Royal Game of Ur - Part VIII - Game Board Complete

Yes, that's right. Part eight. I last blogged about this project in September, and that post starts with excuses to why it is taking so long.

My woodworking has been in a funk lately, and the idea of this board in the first place was  something quick and easy that I could do to get me back in the swing of woodworking.

Maybe it'll work this time.

Anyway, I finished the game board.

Finally completed.

Just in case you are wondering, I based this one off of the game board in the possession of the British Museum - an ancient Sumerian artifact somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 years old.

The original, made a long time ago. I took many liberties, but I think it will do.

Bear with me while I explain what I did:

The part that I was most dreading was carving the rosettes. I intended to chip carve them, but was unsure of my skill, since I have never chip carved anything before. So I thought about it for about it for around eight months.

I found my test piece the other day, and it didn't look as horrible as I thought it did when I made it. I decided if I did that, it would be better than not finishing it at all.

I also figured out that I didn't need to chip carve, at all. That was too hard to learn on this hard wood. So, instead, I took an old gouge I happened to have, sharpened it up, and used it to make the leafy shapes, and cleaned up with my new chip carving knife. Finally, I used my chisel to mark the outer outlines.

Rosette. It could have been worse.

After I did those, the rest was pretty easy. A combination of laying things out with dividers, carving small circles with my eggbeater drill, and drilling holes for Hillbilly inlay.

Not sure why I used blue tape, but it did make some nice layout lines.

The great part of this project, was I could do it at my desk (which is in my shop), and work on it between my lessons teaching Chinese kids English.

Between classes.

I really like how the eyeball thingies turned out. Drill some holes for the eyeball inlay, chop some eye patterns with a gouge (eyeballed, of course), and more eyeballing of the little crosses with my chip carving knife.

The only thing not eyeballed was the location of the eyeballs. I used dividers for those.

Some hide glue and 3mm bamboo skewers made the inlay. This would have taken forever if I had decided to make my own dowels with a dowel plate. Greg, you are my hero for this idea.

I have no idea what the purpose of most of these tiles will be in the game, but they sure do look cool!

After all that was done, before I cleaned anything up, I cut out a little stencil in some scrap cardboard and spray painted the rosettes.

Red and blue rosettes.

My next step was a bit of a risk. I had an idea, and hadn't heard of anyone else's experience with it. I wanted the lines I carved to pop out, so I thought Greg's method of Kohlrosing would be a good idea. The only thing I happened to have around that I could think of was black shoe polish.

I went with it.

I learned spit-shining in the Army.

Here's what I did: I brushed it on, trying at first to only blacken the raised panels on my board. There was plenty of parts where I went over, so I just went with it.  I was careful to get black in every little nook and cranny so it would show up later.

Don't worry, I'm not done yet.

Once that was all done, I let it sit for ten minutes or so, then I used the boot brush. No idea why, I guess old Army habits die hard.

Now it is time to clean it up. I sharpened my smoothing plane and set it for extremely light cuts. I didn't want to plane my newly blackened lines away, only to have to re-carve, re-blacken, and re-plane-them-away again.

Cleaning up the shoe polish.

Many of the inlays were still a bit proud after having cut them with a flush cut saw. Once they were all leveled, I start taking shavings off of the panels, one by one the best I can.

This didn't turn out perfect, but I like the effect.

After this was done, I treated it to a coat of my super-secret-home-refined linseed oil.

I like this effect.

The black shoe polish does indeed accentuate the lines I carved. Plus, it gives an air of age to the game board. I like it.

Not quite complete, but I do have some functional dice.

AAR

 If I build another one of these, there are some things I really like, and some things I'd do differently.

• It might be a good idea to do the carving before planing and sawing away the grooves. There was some blowout in a few spaces because there was nothing to support the fragile edges when chopping a decorative line near the edge. Or not. Perhaps a backing piece would be a better idea.
• The shoe polish was a great idea. But, it gets in the grooves no matter what. Go with it, or mask it. But with a wood like this, the black will stay in the pores of the wood.
• Try to complete the next one in less than nine months.
• Cutting the rosettes with a gouge was a masterstroke: I never could have achieved such uniformity with a carving knife. Maybe others could.

Next I'll have to come up with a plan for the game pieces. Stay tuned!

If (like me) you've forgotten all about this project and want to read all the posts about how I got to this point, they are all here.