2019-11-06T10-54-03

I was recently (re)introduced to the game of domino and decided I would build my own set. I am going to start with a few tests. Here I tried making the dots out of Walnut, using a 1/8”-diameter dowel former and setting them into a scrap piece of Beech. With this technique, the dots expose the end-grain, so I think it may work only for dark dots on a light background as light dots might absorb too much of the finish and darken too much to provide good contrast. Not all dots are perfectly round, but I can live with that “hand-made” unevenness :-) On the other hand, maybe 1/8” dots on a 7/8”-wide piece might be too small; I might try 3/16” dots instead. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-06T11-07-35

I was recently (re)introduced to the game of domino and decided I would build my own set. I am going to start with a few tests. Here I tried making the dots out of Walnut, using a 1/8”-diameter dowel former and setting them into a scrap piece of Beech. With this technique, the dots expose the end-grain, so I think it may work only for dark dots on a light background as light dots might absorb too much of the finish and darken too much to provide good contrast. Not all dots are perfectly round, but I can live with that “hand-made” unevenness :-) On the other hand, maybe 1/8” dots on a 7/8”-wide piece might be too small; I might try 3/16” dots instead. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-06T11-12-19

I was recently (re)introduced to the game of domino and decided I would build my own set. I am going to start with a few tests. Here I tried making the dots out of Walnut, using a 1/8”-diameter dowel former and setting them into a scrap piece of Beech. With this technique, the dots expose the end-grain, so I think it may work only for dark dots on a light background as light dots might absorb too much of the finish and darken too much to provide good contrast. Not all dots are perfectly round, but I can live with that “hand-made” unevenness :-) On the other hand, maybe 1/8” dots on a 7/8”-wide piece might be too small; I might try 3/16” dots instead. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-06T12-31-50

I was recently (re)introduced to the game of domino and decided I would build my own set. I am going to start with a few tests. Here I tried making the dots out of Walnut, using a 1/8”-diameter dowel former and setting them into a scrap piece of Beech. With this technique, the dots expose the end-grain, so I think it may work only for dark dots on a light background as light dots might absorb too much of the finish and darken too much to provide good contrast. Not all dots are perfectly round, but I can live with that “hand-made” unevenness :-) On the other hand, maybe 1/8” dots on a 7/8”-wide piece might be too small; I might try 3/16” dots instead. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-06T12-51-40

I was recently (re)introduced to the game of domino and decided I would build my own set. I am going to start with a few tests. Here I tried making the dots out of Walnut, using a 1/8”-diameter dowel former and setting them into a scrap piece of Beech. With this technique, the dots expose the end-grain, so I think it may work only for dark dots on a light background as light dots might absorb too much of the finish and darken too much to provide good contrast. Not all dots are perfectly round, but I can live with that “hand-made” unevenness :-) On the other hand, maybe 1/8” dots on a 7/8”-wide piece might be too small; I might try 3/16” dots instead. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-12T12-23-25

Ripping a bit of Red Maple to built a jig that will help me make consistent domino pieces more efficiently. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-13T13-21-03

Here is the first part of the dominoes jig; I can quickly check the width of my stock (7/8” in my case) by dropping it into the channel and cross cut it into 1-3/4” long pieces with the Dozuki by pushing the stock against the stop; no end-grain shooting needed. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-19T13-15-37

Plowing the grooves to build two pair of skids for my miter plane. #WorkbenchAppliance #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #Woodworking

2019-11-19T14-05-43

Plowing the grooves to build two pair of skids for my miter plane. #WorkbenchAppliance #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #Woodworking

2019-11-19T18-24-28

My miter plane is on skis! Borrowing the idea from the Japanese planes used to thickness stock for kumiko work, I decided to make simple skids that I can use to prepare stock to exactly the thicknesses I need for my dominoes project. I am afraid I went the long way to making them; I started with a piece of Beech dimensioned to about 18” x 2” x 7/8” and plowed two grooves in its reference face; one about 3/16” from the edge and the other about 3/8” from the other edge; those distances correspond to the thicknesses I am after (plus the protrusion of the iron). I then removed all material in between the two grooves using a combination of plow plane, chisel, and router plane; then I sawed the piece down the middle of the large resulting groove and crosscut each piece in two to get my two pairs of skids. I shaped the skids a little bit (curves in the front to hopefully reduce the chances of banging them into a planing stop) and drilled and elongated the holes to attach the skids to the miter plane with mounting knobs usually sold to attach a fence. #WorkbenchAppliance #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #Woodworking

2019-11-26T10-52-04

Now that the jigs are in place, thicknessing the stock for the domino set and cutting the pieces to length was so quick and easy. I selected the 28 pieces with the best figure for the set, put aside 8 spares, and kept 6 pieces with visible discoloration to use for some experiments and practice. Because of the way I cut the strips from the original board, I ended up with dominoes with quarter-sawn faces; I really like the look of quarter-sawn Red Maple; I’ll have to think of another good project for it. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-26T12-40-17

Now that the jigs are in place, thicknessing the stock for the domino set and cutting the pieces to length was so quick and easy. I selected the 28 pieces with the best figure for the set, put aside 8 spares, and kept 6 pieces with visible discoloration to use for some experiments and practice. Because of the way I cut the strips from the original board, I ended up with dominoes with quarter-sawn faces; I really like the look of quarter-sawn Red Maple; I’ll have to think of another good project for it. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-26T12-41-05

Now that the jigs are in place, thicknessing the stock for the domino set and cutting the pieces to length was so quick and easy. I selected the 28 pieces with the best figure for the set, put aside 8 spares, and kept 6 pieces with visible discoloration to use for some experiments and practice. Because of the way I cut the strips from the original board, I ended up with dominoes with quarter-sawn faces; I really like the look of quarter-sawn Red Maple; I’ll have to think of another good project for it. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-26T14-56-27

Despite using a guide to saw the domino pieces to length, I found the cut was not perfectly straight and decided to take a couple of shavings off at the shooting board. Using a backing piece helped prevent spelching. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-27T10-40-25

My miter plane is on skis! Borrowing the idea from the Japanese planes used to thickness stock for kumiko work, I decided to make simple skids that I can use to prepare stock to exactly the thicknesses I need for my dominoes project. I am afraid I went the long way to making them; I started with a piece of Beech dimensioned to about 18” x 2” x 7/8” and plowed two grooves in its reference face; one about 3/16” from the edge and the other about 3/8” from the other edge; those distances correspond to the thicknesses I am after (plus the protrusion of the iron). I then removed all material in between the two grooves using a combination of plow plane, chisel, and router plane; then I sawed the piece down the middle of the large resulting groove and crosscut each piece in two to get my two pairs of skids. I shaped the skids a little bit (curves in the front to hopefully reduce the chances of banging them into a planing stop) and drilled and elongated the holes to attach the skids to the miter plane with mounting knobs usually sold to attach a fence. #WorkbenchAppliance #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #Woodworking

2019-11-27T11-16-04

Time to rip some Walnut to make the dowels for the dominoes spots. I find that holding the piece in the wooden handscrew significantly reduces vibrations and makes it easy to lean it to position it for a better sawing angle. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #AmericanBeech #Beech #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-27T11-56-19

Spoiler alert! I have been really slow working on these dominoes, so here is a sample 2-1 tile I made to see what I could expect and where I needed crutches or jigs to increase accuracy and consistency and speed things up. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-11-29T12-26-49

This is my simple setup to quickly and consistently mark the center of the spots on my domino tiles. The template is a piece of paper covered with tape (to make it a bit stronger and long lasting) where I pierced holes everywhere there might be spots on a tile; I push a tile in the corner of my trapping, lay the paper template on top of it, and mark the center of the spots with the awl through the template holes. Marking the center of the 168 spots for the whole set took only a few minutes. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-29T12-29-33

With 168 holes to mark and drill on 28 unique tiles, it would be very easy to get distracted and make a mistake; organizing the tiles in an upper triangular matrix makes it a lot easier to keep things under control; the number of spots on the left side of each tile matches the row index and the number of spots on the right side matches the column index. Using a depth stop on the drill bit also sped things up, but it still took me over ninety minutes to go through the whole set. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-11-29T15-30-39

With 168 holes to mark and drill on 28 unique tiles, it would be very easy to get distracted and make a mistake; organizing the tiles in an upper triangular matrix makes it a lot easier to keep things under control; the number of spots on the left side of each tile matches the row index and the number of spots on the right side matches the column index. Using a depth stop on the drill bit also sped things up, but it still took me over ninety minutes to go through the whole set. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #Woodworking

2019-12-04T11-32-51

Filling in the dominoes spots with 1/8” Walnut dowels. I made a mortise in a scrap piece of pine to speed up flush cutting. Still 58 spots to go. Lessons learned: 1. Making 1/8” dowels is hard, even with a decreasing sequence of 3/16”, 4mm, 1/8” dowel formers. 2. Leaving the dowels long and flush cutting afterwards works much better than pre-cutting them to length and trying to hold them steady with tweezers while hammering them in the holes! 3. One tile cracked while hammering in a dowel close to the end grain; filling the holes by the end grain before any of the others can save wasted effort. 4. Glue sometimes oozes out of the end grain of a tile; I may have to shoot the end grain again; would it work better to fill the holes on a long strip of wood and saw the tiles afterwards? Maybe, although it would make marking the spot centres a bit harder. 5. Flush cutting a dowel may splinter it and leave an unfilled bit in a hole; I would see that after final planing and may have to redo a few tiles; make sure to have plenty of spares. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-12-05T14-42-42

Polka dot shavings! All the inlaid spots are done and it is time for one final touch with the smoothing plane. Because somehow some of the glue I put in the holes for the inlaid spots had oozed out the end grain of some of the tiles, I also had to take a quick shaving on the shooting board. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-12-05T14-43-06

Polka dot shavings! All the inlaid spots are done and it is time for one final touch with the smoothing plane. Because somehow some of the glue I put in the holes for the inlaid spots had oozed out the end grain of some of the tiles, I also had to take a quick shaving on the shooting board. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking

2019-12-05T15-49-41

Polka dot shavings! All the inlaid spots are done and it is time for one final touch with the smoothing plane. Because somehow some of the glue I put in the holes for the inlaid spots had oozed out the end grain of some of the tiles, I also had to take a quick shaving on the shooting board. #Dominoes #HandToolsOnly #RedMaple #Maple #BlackWalnut #Walnut #Woodworking