You've been asked to make a slab of purpleheart that is 20"x20"x2" You can glue it up from pieces of purpleheart or you can use MDF and some really nice purpleheart veneer. Assuming you have the tools and skills to perform either task, which one do you do?
david boise ID
i do what the customer wants, and charge accordingly bob
Go board ? It's the only thing I can think of that would use a slab with those dimensions.
I wouldn't glue it up from sheets (you did say laminate). If they're looking for a 2" thick board, then they want something that shrieks "solid timber". 4" wide strips would be OK, but anything that starts to look like Ikea's "glued together rubberwood scraps" just doesn't cut it quality-wise. Make sure the purplehart came from the same board, because you want the colour to stay consistent as it changes. You also want a god scrape / sanding pass to take the surface down a touch - invisible glue smears around the glueline can become very obvious in a timber that changes colour over time.
Then ignore everything I've just said and choose entirely on price.
Purpleheart is also fairly easy to get in 2" thickness. Woodworkers Source carries it as a stock item.
--RC
20" wide though ? I'm impressed !
I've got about twelve foot of 18" square waiting until I can get a big bandsaw to it, but that's recycled Victorian dockwork.
No. Sigh. It would have to be edge joined and glued. (OTOH you might be able to special order it that wide. I'm told the stuff is so common it's used as packing crates in South America.)
--RC
Sorry, I thought I had seen the term "laminate" applied to almost any build up that involves full-length glue-up. I guess I should have also stipulated the woodworker had the required taste (as well as skills and tools) to make all necessary quality and aesthetic decisions in favor of the maximum presentation.
Thank you for the very thorough post, Andy. One doesn't see the word "go" often outside of rec.games.go, do you play? But can you tell me why you would you choose to do the glue-up instead of the veneer? That's what I'm really interested in.
david boise ID
'k. So let's assume the customer doesn't know what they want and they can pay whatever you want to charge. It's a dream job.
david boise ID
Umm, it's hypothetical. But thanks for posting once. Can I get one more? Let's just say it's ornamental and cost isn't a factor. What I'm after is why you might choose one method over the other.
david boise ID
so then you would have 2 hypothetical answers, appropriate for 2 different uses.
the veneer over MDF would be more stable in some situations, such as the top of some piece of indoor furniture. the glued up slab might be more appropriate for an outdoor use, such as a sign.
so your question was lacking, if you meant it to return some real data.
I'd expect the etymology of laminate to imply laminar planes.
Badly.
I wouldn't, but then I'm not making it, and I'm not the customer.
The super-thick Japanese boards are for playing on the floor, whilst kneeling. Using one of these on a table looks ridiculous.
For playing on a low Japanese table, the board thickness is about an inch and half, so as to make the playing height the usual 8". Westerners, except the most flexible, will want it higher.
My ideal go board is thick MDF, with a pale ash, beech or maple veneer on it. It's about an inch thick and using MDF instead of ply gives more mass, and thus more stability. I play on a low table, sitting on the floor or sofa. I generally kneel, and many of my guests kneel too (the iaido bunch), but the ones I play go against don't bend well enough.
I have no interest in the really thick boards. Even though my lounge is already full of stacked timber, I'd regard the use of a whole log as wasteful for a game board. About an inch or two is enough to give stability. As part of the aesthetic of thick solid timber in Japan, it really wants to be either one piece, or as close as you can get to it. 20" is more than you can likely find, but if you can get 18" as solid then I'd use that. 20" would be an unusually wide board (although not so unusual for length).
Purpleheart isn't my choice of timber, being too dark and distracting. You should certainly avoid knots or "loud" figure. My own ash-veneer board has been criticised for the grain being a bit too obvious.
Proportions for a go board are rectangular and not square. Square isn't iki. The marked out area is usually 38.5 x 42 cm, with the players on the narrow edges. The border around this is either symmetrical or very asymmetrical, so the whole board is still rectangular.
It's all great fun till someone loses an eye. I've been playing go for thirty years. I've had many, many boards. The purpleheart in my collection looks absolutely fabulous with a lovely set of purple-veined clamshell stones I got from Kurokigoishi
The delightfully idiosyncratic un-squareness of the goban is a great topic among go players; endless and often ridiculous speculation. The same silliness is applied to theories about the inverted pyramid on the underside of traditional Japanese floor boards.
But, actually, all I'm trying to find out is why some woodworkers like to do glue-ups and some like to do veneers. The fact that this imaginary thingy might have been used as a go board has nothing to do with a completely hypothetical situation.
Thanks for your participation and your comments.
david boise ID
I didn't realise you played yourself, from your first post. I thought you were a woodworker looking to make this for someone else.
About ten since I learned to play, but I don't play that often.
But is that the point ? I'm all for aesthetics, but I think this can sometimes go too far. What's it like to play on such a dark board?
I'm sure you've met bad players with too much money and a goban proudly standing on a coffee table! (you presumably play from a ladder) My idea of a good board is one that's good to _play_ on, not necessarily to look at. It's just a plank ! There's a limit to how much you can dress it up before you've just started putting gingerbread on it.
Wow ! Those are rather splendid
Just glass round here. A potter friend keeps promising to make a set in porcelain, which would be nice.
I've always fancied getting some slate stones (can't afford clamshell), but haven't found anywhere that sells a "half set" like this.
It's for sharpening the stones....
BTW - How big is this thing meant to be ? Sizes for stones and such are quite fanatically constrained, but I've never seen anything written about sizing heso.
Inspired somewhat by your board, I made a new board yesterday - the quickest and easiest ever! I had some offcuts of Valchromat around - a pre-coloured high-grade MDF, in dark grey. I made up a full size and a quarter-size board (probably an Xmas present for my son), then inlayed them with white-dyed epoxy. When I've worked out how to flatten the inlay without damaging the surface, they'll be done.
I think a go board is near-hypothetical, but interesting because of it. There just aren't many woodworking projects that are so simply flat and unsupported - most other pieces are a hollow box, where there's some level of bracing from the other sides.
IMHO, the crucial question here is thickness. I'm not going to mess around doing an 18" wide glueup of narrow strips, and a glueup of 2 or
3 wide strips wouldn't be stable unless they were at least 2" thick (and eating into my best quality prime-cut timber pile). I make such glueups regularly for cabinets, but they have some sort of bracing or breadboard end, not a bare board. For a thickness beneath this, plywood (or MDF, for I have no shame and it is denser) is a better substrate, even if I need to veneer it.For a thick board, I'd really feel that it was solid timber or nothing. I've got lime here that could make a goban, but even at that thickness it would be quite lightweight. It would be a lovely commercial project if someone wanted to pay for it, but I'm not giving up the thick timber when I don't need to.
Data wasn't necessary, just an opinion. Lacking? Sorry you thought so. Silly of me, astute of you. But I don't have your woodworking skills nor do I have your experience.
david boise ID
After more than one close call, I stopped woodworking while I could still count to ten without taking off a shoe. I made lovely boxes and almost got good enough at hand-cut dovetails to use them in custom projects. Not quite.
I can play my usually tasteless game on any surface; cardboard, computer screen, leather, fine woods.
Quite true. Still, I encourage unique western influence whenever I hear of a woodworker attempting go boards. The Japanese boards haven't changed for centuries. That only means the aesthetic is satisfactory. It does not necessarily mean there is no room for new art.
I have made such stones of three different clays and porcelain. Worthless pain the ass, I did not possess the skills. Of course, a porcelain craftsman would do much better.
Kuroki's online outlet shop often has remarkable bargains. You can get a set of shell/slate go ishi for much less than you might imagine. Shipping takes about six weeks by boat. Worth the wait!
Okay, that's a new one. Can I use that? Like the Cheops Razor Blade Pyramids? I had one as a kid.
Sorry, "heso" isn't in my rudimentary go vocabulary.
A white grid? Now who's violating tradition? Wanna see some interesting go board inlays?
Your boy might enjoy the manga/anime "Hikaru No Go."
Thanks for the running conversation. I'm in over my head at this point!
snipped-for-privacy@mac.com
Those prices do look good. I might try and get friends to pick some up for me.
Heso - the pyramid thing.
BTW - Do you know anything about the business of ruling lines with a sword ? I also collect and restore swords, so I have the hardware...
Ah, but do they ever sell ? I'd love to make such a high-ticket piece, but I think I might have retired before I ever sold one.
I'm at a craft fair in a couple of weeks. I'll have two chairs there and one will have a deliberately enormous pricetag. I don't really _want_ to sell it, I'd prefer to keep it for myself, and if it makes the other one look like more of a bargain, then that's fine by me.
Thanks - I'd not seen that before. I'll have to try and find some - for a change from the infernal yu-gi-oh if nothing else!
I didn't mean to impugn your woodworking skills or your experience, just pointing out that your question did not present in a way that we could clearly see what it was that you wanted.
nothing personal....
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