Making a Solitaire Board


Anthony Bailey tries his hand at making a traditional board game

Table of Contents

Solitaire is just that – a solitary game – that requires one player only with just the centre marble removed and each leap frog move made vertically or horizontally. The trick is to remove all the marbles to complete the game successfully. There is a skill in doing this and thus winning against yourself.

Making a solitaire board is also a challenge. The biggest one was how to create rows of evenly spaced recesses for the marbles. You can buy packs of marbles either in a games or toyshop or online, of course. Most boards are round: I couldn’t see a problem with mine being octagonal, however. I also wanted to make it visually a little more interesting by butt gluing some contrasting woods together.

Hexagonal wooden solitaire board with marbles.
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Preparing the timber

Wooden boards clamped on workbench for woodwork project.
1. The first job was to thickness and edge some offcuts, two pieces of ash and one of walnut and glue them together using my incredibly useful bench dogs to clamp them tight. I have two wide strips of planed softwood, which I use to safely and comprehensively clamp anything between the dogs and act as spacers if needed

Making the recesses

Wood board with metal ruler and grid marks.
2. I first considered using the router table for machining the recesses with a 16mm corebox cutter. However, I would not be able to see what was happening, the complexity of getting exact spacing would be a pretty hideous exercise. Common sense dawned and I decided to make an ‘overhand’ jig by drilling spaced holes for a 20mm guide bush in a piece of 6mm birch ply. The holes’ centres were at 25mm in three rows of seven

Drilling precise holes in a wooden board
3. A 20mm sawtooth Forstner bit proved to be an exact sliding fit with the chosen guide bush. The 1pi8llar drill I used has a new sub-table fence and clamp fitted. On this, I put a piece of birch ply as a sacrificial board. By aligning the point of the Forstner on each cross line, I found I could get very precisely spaced drill holes
Carpenter using hammer on wooden board with holes.
4. The new jig needed de-fluffing but apart from that it was ready to go. I did consider briefly whether it needed a fence to run off, but as I was using odd-sized offcuts that wasn’t a workable option. In fact, at this point, I realised this project wasn’t going to be as difficult as most of mine to execute!
Wooden joint on a workshop table
5. I found the ‘working centre’ of the workpiece – that is the place where I knew there was enough wood all round if I chopped the corners off. Then perpendicular cross lines were drawn centred on the middle walnut section. These would be my aiming lines for setting the jig in place
Person tapping wooden pegboard with hammer
6. Thin veneer pins were used at the corners to hold the jig in place. Since the corners were going to be chopped off, these tiny holes would go anyway. The jig was sighted and centred on the middle row of holes
Router creating holes in wooden board
7. With the 20mm guide bush and 16mm corebox cutter installed, the router was rested in one of the holes and while static, the cutter was plunged to touch the board blank. The depth gauge was then set for about 5mm deep. This was experimental as the recess needed to only be deep enough to locate each marble. Once I found what looked like a suitable depth, I stuck with that throughout. Each recess was plunged and cut in turn until they were all done. Then the jig was lifted and turned and centred perpendicular to the first set using the other pencil crosshair. It was then pinned in place and the other recesses machined. The centre nine holes did not need machining as they were already done
Wooden planks with drilled holes on workbench.
8. The recesses were now all machined but a little rough inside each one, so I used a ball-ended abrasive bit in a cordless drill to give a completely smooth finish

Shaping the board

Woodworker using hand planer on dovetail joint.
9. Now the corners could be chopped off at 45°. I decided to make these edges longer because it looked better when they exactly met the edge of the walnut centre strip. This wouldn’t affect the recesses at all or the running recess around the outside of the board

Making the running recess

Carpenter marking wood with square ruler and pencil.
10. Once the shape was cut out, I needed to machine the running recess. To do this, I drew two pencil lines on the router table sub-fence that lined up with the diameter of the same corebox cutter now fitted in the table. I lined up the corner of each edge with the start pencil line and did a ‘drop-on’ cut. When the stop pencil line was reached, I lifted it off at the back end
Wooden board with circular indents on router table.
11. The running recesses met surprisingly well at each corner, which was a relief!

Finishing

Woodworker using plane on drilled wood block.
12. I decided to keep all the board edges square but applied a tiny bevel on all the upper face arrises. I could have used a bearing-guided bevel cutter in the router table but I opted instead for a block plane, as it was quick and easy to do. The only proviso was to only work with, not against, the grain to avoid tearout
Using electric sander on wooden surface
13. A good sanding was now required. The edges were completed using a sanding block. The recesses had already been sanded
Applying hardwax oil to wooden board
14. My favourite finish is wax oil, which I applied liberally and used kitchen paper towel to wipe out all the excess before leaving the board to dry. If you’d like to apply a final finishing touch, simply affix some baize or felt underneath, otherwise it’s ‘game on’

Further reading

A Trumpet-Inspired Chess Set

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