Home Made Floor Board

(2004 aug - Another Home Made Board: GobanSelfMade - KjeldPetersen)

BenShoemaker:

I am planning on making a floor goban, or at the very least a "thick" table goban.

I plan to glue 18" lengths of 2x4 or 2x6 together to end up with something 18x18x4 or 18x18x6 which I can add legs to for a floor model, or leave alone for a table model. I'm going for functional and inexpensive rather than elaborate and expensive.

Here is someone else's page who made their own floor goban: http://www.e4e5.net/page3.html

And here is a nice table board tutorial: http://users.tkk.fi/~kalyytik/goban/

StormCrow: It definitely sounds interesting to do. I just wish people who put pictures of this stuff up online would put up more and higher-res pictures. I've considered "borrowing" my father-in-law's woodshop for such a project myself a couple of times.

BenShoemaker: Yes, more pictures would be great. When I get around to making mine, I will try to take pictures at various stages so you can see the work progress from start to finish.

Niklaus: Has anybody tried making a floor board out of just one piece of wood? Where could one get such a big, thick piece and what would it cost (it doesn't have to be Kaya :-) ?

And another somewhat related question: Does anybody know the prices of floor gobans in Asia (Korea, Japan)? If they're much cheaper than what you pay here, I could maybe get a Korean or Japanese friend of my sister's to send one to me.

The problem is, regardless of what type of wood you use, finding a solid piece of wood the size needed for a floor board is hard and expensive. The tree has to get that big. A friend of mine looked into it, it was really expensive, although I couldn't quote you a price off the top of my head.

Migeru: Recently a bunch of trees around my neighbourhood have been taken down due to illness (I presume). When the tree is down, they cut it into short cylinders for ease of transportations. Some of these trees are rather big: one of those cylinders would make a nice 8" floor board.

Fhayashi: Veneer would be the cheap way to do it. Make up the bulk of the body with layers of glued medium-density fiberboard. Get nice looking veneer and do the sides. Maybe glue a real chunk of wood on the top.

Tamsin: I built a "flat-pack" floor-standing goban which came out rather well. I constructed a kind of wooden box with upstanding brackets to hold my board in place. The board can be removed and used as a table-top board.

An alternative way would be to glue together layers of MDF (ordinary timber is much too expensive), after first having jig-saw cut four holes in the bottom two or three layers to accommodate the legs (you can buy quite cheap ready-turned table legs from DIY stores that cut easily be cut down to an appropriate length).

If you would like more info, e-mail me at t.jones1ZUMtesco.net

BenShoemaker:

How to apply the lines: http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~rozan/memori.htm

How to carve the "gardenia" legs: http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~rozan/kodawari.htm

Various finished Gobans: http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~rozan/gobannmihonn.htm