Popular Post Chestnut Posted July 11, 2019 Popular Post Report Share Posted July 11, 2019 One of Megan's friends wanted an outdoor connect four game made. She sent me a picture and it looked easy enough so i said sure. The construction is pretty simple but became very tedious very quickly. I used a hole saw to drill out the game board from 1/4" pine ply. Using a 3.5" hole saw with a hand drill was not very fun and the drill caught a lot and beat me up quite a bit. The main structure is 1/4" ply sandwiching some slats that separate off the rows. I used some random hardwood, i honestly have no idea what it is, to make the internal structure as well as the legs. The next part was to make the game pieces. Again hole saw but this time 4" and i used my drill press. I had some 1/2" birch ply that was waste from making some drawers. I quickly learned that stacking pieces of ply would decrease the time it took to cut these out. I also figured out that if you position the hole saw so that part of the saw goes over the edge it clears the saw dust from the kerf and the saw cuts a lot more efficiently. Another trick is to drill a hole in the kerf. I hit the edges with a chamfer bit and gave them a quick sand. Followed with some paint. The project materials were requested to be lower in quality and painted. I wanted the whole thing to come apart for easy storage or transport. This was an interesting solution and i just borrowed some ques from the table top game. I used some thread taps to tap4 1/4"-20 holes and then mounted 2 bolts on either side. On the leg i drilled a 1/2" hole and then cut a slot on my router table. i think this is called a keyhole or something.... I used a chisel to remove some material towards the hole so there is a taper that pulls the sides in and sort of locks them in place. It works well, you can pick up the whole thing and the legs don't fall off but are easy to remove. The dump function was the most difficult part and I'm not sure that i did so well with it. If it doesn't work I'll offer to redo it but this was the best option i could think of that didn't use hinges and a catch. I didn't want to put any more money into this than i had to as it's more of a gift than something I'll ever make money on. After stainless steel fasteners material and finish I'm probably loosing on this deal anyway. It's simple and mimics what i used for the legs. It's not as easy to use as i hoped but it's not bad. Finish was some medium brown trans fast dye applied with HVLP and then 4 coats of Minwax spar urethane water borne formula. I don't much like this finish as it gives the dye and wood a green cast. Maybe it just needs to dry fully. I will probably use the rest of the can on junk projects and there is a good change it'll just get tossed. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Minwax-Pro-Series-32-fl-oz-Satin-Water-based-Varnish/999918584 I wanted to use General Finishes exterior 450 but their distribution network sucks, Rockler was closed and a 30 min drive so i use minwax products. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keggers Posted July 11, 2019 Report Share Posted July 11, 2019 Excellent job! I have some grand kids that would love this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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