My niece had been begging me for a mancala board for years, so I decided to make her one for her high school graduation.
After drawing the board out full size on several pieces of printer paper taped together, I transferred the design to a story stick and then transferred it to the work piece. I had a slab of Michigan black walnut that a friend had given me, and I thought that the color variations in the piece would make for an interesting game board.
I routed out the dishes with a 1-1/4″ round nose bit with a bearing, using a jig that I made out of an old piece of 2×12 pine that I had laying around.
The difficult part was sanding inside the dishes, and I had to make a mini sanding disk for my drill to smooth out the bottoms. There was also a lot of hand sanding involved. I sanded to 120 grit, then applied 2 coats of Danish oil, and three coats of wipe-on polyurethane.
It was a fun project and I learned a lot, especially about the importance of a router speed control with heavier bits. My niece was thrilled, and wanted to play it all weekend!
In the process of sandcasting my own mancala board. I am at a loss as to which router bits to purchase to make the cups. I tried the 1/2 inch router bits and the cups turned out dimple size. What process did you use in making the cups. PS I am using Modulan to make my pattern.Thanks
Nicely done, your timing helped inspire me. I’ve been meaning to build a Mancala board for a while. The prototype is now complete. Similar to you I used a template to route the board. My template was a piece of 3/4″ cabinet plywood cutoff saved from a recent job. I used a 2 1/8″ forstner bit to drill holes through the template. I made the template and my poplar gameboard wider than needed so I could use screws to hold them solidly together, clamped it to the bench and then used a plunge router and a Whiteside ‘tray’ router bit to rout out the gameboard. After routing the gameboard was ripped narrower to remove the screw holes. My gameboard was only 3/4″ thick and within one day of completion it had warped, I assume due to the amount of wood removed. Now that the template is made, I’m going to try again on some nicer and thicker wood, hopefully to avoid the warping or barring avoiding the warping, have enough thickness left to replane the gameboard flat if it warps
For me it’s difficult when sanding to keep the symmetric in a piece. Well done.
Very nice and I’m looking forward to you expounding on your router process.
Hi all,
The routing process gave me a lot of trouble, at first. I tried several different ways to make the bowls, but in the end I found that I had to bite the bullet and invest in the biggest bull-nose bit I could afford. I settled on a 1-1/4″ bull-nose with bearing from Eagle America.
Of course, that also meant investing in a router that could handle 1/2 inch shank router bits. Acting on the principle that “no job is worth doing unless you get a new tool (or tools) out of it”, I picked up a plunge router from Harbor Freight.
The first time I ran up the new 2-1/2 hp plunge router, it vibrated badly. After poking around on the forums here at WW, I learned that bits that heavy (a whopping 6-3/4 oz.!) need to be run at slower speeds. So again, acting on the above principle, I picked up an aftermarket speed governor. (New tool count: 3, and no objections from the wife, yet!).
I cut a template out of 1/4″ MDF, and then transferred the design to the 2×12 pine.board. Unfortunately, I didn’t have forstner bits at the time (I have since rectified that situation), so I had to use hole saws to cut the jig. I clamped the jig and work piece to a bench, and took about three medium passes in each bowl with the router.
All told, it was a huge learning experience.
Very cool. I would also be interested in the routing process.
Looks great. That is a beautiful piece of wood. I’m not sure how you routed but I imagine it would be cleaner if you did a very very light pass to finish off the routing. I’m imagining a pine board with forstner holes in it as your template. I’m interested to know more about your routing process.
My kids love Mancala! How can I buy one of these boards from the artist?
His name above is linked to his website.