Senet throwing sticks, tafl frames

There are a lot of parts to even simple games, and sometimes the simple pieces get overlooked in favor of building the main game board.  So I spent a lot of time in the woodshop today, cutting frames for tafl boards and cutting throwing sticks for all the senet boxes we've put together over the last several months.  This is the second batch of throwing sticks, after an initial sanding.  The first batch is drying after a light stain was applied.  A couple of 9x9 tablut boards are to the right.

Oiling Senet Boxes

Applying Danish oil is something we do to all our boxes and gameboards.  Whether we use dark walnut or natural, it really brings out the grain of the wood.  For most of our game boards, this is the second to last step before we finish them. The last step is typically to apply a water-based polycrylic finish to further protect the wood and any paint or leafing.

Casualties of the Creative Process

When we started building game boxes about a year ago, specifically Senet and Tjau boxes, we went through a lot of designs and experiments to see what we liked.  This unseemly pile is the group of unfinished, some almost finished, boxes and designs.  Most of them we'll be able to complete in the coming days.  Some of them we'll probably quietly put away and use as utility boxes.

Assembling more Seega boards

Putting together a few more Seega boards--here we've cut and glued two more 5x5 game boards and cut and stained the board frames.  We'll experiment with some minor decorations to see what we like, but the simple origins and gameplay of Seega in my mind would be betrayed by any over decoration.

Seega--From Mock-Up to Prototype

Glued the game squares down to a base and applied a few coats of Natural color Danish Oil, then cut and stained a quick frame for the entire board.  Here the game board is dry assembled--we'll glue it together and apply a finish over the next day or so.  Still working on some good game pieces to replace the colored glass gems.

Senet Game Board with carved lid and painted gold base pattern

Both the box and the Senet game board lid are made of pine. The 30-Square Senet board is hand-carved, and the heiroglyphs were also etched by hand.  The box was stained with an ebony wipe-on stain and then sealed. After sealing, the pattern along the bottom edge was hand-painted with gold leaf (the pattern is based on a pattern along part of King Tut's gold death mask).  A 20-Square Tjau board is carved on the flip-side of the lid.

Senet Board with side drawer 2

Following up on the last post, here is our side-drawer game board fully assembled and treated with a medium-walnut Danish oil.  I took my time putting this one together-- it was a lot of fun, but I think next time I'll do it a bit differently. Next step will be to apply the game squares (haven't yet decided if this will be a 30-Square Senet board or a 20 Square Tjau board) and the side panel paintings.

Senet board with side drawer

Just for something different, I thought I'd work on a Senet board with a built-in drawer.  Many of the recovered Senet games have a drawer on one of the box ends.  I came across a picture a while ago of a 20 Squares board with a drawer on one of the halves of the long side of the box, which I found incredibly interesting, if only because it was so different from the other, more 'common' boxes.  Anyway, this undecorated box is my first attempt at executing a similar design.  Still needs to be stained, painted, and sealed, and I also want to fix a suitable handle to the drawer.

Here's a picture of the original 20 Squares board, which dates back to the Egyptian New Kingdom.

Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

Silhouettes

Here's an example of where an experiment with one of our early Senet boxes led to a surprising result.  We painted the crane images on bare, untreated pine using egg tempera, and THEN applied the stain.  The paint itself was stripped off, leaving somewhat ghostly silhouettes.  This technique needs perfecting, but we were very happy with the results, despite the loss of the original colors.

Senet gameboard box blanks

Cut and assembled the frames of two more senet gameboards today.  Right now we're keeping with dimensions of 2.5"x5"x14", mainly using 3/8" pine stock.  For the joints we're using fingerjoints right now, but most of the boxes we've created so far have standard mitered joints.  Tomorrow I'll cut the grooves and fit the box floors, cut from red oak plywood, as well as the box lid/gameboards.