Gluing the Tablut Frame

Finally got around to gluing the frame for the Tablut board.  The frame is only about half an inch thick at its widest, so my corner straps were a little tricky to get in place. 

The individual squares for this board are 1 1/4 inches on a side, and the overall gameboard is just under 12" x 12" with the frame.

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.

Finished Tablut board

Well, mostly finished. The 9x9 gameboard is still drying (applied a coat of danish oil).  Played around with a few different router settings before settling on a border frame that we liked. Once it's dried and glued, we'll probably add a high gloss or semi gloss finish to it.

Latest Seega Boards

We felt simplicity was the best way to go with the Seega (sometimes seen as Siga) boards. The game board on the left was stained with a natural color Danish Oil, the one on the right we used a cherry color oil, and framed both with simple black.  The center square, which is the safe square in the game, we just painted black on one and copper on the other.

And Back to Tafl games...

This is dry assembled tafl board...a 9x9 grid used in the tafl variant called "Tablut".  Before we're done, we'll apply danish oil to the board, and add a border frame to tie the set together.  Tablut is the best documented tafl game--the Swedish botonist Carl Linnaeus observed Sami tribesmen in Lapland playing the game in 1732 and recorded what he could (he didn't speak the language) in his journal.
(oh yeah, and notice the Orbiter Arts wine glass--ordered a set of these a few months back, just threw it in the pic to show it off)

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.