Nine Men Morris

Nine Men Morris game board (otherwise known as miter-joint nightmare from hell). I made the board with cutoffs from other projects. it has a red oak center square. Walnut is used for the inner two squares dividing lines and ipe for the outer square guidelines. Poplar then wormy chestnut then cherry surround the center square. The men holders are bubinga on the left (white markers) and mahogany on the right (red markers). Finish is spray lacquer. There is a piece of ‘charcoal speaker cabinet carpet’ on the bottom. I added the holes in the center square as a ‘stockade’, a place to put captured men so they cannot be returned to play until game is over. I have not seen this but it is handy. You can find rules to this game at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men%27s_Morris as well as many others. It is a very ancient game, probably the fore runner of tic-tac-toe and maybe even checkers and chess. I cut then sanded each miter-joint to fit individually, but for the next one might laminate six layers then cut only four times!! I left the walnut and ipe a little proud of the surface thinking I’d plane them down flush with a block plane. Mistake! Trying to plane ipe is like trying to plane concrete! Finally got surface all planed/sanded/scraped down flush but it took a lot of time and manual labor! Pegs are .25” birch dowels .75” long with little plastic .25” bolt end protectors pushed on for the two armies and to make them easy to get hold of (especially for the kids). Main square is 10.5”. All scrap pieces making the squares were .625 thick and with walnut/ipe dividers came to 1” wide. The pieces were glued together on a .25” birch plywood substrate except for the cherry which is .75” thick to cover the edges. The peg holders are approx 1” x 1” x 9.5” long. Thanks for looking and your comments are always anxiously awaited!!

-- Dennis, WV