Stop Violin, Go Game Board

So if slow and steady wins the race it should be obvious my violin project is running a marathon. I've only done one pass of sanding with 150 grit sand paper in the past few weeks but I was stuck deciding on what to do next. I didn't want to keep sanding while I still had large scale body work to do(cutting a recess for the electronics and drilling tuner holes). But I've finally decided I'm only including a piezo pickup and 1/4" audio jack in the body and putting the rest of the electronics in a separate swappable box.

In other "I can make that" news, two weekends ago a friend mentioned a board game called Go to me in passing. It's a Chinese/Japanese/Korean game about controlling territories on a board by placing black or white stones at intersections and surrounding your opponent. I have enjoyed playing it. And of course rather than buying a board I felt I could totally make that. This past weekend, that's what I did.



I decided since I'm a beginner I'd make a smaller board. The official size is a grid of 19x19 but the strategy is a little rough to comprehend when you begin playing. So beginners start on a board of 9x9 to get a better understanding of how the plays interact.



Once they get a handle on defense/offense and capturing territory, the players move up to a 13x13 board. Which is what I made on the reverse side of the board!



Overall this was a very simple project. I got some plywood from Lowe's and cut it down to size. Which is calculated by:
((GridSize-1) x Box width) + (2 x border width)
For whatever reason the boxes are 22mm in width but 23.7 mm in length and I arbitrarily decided 15mm for a border. Then I gave all the sides a quick sanding. After that, I painted a thin layer of clear coat to seal the wood. Then marked out the grid lines in pencil and went over them with a normal black sharpie marker. Lastly I painted two more clear coats on each side and it was done! I bought an inexpensive set of black and white stones from Amazon and now I'm ready to play!

I'll be getting back to the violin very soon