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Making a Crokinole Board

This article shows you how we make crokinole boards. A crokinole board consists of several parts. The deck is the playing surface. We use 1/2" plywood for our decks. The deck sits on the base, which consists of the bottom platform and rails. Our bases are also 1/2" plywood but donut shaped. Boards made by others are often constructed of a 1/4" plywood deck on a solid particle board base. We use 1/2 inch plywood on a 1/2 inch plywood base. The rails form the outside boundary. We construct our rails from two overlapping wood rings.

I plan to make three crokinole boards from 1/2" oak plywood. Each deck will be a different color than the base, and I will use a wood plug with decal for each center.

"Cowboy" will have a natural oak deck with a black base, and I will use a cowboy decal for the center and for the box lid. "Red Wolf" will have a stained oak deck (golden oak stain) with a burgundy base. I will use a red wolf decal for the center and the box lid. "Mount Doom" will have an oak deck stained with ebony, and I will paint the base gold. This board will have a Fellowship of the Ring theme.  The center will be an "Eye of Sauron" decal. I photo-copied from the books the text that was engraved on the ring. I will put the text on decals, and then I will put the decals into the ditch bottom.

Our local hardware outlets generally stock 1/2" birch and oak plywood. We prefer to use birch in our crokinole and carrom boards because it finishes easily. However, I will use oak for this set of boards. The one nice thing about oak is that it has extreme character. For "Mount Doom", I think the ebony stain on oak will be more dramatic and more in tune with the Sauron dark powers.

We need one 4’x8’ sheet of 1/2" plywood for the decks and bases, and we need a couple 8’ lengths of 1"x2" oak for the rails. I will make the pegs from dowels. We do not make our own discs because it is too difficult, so instead we buy them in bulk from an online resource.

I can make two regulation size crokinole boards from one 4’x4’ square of 1/2" plywood. This was a real revelation when I first figured out how to do it!