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.

Some late night game board staining

Decided to stay up late and get some staining done.  Below is a picture of our first 11 x 11 hnefatafl board. In the unstained shot you also see four 9 x 9 tablut boards.  I just finished wiping down the stained hnefatfal board about 10 minutes ago.  We'll let it dry for about 72 hours, then apply a water-based polycrylic that will give the gameboard a nice looking finished look. 

Completed Seega boards

And here are the final stained Seega boards with the glass game tokens.  Played several games with my sons tonight--Seega continues to be a household favorite.

Seega Game process

Hello, everyone--figured it was time to get back into updating the blog regularly--apologies for the overlong delay.

Any of you that have read the older posts know that I like to write not only about the games we make, but the stages and processes we use to make them.  This entry focuses mainly on a small batch of Seega games we've nearly completed, but the process itself applies (mostly) to how we assemble our tafl boards as well.  There are basically three components to these game boards as we makes them: the base, the game squares, and the frame.  The base we simply cut to size from a sheet of plywood (typically luaun).  The squares themselves, since they are the face of the game board, we cut from a nicer quality oak plywood.  To cut the squares, I cut thin strips of the plywood on my table saw. Then, I stack them 4 deep and cut them using a miter saw.

This picture shows one of my oak plywood strips on the miter saw with the jig i use for Seega and tafl board squares.

I usually just dedicate an hour or two a week to cut a lot of squares, and bag them in bags of 40.

Once I have the bases and the squares cut, we just carefully the glue the sqaures on.  I usually have a little trim-work to do on the sides of the boards, but then I cut the board frames.  For the Seega games, I cut simple unstained L-shape molding to size and then stain them.  Once the stain dries, we glue the frame to the board.

Here are four of the Seega boards, two have been glued  and dried, two are still clamped and drying.

Once the glue dries, we stain the boards and the frames to bring out the texture.  This batch we just stained a few hours ago with a dark walnut stain.   I tried to get the light so you can see the wet stain.  We put the first coat on for half an hour, the second coat for 15 minutes. After that, they get wiped down to dry for at least 8 hours. After that, they're pretty much finished.

Getting ready to set up a storefront

It's been a while between posts--not due to a lack of activity, though.  We've been busy getting our games itemized and put into a catalog as we get ready to open an online storefront for our games!  Still have a lot to do, but just yesterday we bought a mini tabletop photo studio set so we can take well-lit, high resolution pictures of the boardgames we want to offer for sale (see below for an example).  

Red and Black Senet Board

The picture doesn't really do this one justice.  We were playing around with color effects, and I quite like the way this one came out, though the dark staining is exaggerated.  This Senet board has a kind of burned-wood look.

Painting Senet boxes using Egg Tempera

We decided when we first started creating Senet board games that we'd use egg tempera for any painted surfaces. Egg tempera, also simply called tempera, is a painting medium used since the time of the pharoahs, if not even earlier. It's simply a mix of pigments with a binder, in this case egg yolk. Egg tempera was the primary method of painting until oil-based paints gained popularity in the 1500s.  In the images below, we're mixing pigment with the binder, and have applied a base coat.