When my past supervisior at work discovered that I liked to tinker in the shop on weekends, she approached me with a project to replicate a family game her family simply referred to as “Marbles”. The original game was made by by her uncle out of some scrap birch hardwood. Despite its simplicity, the game had become a family tradition, often played after dinner during family get-togethers, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.

At its core, the game is similar to Parcheesi, but played with a set of marbles instead of plastic tokens, and a double-deck of playing cards instead of dice. But what made her game unique was the dual-versions it contained: a 4-player version on one side of the board and 6-player version on the reverse.

In order to space the holes accurately and consistantly, I first created a full-size plywood template of the hole pattern for each side, and then used a 1/2-inch core-box bit in a plunge router, afixed with a 3/4-inch bushing to accurately punch each of the more than 250 semi-hemispherical holes on each board.

I stained each board with strongly-brewed Lipton’s Tea and then followed Sean Clark’s 5-step finish described in “Anyone for Tea?”, FWW #207. The result was a deep, mid-luster look, that brought out the warmth of the maple hardwood I selected. A unique selection of craft-marbles (6 sets of 5 marbles for each board), picked from a large bin of random marbles at a local toy store, rounded out this trully custom game, which is destined to become a new family tradition at the holidays.

Launch Gallery