I grew up playing Scrabble with my family, and love the game. When I discovered the Glowforge campaign back in 2015, I had an idea for a custom Scrabble board made entirely from high end materials like hardwood.
It wasn’t until this year that I had a shop with the rest of the tools I needed, along with enough time, to make this a reality.
This will be a Christmas gift for my parents. The structure of the board is baltic birch plywood. The lattice for the grid is walnut vaneer, the tiles are maple vaneer, the scoring multipliers are mahogany, cherry, and walnut. Letters are maple. All in all this tool about 8 weeks to design, cut, assemble, and finish.
The board features a drawer for the tile holders, a rotating base, and the entire structure is veneered in walnut.
Edit: In case anyone wanted to source similar materials, I bought all of the wood at Rockler. The grid was cut from 5" wide, 1/8" thick walnut, the game tiles were from the same but in Maple. The board squares were from 1/16" veneer packs, which were less delicate than the standard >1/32" veneers.
Beautiful! I think we all had those ideal projects in mind when we backed them so many years ago. (Mine is still in the works…but I’ve found plenty of other things to make in the meantime!)
Heirloom quality! @marmak3261 did one where he sharpened his inlay skill doing the letter tiles in contrasting woods.
Black Walnut has always been a favorite of mine. Thank you for showing that great work!
Excellent execution, and nice touches with the drawer and turning base. My best friend is a Scrabble player, I should do something like this for her. (Hope it doesn’t take 5yrs, though!) I’m in love with your work.
Your woodworking skills are top notch. Love the woods that you chose and the way you made the grid for the board. Beautiful job and something that will be treasured for a long time.
