Celebrating My 100th Series Board

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

Upcoming Board Series (38 Boards)

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

Upcoming series include:

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

EliminatingTear Out When Drilling Hundreds of Holes

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

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

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

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

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

I've resisted the temptation to Blog...

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