A quick Follow-up, Karma, A New Old Bandsaw Rube Goldberg Would be Proud Of and Finishing Notes

A quick follow-up:

At a customer request, I made a template based on the board by ACC Tournament Board maker, Roy Boyles. The customer sent me one of Roy's boards to work from. I sent back the board and the template and never heard another word from the customer. I made the template for free and didn't charge for shipping it back. So much for common courtesy.

Speaking of Karma...

I was reminded why you don't treat people like SH*T (see above). The reason is Karma. Yes, the universe really does keep score. This was once again demonstrated to me when I had to replace my bandsaw this week. I've given away many things on craigslist for free. One of the more useful things I've given away was a perfectly good electric water heater. It was used, but it hadn't been used that much. I gave it away to a gentleman who, like a lot people these days, is financially strapped and couldn't afford $400 for a new water heater. He picked up the water heater, took it home, had a friend who was plumber/electrician install it for him and he had a perfectly good water heater and didn't have to take cold showers anymore. He made a point to send me a follow-up email and thank me for the water heater.

Fast forward a couple of years. My smaller vintage Powermatic 41 14" bandsaw, which I've always secretly hated, finally breaks! Yeah! I've hated it because the blade never tracked right, it was a pain to tension the blade correctly, it took a funny blade size (99") that most vendors don't stock, and the blade frequently jumped off the wheels if you put any pressure on the blade.

So now I have to get another bandsaw. I too, am watching every penny and can't afford a new bandsaw (and I don't want new, I'd rather get a vintage one) and I can maybe afford $100. I found a nice old delta 14" band, but it was pretty far away. A couple of days later, I'm trolling Craigslist and sure enough, an old Rockwell 14" bandsaw shows up and the guy is only 10 minutes away.

A New Old Bandsaw Rube Goldberg Would be Proud Of...

I get over to the guy's house and boy, did I hit the jackpot. A nice, clean vintage 14" Rockwell with some Rube Goldberg type modifications. He added 2 table extensions to either side of the table. The stock table had been extended 12" in either direction. The original owner had built a complicated looking 4-tier tower to raise the motor and then added 5 Pulleys to the original single pulley. He created and welded on a nicely integrated dust collecting shroud to the lower door of saw. He wired in 2 sets of enclosed 110V outlets (total of 4 outlets) nicely integrated into the switch area. He beefed up the power cord to handle the extra juice required by the extra outlets. And it had the original stock motor.


Finishing Notes

For the first 200 or so crib boards I've made, I've really struggled to get a consistent and repeatable approach to finishing, that was quick, easy to do, repeatable and gave my boards a look that really emphasized the warmth of the wood grain but didn't look plasticy or fake! Rather, it gave a look of depth to the wood and it's grain.

So last week, I was sanding and finishing up 10 soon to be released boards and I thought about all my previous attempts at trying to get a consistent and easily repeated finish and this time really stepped through what I was doing with a very methodical approach. I took notes of what I did, I repeated the approach and I got it! Finally!!!!

I didn't invent some new finishing approach. Rather, I just finally made sure I was consistent in my approach and paid careful attention to what I was doing. Too often, I get distracted and or impatient when finishing, so I veer off course. The key this time was to make sure that I prepped the board properly when sanding and sealing. Prep is everything when it comes to finishing. No surprise there.

T and T (Templates and Tournament Boards)

As I've mentioned before, template sales seem to come in waves. I won't sell any templates for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden, I'll be drilling 10 templates that week. So seems to be the case for new template designs. This week, I received 3 requests for new template designs: a spiral, the "29" shaped board and an intriguing request to downsize the size of the Standard Tournament model by a few inches (more on why it's intriguing in a moment). Since I don't do my templates in CAD, new template designs pose a challenge - how to make new templates using existing templates. For the "29" shaped board, I can print out a picture of a "29" shaped cribbage board, enlarge it to size I want and then spray mount the picture onto piece of wood and use it as rough guide to make the template. For the spiral board, I can draw a perfect spiral with Adobe Illustrator and then paste the picture spiral picture down and drill accordingly, using the spiral line as a guide for the center hole (for a 3 player board).

The third and most intriguing request came from someone who recently bought the tournament style template, but didn't realize till he received it, that it was longer than he expected by about 3-4 inches. The gentleman was looking for a tournament board template to match the length of his existing tournament board which had been made by a gentleman named Roy Boyles. A little bit more investigation showed Roy used to sell this size of tournament board (around 19 inches long) through ads he placed in the ACC newsletter and then all proceeds from his sales were donated directly to the Lymphona Society.

So I offered to make him a template to match Roy's board (as close as I reasonably can) and he will loan me Roy's board, so I can take measurements from it.

Apparently, at ACC sanctioned tournaments, the standard tournament board used is around 19 inches long. I have never attended an ACC tournament and thus, I didn't know this. (I really should get out more). I looked around on the Internet a little bit and could not find anyone who sells 19" tournament boards. My tourney boards are typically 22-23" long. One place sold a 29" long tourney boards and yet another place sold tourney boards that are only 15" long.

Roy has stopped selling his tournament boards, but he still gets requests for them. So...this gentleman was kind enough to offer an introduction of sorts between myself and Roy, with the intent that I could possibly fill the niche left by Roy and offer for sale these size of tournament boards.

It's an exciting proposal, so we'll see.

A Silly Slogan on Some Enumero "Schwag"

I wandered over to CafePress last week and put together a small collection of Enumero Cribbage Board "schwag". Just a picture with the Enumero website location didn't seem like enough, so I decided to make the "schwag" functional as well fashionable. With Enumero "Schwag", not only will you look cool and hip and stylish at your next Cribbage Tournament, you can indulge your desire to find a suitable cribbage partner with the humorous slogan, "I'm Begging for Some Pegging...". The image and slogan is available on thong underwear, T-Shirts, mugs, hats and bumper stickers.

Here is the location:

http://www.cafepress.com/enumerocribbage

And for those of you who would like to point some of the other definitions of "pegging" (aside those related to Cribbage), I'm way ahead of you. Urban Dictionary.com actually gives (ironically) 19 definitions for "peg".

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=peg

Some Random Thoughts about Self-Centering Bits and Crib Templates

The holes in most of templates I sell are 1/8" and are meant to be drilled straight through with a 1/8" bits. I prefer cobalt bits since they drill very clean. So I don't believe the templates I sell will work with self-centering drill bits. As we all know, 1/8" is the most common size for cribbage pegs.

I see the closest you can get to 1/8" is 7/64" in terms of self centering bits? The problem with self centering bits (and my templates) is that there is no recess for the outer shank of the self-centering bit, like you would find on a hinge. Alternatively, you could have a drill template with a hole big enough to accommodate the outer shank of the self-centering bit. For example, Rockler's shelf-hole jigs work this way.

These folks:

http://www.coastaltool.com/a/ab/snappy/self_centering.htm

sell a 7/64" self centering bit which works with a #6 screw. I include #6 screws with my templates, so it seems like its close...but I know from experience that some pegs don't always sit right in 7/64" holes vs. 1/8" holes. So even if this did work, you might have to go back and re-drill everything at 1/8".

That said...Rockler sells cribbage templates and they sell self-centering bits to with the templates. See this URL:

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=10120&filter=cribbage%20template

As far as hitting the drill bit hitting the edge of the hole on the template or the bit missing the hole or the drill bit wandering , I've never given that one much thought. I drill pretty fast, and if I miss the target hole and start to drill a "new" hole in the plastic template, I simply stop, put some Tightbond II Glue in the "new" hole, cover it with a very small piece of blue tape and move on. Needless to say, some of my more well used templates have a lot of "new" holes filled with glue. But it adds character to the template. It shows that it’s well loved.

Could you make templates to accept countersink drill bits?

Unfortunately, I can't really make templates to accept a self-centering bit due to the fact that I "clone" my plastic templates from metal templates which were originally made on a CAD drilling machine. In order for me to make ones that could take self centering bits, I would have to drill a regular template, and then enlarge each hole to fit the cap or insert piece of self centering bit. Given how close the holes are to each other on some of the templates, I can't guarantee that this would work so well. Holes too close together in plastic might lead to problems - making the templates too brittle? Alternatively, I could countersink, the edge of each template hole, similar to the way they do for hinge holes, but this would likely take a long time and would probably wear out my good countersink bit. :->

These folks sell a very nice countersink bit - that might work - but I can't guarantee how well it will do in plastic. Just a thought. :-> I use this bit (and their wood threading tools) to tap holes and make threaded caps for crib pegs in the crib board.

http://www.bealltool.com/products/threading/countersink.php

19 States, Quarters & Caps

I keep track of a lot of metrics around the selling of my cribbage and chess boards. I keep track of which states I've sold in and I've been hovering around 32 states for a while. I figure I have a long way to go before I hit the 51st state, seeing how I have to sell boards to crib players in another 19 states, but I've already planned how commemorate when I finally hit the 51st state. The 51st state buyer will receive their board with their state's quarter inlaid into the bottom of the board. I'm counting the District of Columbia as a separate state, BTW. For the curious, here's a list of the 19 remaining states to be sold in: Arkansas - Delaware - Illinois - Louisiana - Maine - Missouri - Montana - Nebraska - Nevada - New Hampshire - New Mexico - North Dakota - Oklahoma - Rhode Island - Tennessee - Utah - Vermont - West Virginia - Wyoming. Since I turn my own threaded caps from hardwood dowels, I decide to start numerically numbering boards with their caps. This be will just another fun way of keeping track of the numeric order in which boards are sold. So for example, if you bought board #168, the bottom of the screw cap on your board would have the number "#168" etched onto it. The number will be on the bottom of the cap (below the threads so as not to be visible).

Price Fixation

Since I'm just about done drilling the 150+ boards that have been in the work queue for the last year or so, I can start to turn my attention to actually finishing and releasing the new series (there are 22 new series). I will try and finish and release a couple of series at a time. With a few exceptions, there probably won't that many boards under $15 anymore. Back in the day, I sold boards for as little as $3. There will still be a fair amount of boards under $20 though. Most of the more expensive boards (any board selling for over $29) will come with free shipping, free deck of sealed playing cards, etc. I really struggle with pricing and I will continue to - since I don't want to price my work so high I never sell anything, but not so low - that people question the quality and/or workmanship. Cribbage boards can be bought for as cheap as couple of dollars, so charging $50 or $100 for board can be a little challenging. Based on my own experience, I know what sells in that price range, albeit slower.

100th Template Sold and the lucky buyer got some "Schwag"

I zoomed right by the 100th Template sold and the lucky buyer got some "Schwag". I thought I wouldn't hit the 100th template sold until Mid-June, but I was off by a month. The 100th template sold on May 15th, via eBay. The lucky buyer of the 100th template received a complimentary "Schwag Pack" which included an EnumeroCribbageboards.com T-Shirt and a set of 8 fancy pegs. For those of you keeping score, the 100th template was a 2 Player Continuous Track Compact Model. I've also noticed that template sales seem to come in batches. For example, the last batch of templates ( a total of 8 templates ) all sold between during a 5 day period. And it looks like I will have some more "Factory Seconds" of templates to sell sometime in June. If I make a template and don't like it, then it ends up in the "Factory Seconds" pile. Once I get about 10 templates in the pile, I sell the whole lot on Ebay. The factory seconds are not counted in the template sold count. Nor do they have labels and they are not numbered, like the regular templates. Since I've cracked a 100 templates sold mark, I'm won't update the template count for a while. I'll just leave it at "100+" sold. I surprised myself how quickly I hit a 100 templates sold - it took just under a year. I started selling templates in late May of 2008.