since its 5 strips of ¼ sawn Cocobolo that are all perfectly book-matched and aligned. It’s tough to get 3 bookmatched strips to align, let alone 5! It’s the first board I got the idea of using ¼ sawn strips to design board faces. It’s the first board I did with Cocobolo. It’s THE board that kind of opened the flood-gates in terms of creating boards with unique and unusual grain patterns. It’s a board I created when I didn’t really know what I was doing and somehow got really lucky on my first try. And good luck inspires us to continue on. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a very good picture – but it still sold during Xmas 2008.

To that end, I’ve come up with a new 4 Tier pricing structure that rates the boards from 3 to 0, 0 being the best. Then the 4 tiers are broken down a little bit more depending on if the board is a Tournament Style, 2,3 or 4 Player board or a Giant Board (the 3 foot long board). Since any given board takes about 2 ½ to 3 hours from start to finish, I decided not to base my prices simply on how long a board takes to make – since they all take about the same amount of time. Instead, prices will vary based on the final appearance of the board and the type(s) of wood that make up the board.

The Custom Board Jinx

I’ve done a few custom boards, but I probably won’t do any more. They’re not really for me. I know of a few board makers that do custom work and have referred people who have asked about custom boards to them. Lots of folks on the Web make custom crib boards, but I can’t seem to get my head around it. At the end of the day, I can only approximate what a given customer wants and handmade objects are undervalued enough without adding an additional parameter (such as customization) into the mix.

Earlier this year, a customer made a custom request and asked me to repeat an earlier design. I made 4 boards in the design and the boards just didn’t come out very good. I declared all 4 of them “Postpono” and sold them for almost nothing. Naturally, the person who requested the board didn’t buy any of the 4 boards – I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t get what he requested and I couldn’t see redoing a 4 board series completely from scratch for the possible chance of selling one board from that series for the whopping sum of $24.

In my world, wood always dictates the final product. Least with boards that are complete and offered for sale, the customer chooses either to buy a board, because they like it or not to buy a board, because they don’t. Most people fall in the latter category. Most people are window shoppers.


As a Percentage…

My favorite place to sell crib boards, etsy.com, started offering coupons right before Cyber Monday! Yeah! I went ahead and offered a 31% off coupon (any board on the etsy.com site) and sure enough, people started using it. I’m actually pretty happy that I can do this now. I’ve been amassing a large collection of email addresses (from my 600+ template/boards sales over the last 5 years) and have wanted to start email marketing past clients – but I didn’t want to SPAM people just for the sake of sending them SPAM – I wanted to send them something they might actually find useful – like a DISCOUNT coupon for a future purchase.

I’ve played around with coupons on paypal, and it’s kind of doable, but it’s not very elegant and difficult to implement. It’s much easier on etsy.com.

CafePress.com

Custom made, short-run hats and T-shirts available over the Internet seems like a good idea, but seriously, it’s not. I am of course bitter because I’ve had items on cafepress.com for 2 years and have made exactly no money. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

On the off chance you wander over to it in search of an Enumero Bike themed bike Messenger bag, thong underwear or even a T-shirt, here is the address:

http://www.cafepress.com/enumerocribbage

It’s a Holiday…

I sold at least on board on the following Holidays this year.

Xmas (2009)
New Year’s Eve (2009)
New Year’s Day (2010)
Valentine’s Day (2010)
Turkey Day (2010)
CyberMonday (2010)
New Year’s Eve (2010)

Etsy.com is “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade ™ ”

Etsy.com still seems to be a great place to sell boards. As always, it’s a great place for the consumer/buyer since the immense amount of competition on the site can only drive places one direction (down) and the selection is equally immense.

Unlike flea-bay (ebay.com), etsy doesn’t gouge you on fees and your 20 cent insertion fee is good for 6 months! Their fees are reasonable and fair, not excessive. There are many things I like about etsy.com. The website is very nicely laid out, it’s easy to navigate and easy to post items to. If you want to promote your items on their site, you can easily do this for a small fee. In my experience, the buyers “get it” and respect the fact that the items they’re buying are hand made and not churned out by the thousands in some factory somewhere.

Pegging Along…

In order to make better use of my less expensive pegs on 3 and 4 player boards, I’ve taken to painting the pegs copper and black with some success. The trick is to spray on as little paint as possible, otherwise it flakes off too easily.

Recycling

I’ve had ½ dozen chess boards not quite done for some time. One chess board was hastily completed and given to a customer as a replacement chess board. The board they bought from me a couple of years earlier (one of my early chess boards, had warped rather seriously). Yes, I do honor my lifetime warranty. So that leaves 5 chess board to still be finished. Of those 5 chess boards, 2 of the boards had some issues – they also warped – so I re-glued them to a stable substrate. When I first started doing chess boards a couple of years ago, I thought I could do them in solid hardwoods, but I’ve since decided to make chess boards the same way I do crib boards: re-saw the material, glue the material to a stable substrate and then add edge layers, thus preventing any chance of warping. The old woodworker’s adage still applies: Wood Moves.

Even after re-gluing the 2 warped chess boards to a stable substrate, the 2 boards still had issues. Since both boards were Maple & Purpleheart squares, I thought, Ah-ha. I can make one good chess board from the 2 slightly screwed up chessboards. Well that idea didn’t pan out. So there I am staring at all these various parts of 2 cut up chess boards…trying to decide what to do…and the obvious solution didn’t really come to me right away. It took me a minute to realize that the random assortment of glued up squares would actually make interesting looking crib boards!

Which then got me thinking about my box of board rejects – boards I couldn’t sell even for $1, but hated to throw away. Perfect for re-purposing to another board. So I went to my freshly arrived box of Koa pieces and voila – in a matter of a few minutes, I re-purposed 8 dead boards – giving them a 2nd chance. In most cases the board face was the problem – the board bottom and substrate were perfectly usable.


Some Words about Drill Templates…Rants & All!

I finally ran out of the longer pieces of plastic and since I won’t pay full retail for plastic, I’ve been making do with what I’ve got. In other words, I’m not currently selling any templates requiring plastic over about 15” long. This eliminates quite a few templates, many of which sell well.

I tried to mitigate this problem by buying what I thought was the good, high grade chemcast (paper backed) plastic from the folks at http://www.freckleface.com. Unfortunately, the folks there are terriblely rude and just plain nasty/awful people to deal with. Don’t let the as asinine picture of the stupid Freckle Face kid on the web site fool you. These people are DICKS! And on top of that, they’re dishonest. And the owner of the company, with whom I corresponded directly with, is pretty much a royal DICK! Just my opinion, but I would never deal with them again. They charge top dollar for SHIT quality plastic (the lowest grade of plastic available). And when I pointed this out to them, let’s just say, the email correspondence between them and I went from PG-13 to down right nasty! A Better Business Bureau complaint produced nothing, further confirming my suspicion that the BBB is an equally worthless entity as these people are. Every single complaint I’ve ever filed with the BBB has gone absolutely nowhere and produced no tangible results.

So to mitigate my supply chain issues (aka the Scrap Bin at my local Tap Plastics), I came up with the idea of the NFS template. I quasi gave up Tap Plastics in Dublin. They started charging way to much for their chemcast pieces. They want $8 or $10 for little cast off pieces.

The NFS Template is a shortened version of the full size template. NFS is short for “Not Full Size”. The idea is that you don’t need full size templates – it’s really only a convenience. The only part of the template that is shortened are the straight streets in the middle of the template. If you have the turns and the corresponding streets to align from, then you can easily drill a full size board with an NFS style template. The only drawback is that you have to “pick up” the template and remount it. But the NFS templates are drilled in such a way you have to do this once. So you drill half the board, then pick up the template, remount it aligning it to the existing streets you’ve just drilled and then drill the other half. The secondary advantage to NFS templates is that people can’t use them for full size 120 point cribbage boards! The NFS template approach is similar to the “mirror” template approach, where you drill half the board + the registration holes for the 2nd half, and then flip the template, align it to the registration holes and drill the other half.

A quick check revealed that www.cribbageboardtemplate(s).com is still parked but not used. At last check, you cannot purchase templates off of this website. You can however, purchase the website (minimum bid is $100) if you choose to get into the highly lucrative cribbage board template market. Yeah…good luck with that!

A couple of URL derivatives that seem to still be up for grabs (in other words, no one has registered them yet):

http://www.cribboardtemplate.com/
http://www.cribbagetemplate.com/
http://www.cribbagedrilltemplate.com/

And of course my personal favorite…

http://www.its-a-cribbage-drill-template-dammit-and-not-a-plastic-cribbage-board-and-besides-plastic-crib-boards-are-ugly-lack-depth-and-warmth-unlike-wood.com/

The bottom line is that template sells were down quite a bit this year. It’s to be expected that template sells would taper off. As I will readily testify to, there is no money to be made making cribbage boards, so…why would there be any money in selling templates.

I clicked over the 300th template sold right before Halloween. It seemed like a good stopping point for templates made to order, thus I’ve decided to stop selling templates made to order. Rather, I’m now selling templates that are made when I drill out a given board. The obvious advantage of this is time savings. I mean it seems pretty obvious to drill a template at the same time you drill a board, but I didn’t come to this conclusion very quickly or easily. After all, I did 300 made to order templates!

So just like the crib boards, there is a picture of the actual template for sale, which would have been created at the time a board was drilled. And like crib boards, the template picture would have to be removed and the listing updated every time a given template sold.

In a perfect world of template making, I would have a $5,000+ CAD machine do the drilling for me and I would only make templates out of ¼” thick bullet proof polycarbonate plastic (the stuff that can’t crack or break and costs about $20+ sq. foot). And since this world is so perfect, I would charge $50 - $60 for these CAD made templates.


COA

I was never happy with the way I did my little Certificate of Authenticity cards. These are little Maple Veneer cards that I imprint my maker’s stamp on and on the back I write the board name and the series it belongs to. So…instead of writing the information out on the back of the card, I now print this information out on a medium grade copier paper readily available in most corporate laser printers. The advantage to this is 2 fold. One, since I have lousy handwriting, the board name and series is actually legible when it’s printed out. And the 2nd, less obvious advantage is that the paper on the back of the veneer card acts as a sort of a paper backing on the maple card veneer and stiffens up the card and prevents it from cracking or breaking after it’s been stamped with my electric maker’s stamp. These little veneer cards as so thin, I don’t think they were ever designed to have an imprint burned into them.

To Finish Up…

I continued to enhance my techniques this year. A good finish is elusive, but I’m very pleased with my results this year.

My 2nd Advertising Link

I picked up a 2nd ad link in 2010. The gentleman didn’t pay as much as the guy for the first link…but with the economy as rocky as it is, any ad revenue is appreciated! My first ad link from late 2009 renewed as well.

Schwag Alert

The template counting Odometer clicked over 300 on Oct 29th with the 4 Player Compact template. The buyer naturally received some schwag with it. I’ve loosened up my rules on giving schwag (cups, T-shirts, mouse pads, pens, tote-bag, key chains, hats, etc.). And of course, the person who buys Cribbage Board #300 will not only get some schwag, but the pretty fancy Austrian pegs, just like the folks who purchased board #100 and #200. I still get all my schwag at vistaprint.com. For example, my last order of enumerocribbageboards.com imprinted schwag consisted of the following 5 items:

1. XL T-Shirt
2. Hat
3. Custom Rubber Stamp
4. Mouse Pad
5. 25 Small Business “Fridge” Magnets

And all of it cost me a total of $7.45. All the items were “free”. The $7.45 was the cost of shipping.

Trading

I nice gentleman from the Pacific Northwest and I traded an assortment of pegs and a couple of templates for a piece of Indian Rosewood. I think he was a little surprised when I told him I would make 10 boards (10 Notable Native Americans Series) out of it. It was a blind trade on my side – I didn’t see the wood until I received it on my side. I like the wood, but I would probably not use it for board faces again. For my style of boards, Indian Rosewood would work much better an accent piece.

Coupons work very well. Who knew?

The good folks @ etsy.com started supporting coupons on their website right around Thanksgiving. They seem to work really well. I believe if you’re going to give someone a discount or coupon, at least make it worth their while. 10% coupons are lame! I opted for a meaty 31 point discount (enough for a skunk!)

Made In China

For the last few years, I’ve been buying pegs (in bulk) from woodexpressions.com. I include metal pegs and playing cards with my board as a courtesy so people can start playing on my boards right away – no need to cut up match sticks to start playing. For me, pegs are a supply expense and not something I construct from scratch and sell. Much to my surprise, I started to run really low on pegs during the Holiday Season.

I get the pegs at quasi-wholesale from woodexpressions.com which is quite a savings over retail. Not surprising, the pegs that I have gotten from them are made in China.

So I started wondering what it would take to cut out the proverbial Middle Man and just buy the pegs directly from the manufacturer in China myself. So I asked “The Google” and I found alibaba.com which is a website that connects overseas suppliers with buyers. I made few email inquiries and found I could get 10,000 pegs for a very good price, much less than what I’m paying WoodExpressions.com. Following the Henry Ford mantra of “You can get it in any color you like, as long as it’s black”, the first order of 10,000 pegs will be silver. Even with shipping factored in, I still realize a substantial cost savings. And yes, 10,000 pegs is the minimum order. So if you need silver pegs for cheap, look no further!

The 300

For some silly reason, I really wanted to hit 300 total cribbage boards sold before the end of 2010. And I did so on Dec 13th, 2010. I also picked up a new state, Utah. My basking in the glow of this personal milestone didn’t last long and about 20 hours later, board # 301 sold. You got to love the Holiday Shopping Season!

And the final count was…

I have I sold out 17 series in and 99 boards in 2010. A nice increase from 2009, largely due to etsy.com. Comparing page views from etsy.com to page views to my website, they definitely seem comparable. If anything, my website is slightly more in terms of page views. The bottom line is that page views on etsy.com translate to actual sales – not so much on my website. I think folks inherently trust a product hosting site like etsy.com (or ebay.com), over an individual’s website. Also, I think etsy.com has really grown and people recognize it as the place to go when looking for something vintage or hand-crafted, especially during the Holiday Shopping Season.

For 2011…

Tropical Exotic Hardwoods of Latin America have provided me with quite a bit of material to some nice single piece Cocobolo tournament size boards. As always, Cocobolo ain’t cheap, but it is sure pretty!

I had very good success with another vendor on ebay, Chitswood. I really dig the smaller thinner pieces he sells, perfect for travel size boards. I did the Comedic Teams IV – Monty Python series using his wood as well. That turned out to be a very popular (sold out relatively quickly) series as well. I hope he starts selling wood again!

The Koa boards should do quite well as well.

And as usual, I have a large collection of boards on the shelf that have been drilled, they just need to be finished. So I will be throwing those into the mix as well

Changes for 2011

I finally got all the states and appropriate shipping rates entered into my paypal account, so I can do location based shipping costs (assuming someone buys

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Fickle Hand of Fate aka My Drum Sander and The End of Cheap Plastic

The Fickle Hand of Fate aka My Drum Sander

When I come up for name for a series of boards, I have to find a collection of of related things to match the number boards. Recently, I announced a new series, "The 10 Named Space Shuttles" to match a series of 10 Cocobolo Faced Tournament Boards. There were actually 9 shuttles produced by NASA and a 10th shuttle that was a Amusement Park Ride at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois. Unfortunately, one of the 10 boards met with an unfortunate sanding accident when going through the sanding clean-up phase and it wasn't really fixable. So, my carefully crafted series of 10 boards was reduced to 9 boards. I had to eject one of the boards. I was never 100% comfortable grouping a Space Shuttle Amusement Park ride in with the real Space Shuttles so it was an easy choice. Thus the series of 9 boards, each named after an actual NASA Space Shuttle, became "NASA's 9 Shuttle/Orbiter Vehicles". The prices on the boards named after vehicles that went into outer space (not all of NASA's Space Shuttles went into space), reflect something about the Space Travel history of the board. For example, the "Challenger" board will cost $73, for the 73 seconds that Challenger flew on it's last mission before it's catastrophic and tragic failure. The "Columbia" board will sell for $48.08 (one penny for every one of it's 4808 trips around the earth). The Discovery" board will cost $52.47, honoring it's 5247 trips around the Earth thus far.

The End of Cheap Plastic

I like a bargain as much as the next person. I've been able to keep the costs of some of my bigger/longer templates cheaper due to the fact that I had a large stash of 2 foot long Polycarbonate plastic pieces that I picked up pretty inexpensively. Alas, I've almost sold out of these pieces and will have to buy longer (2 foot long) plastic pieces at full retail. The prices on the longer templates will go up a couple of dollars to reflect this.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Where the Wild Things Are

My wife keeps horses at a nearby retirement Community. And near where the horses live, this Retirement Community has a large and pretty active dumpster facility. It's not uncommon for someone who has passed this world and unto the next to have all their worldly goods taken up to the dumpsters and "dumped". It makes for some interesting treasure hunting for the locals.

My wife casually mentioned the other day that someone had thrown away a leather chair - covered in Zebra Leather. I didn't give it much thought until I went over there to help out with some maintenance chores for the horses and I saw the chair. The Zebra leather was in pretty decent shape.

I'd previously made a couple of boards with palm leave pieces, so I thought I'd give the Zebra leather a try. I was able to salvage quite a few good pieces - but like most of the boards I make, the material itself (and not me) will determine what type of board, it's size, etc.

I wouldn't normally make a board out of animal hide, but there is a lot precedence for making crib boards out of animal type material (ivory tusks, deer antlers and moose antlers - to name a few), so it's not all that far fetched. The hide fits my general criteria of being unusual or interesting, so it seemed like a good fit. On a at least of a few of the boards, I will mix the Zebra Hide face with some Zebrawood.

I would never have gone out and actively looked to make a board out of an animal hide - but since this re-purposing the hide (it would have gone to the landfill), I was OK with it.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Post Holiday Wrap Up and New Templates

I actually sold boards on and after Christmas

Admittedly, the cribbage board business can be somewhat seasonal since the majority of them are given as gifts. Given that etsy is now a strong selling avenue for me, I pretty much expected not to see another cribbage board sale until next November, so I was bit surprised I’ve actually sold a few boards since Christmas. In fact, I sold a board on Christmas day.

Templates

Now that the holidays have passed, I’m selling templates again with one notable exception: I added a disclaimer letting people know I don’t have and I don’t use CAD machinery to drill my templates. My goal has always been to sell reasonably good looking templates with out the holes wandering all over the place.

I got the idea of making really small templates, what I will call micro-templates. I cruised around the web looking for ideas of how to squeeze a 120 point continuous track format into a very small area – say 5” x 5”. I found some interesting wrap around type drill patterns (from other crib board vendors) which I shrank down by about half to fit the micro-template paradigm.

I also came up with a bunch of new designs in the geometric section: trapezoid, Compact Ovals, Heart, star, race-track, and rectangle/triangle/square with tapered corners.

I’m also adding what I call SCT templates (Spiral Cascading Turns), where the number of turns equals the number of streets.

With all the new template designs, I up to 55 template designs – the trick now is to get caught up and drill them all. So I’d be increasing my current template count from 30 templates to 55+ templates.

In addition to the little freebies I include with the plastic templates I sell, I’m now throwing in a paper template (3 person continuous track) loosely based on the paper template Lee Valley sells on their website. You tack the template to the board material, us an awl to mark the hole center and then come back and drill the hole. I include 2 copies of the template – one to use and one to share.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Enumero State of the Union 2009

Since it’s nearing the end of the year and not likely I will sell any more boards between now and Jan 1st, I’ll jump ahead a little bit and give my EnumeroCribbageboards.com State of the Union, for 2009.

Money vs. the Cribbage Board

If a board sells at a given price, then that’s probably a fair selling price. Admittedly, I did some price fishing this year – trying to find out the right prices for a given board. I marked a few boards a little high than I would normally and then dropped the prices till they sold, thus establishing a fair selling price. Etsy.com was a huge help in that regard – since if a board sells on etsy.com, then it seems to be fairly representative of its market value, given that etsy.com is kind of a perfect place to figure out a proper selling price, albeit it’s a little trial and error. Setting a price for a board is something I’ve struggled with – until this year.

I sell boards that are distinctive and unique in their appearance and construction. My boards include solid stable wood cores (prevents warping), double edge borders, inlay galore, custom hardwood threaded caps for the peg storage compartments and are typically use made from 5 to 8 different species of woods and 8 to 29 distinct pieces of wood. And I don’t charge and an arm and a leg either.


Going…going…gone green

I think it’s fair to say that my cribbage boards are fairly “green” in the way I make them. I use recycled substrate material (the wood that makes up the core or center of the board), whenever possible. For smaller boards, this is typically cabinet grade plywood and for the larger boards, it can be recycled maple cutting board or the table top from a solid white oak table. It’s actually quite astonishing (even to me) how little wood I need to make a very nice looking board. The power to generate my power tools is provided (in part) from a large 19 panel array of Solar Photovoltaic (energy producing) panels on our roof. The shavings from planning the wood for the boards either ends up the garden or in the back of my wife’s horse trailer. I collect most of the sawdust generated and it goes into the Compost Tumbler. My glue spreaders are small left-over rectangular wood pieces. The card board boxes I use to ship the boards are either recycled (saved from the landfill at my regular paying job) or provided to me (at no cost) via the USPS who makes their shipping boxes from Post Consumer Waste. I rarely ever make one board at a time. There are always made in small batches. When I finish the boards, I typically try and do them about 10 or 12 at a time. This cuts down on waste as well. I light my shop with Compact Fluorescent bulbs. And for fresh air, a nice cross breeze and natural light, I simply open the garage door.

The sand paper wrap on my big drum sander is used over and over again – I “clean” it with what is essentially a giant eraser. I do this until there is basically no “grit” left on the sandpaper wrap.

Going forward, any board made with a least one piece of recycled material, will have a stamp on the bottom of the board. The presence of the stamp will indicate some piece(s) that make up the board came from some kind of recycled or re-purposed material.

Etsy.com is “Your place to buy & sell all things handmade ™ ” Part I

I mentioned etsy.com earlier. If you go to etsy.com and search for things made of wood (under woodworking) you will come back with about 1600 pages. Since each pages hold 20+ items, that’s about 32,000 items just under the woodworking section. Such a large and vast selection is great if you’re a consumer. Competition, especially in the world of hand-crafted items really makes for good buys! You can get amazing prices on some very, very beautiful, handcrafted items. etsy.com has, dare I say it, has become successful for both the consumer and seller and etsy.com is still WAY cheaper than ebay.com for sellers, which still gets about 20% of the item’s final selling price (when listed with auction style), when you factor in listing fees, final valuation fees and Paypal’s fees.

Getting Through Customs and Random Thoughts About Wood

I did 2 custom board requests this year. The 2nd custom board request included Ipe (aka ironwood, or as I like to call it, “Concrete in wood form”. After finishing the boards, I was reminded that Ipe is actually quite nice to work with and finishes nicely as well. Of the dozen or so wood species I routinely work with, Ipe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipe ) is a very consistent wood. The only downside is that it’s dust is pretty toxic and it’s splinter are razor sharp. Purpleheart/Paduak/Ebony can be brittle and a little finicky, but always finish well and really make the boards “pop”. Cherry is seductive in its color and grain and really is “God’s Gift to Cabinetmakers”. Mahogany always forgives but can be a little inconsistent in its grain patterns. Walnut varies from dark brown to creamy white, but its grain and appearance are always warm and inviting. Maple puts up very little fuss and seems to want to please. Poplar is like working with an old friend who knows all of your bad habits and quirks and never, ever judges. It just works. Striped Canary wood is just plain beautiful and very, very sexy. Zebra wood can be a little disappointing, but still a very pretty and interesting wood. Incense cedar is a bit brittle, but smells great and is quite beautiful and always finishes nicely. Pine/Fir, is just good old predictable pine, tried and true. And finally, Cocobolo is like a secret, exotic mistress. Expensive, dangerous, fussy as hell, and worth every penny. Just remember to take a shower after working with it! The dust always gives me the itchies!


Pegging Along…


I stopped using Miller pegs for the 3/16” hole cribbage boards. I found a very nice vendor on ebay.com who sells 3/16” polished metal pegs and so I bought a bunch of the 3/16” pegs (about 20-25 boards worth). I really like using metal pegs whenever possible. They contrast nicely with wood and more importantly, they won’t break off and create one of those “forever-plugged” holes in your cribbage board.

Alignment is Important

Believe or not, I actually worry about peg hole alignment. A lot. I was reminded of this fact when going through some of my dad’s personal possessions after he passed away this last summer. I found an older Drueke Cribbage board (in its original box). I opened the box and to my astonishment, I saw the hole alignment on this board wandered all over the place. It obviously had not been drilled with any kind of drill template. The holes were just too far off. It’s surprisingly difficult to free hand drill in a straight line. It can be done, but it’s not that easy. And if you think about it, holes have to align straight to adjacent holes on either side (say for example in 3 player board) and straight to holes in its own street. Then the grouping of the holes has to align with other groupings, in both the X and Y direction. And lets not forget the turns and making sure the holes the curve, whether 180 degrees or 90 degrees or 45 degrees, line up correctly. See, I told you I worry a lot about peg hole alignment.

ACC Tournament Style Boards

Earlier this year I got a chance to see what type of board is used by serious Peggers at Grass Roots Games and at ACC Tournaments. It was a thin board (about 2” wide) and about 19” long and had directional arrows that indicated the turn since these were continuous track boards. I even figured out how to ink “turn arrows” onto the boards. These boards were sold via the ACC newsletter for years by a gentleman named Roy Boyles. As I understand it, Roy stopped selling the boards.

I made a template from Roy’s board and then returned the board, the template etc. back to the board’s owner. The board’s owner (a friend of Roy Boyles) had made a custom request for the template. I of course made several templates for myself. I ended up making 3 different templates in the vein of the ACC tournament style board. A long and short version of with 1/8” holes and then a long version with 9/64” holes.

Since I have a lot of odd and end pieces of beech flooring around, I will go ahead and try something new in the new year and make some ACC Tournament style boards with the beech flooring. Simple, clean little boards either with 1/8” or 9/64” holes. And since there is now a Lumber Liquidator’s near my house, I may pop over there and see if they have any scrap pieces they want to sell for cheap.


Some Words about Drill Templates…


I stopped selling templates in early November. My inbox, which used to be all ablaze with template orders, has cooled considerably. For the most part, I’m kind of glad to take a break from doing templates. Templates grew a head of it’s own and quickly took over – consuming what little free shop time I have. I honesty think cribbage drill templates is one of those few areas (for selling stuff on the Internet) that has not been properly exploited, even by Amazon.com.

To Finish Up…


I like consistency and predictability when it comes to finishing boards. Most woodworkers will tell you that finishing is something they struggle with. I am no exception. My finishing technique(s) over the last year are a step closer to where I would like them to be. I’m more consistent and the results are more predictable. Both are good things since the finish is the finish.

And the final count was…


As of this writing, I have I sold out 9 series in 2009, and 49 boards. Less than 2008, but my hit counts started going up – possibly because I started to get a high ranking in the search engines? Both of the custom board requests I did this year were from people who saw the boards on etsy.com. So averaging the last 3 years, it’s safe to say that I sell about 50 boards a year.


etsy.com Part II


esty.com is a good place to sell crib boards since there are boards from different vendors to compare to one other right there in the same location, on the same web page and it’s this comparison shopping that I think people enjoy.

People coming to etsy.com expect to find hand made cribbage boards that are perhaps different looking and are made with different materials than commercially available boards. Whereas the typical visitor at my website, is generally referred there one of two ways – either by a search engine (google makes most of the referrals) or by the ACC Website (www.cribbage.org/links) and the Cribbage Corner website ( http://cribbagecorner.com/cribbage-boards ).

Fake 200th Board, Real 200th Board and the 300th Board Sold

I probably jumped the gun a little bit, awarding the 200th board sold schwag to the 188th cribbage board sold (I was counting chess boards in the overall board count). So…to alleviate my guilt, I gave some schwag to the buyer of the 200th Cribbage board (212th board overall). This person also happened to make the largest single purchase of Crib Boards to date (4 boards in one order). So…it felt like the right thing to do. Going forward, I think I will keep the board counts separate. So when I roll around to the 300th board sold (tentatively scheduled for the Holiday Season 2011 if past sales are any indication of future sales – averaging 50 boards per year sold over the last 4 years or so), it will be the actual 300th cribbage board sold and the number “300” engraved on the wood cap would confirm this.

My first paid Advertising Link

Quite out of the blue, a gentleman asked to advertise on the home page with a small text link to an online gambling site. Cribbage is often played for money (in England it’s one of the few games allowed by Statute to be played for small stakes), so I said why not?

Ironically, the very question of whether cribbage is gambling is not (similar in some interpretations to lotteries) is addressed here:

http://home.mountaincable.net/~halscrib/cutlucky.htm