DIY Quarto Boardgame (woodworking)

 

I decided to make my own Quarto boards; one for me and one as a gift. The rules are pretty straight forward and a bit different than most similar games (I'll group it with tik-tac-toe and Tak). In this game, you choose which piece your opponent places on the board and the goal is to get 4 pieces in a line that share a common characteristic (tall/short; dark/light; square/round; hollow/solid). That's it!

I had been hoarding a piece of oak in my garage for many years (just a small piece of scrap) and decided to learn some techniques. I've never ripped boards down to custom sizes before, so given that this was a 1x3" board (0.75 nominal thickness) I cut 3 strips 3/4" wide.

Then, to make the round ones, I had to make my own dowel. I watched a neat youtube video on how to do this; basically use a router to cut 1/4" rounds on all four sides. Then I drilled a screw into one end and hammered a nail into the other, attached my drill to the screw and spun the dowel around (pivoting on the nail) while sanding it. Worked super fast to smooth it up and they're like 95% round (maybe slightly ovoid).

Then I wanted all of my pieces to be the same height (either short or tall) so I clamped a scrap piece of board on my bandsaw as a guide. It still ended up a bit crooked but I sanded that out.

Once I had all of my pieces, I sanded the corners to make them handle better and made sure the tops and bottoms were flat.

I then drilled out the centres of half of them. I tried to line them up perfectly but there was a bit of drift. I should have started with a tiny bit and gradually moved up. The forstner bits I used seemed to drift on the oak end grain.

Lastly, I used some stain to darken half of them (making sure it was one of each type of piece) and then spray laquered them to bring out the grain. I could have used a unique type of wood, but this was supposed to be scrap, and I've not delved into buying fancy wood yet. For the gameboard I bought a cheap canvas bag on ebay as a travel case and then drew the grid on with a sharpie. Great for camping!