The Hobby Guy Workshop

A simple customized checkerboard and checkers using wood and acrylic.

Completed

Laser Workshop GuildDiode Lasers Community

My daughter asked if I could make a checker set for my grandsons. I started in Lightburn by making 24 simple discs. I planned on using “cast” acrylic. I only use cast acrylic since extruded acrylic is supposed to give horrible results. I set up to cut 12 discs out of black acrylic and 12 out of red acrylic. Black acrylic cuts better but red seems to engrave better. I am also creating a wooden checker board in Lightburn. I’m sure I could have downloaded a checkerboard design, but I wanted to create it myself.

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Session 1

Making some checkers

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My daughter asked if I could make a checker set for my grandsons. I started by making 24 simple discs out of "cast" acrylic.
I made 12 discs out of black acrylic and 12 out of red acrylic. (The black acrylic cuts better but the red engraves better.)
After I had cut them all out, my wife pointed out that I should have engraved a crown on one side of each checker for when they are "kinged". I needed to come up with a way to align the crown image on each disc (checker). I used strong magnets to hold down a piece of scrap wood. Using Lightburn, I cut a circle the size of one of my checkers in the scrap wood and used masking tape to remove the cut disc. I centered a simple crown graphic in the cut out disc space location in Lightburn. I engraved each checker (one at a time) with a crown on one side. (I basically made a jig on the fly.) It would have been much better if I had planned out the crown to engrave on each checker before cutting them out. This was obviously not the best way to do it but it worked.

2 Project Entries in this Session.

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ManCastleKingManCastleKing