The Gigantonormous Scrabble Board

Big Tiles you ask? Been there, done that. How about Big Board?

As in really super duper big board. If you want big, there's Super Scrabble which is a 21x21 board (as opposed to a standard 15x15). But a certain wacky Scrabble fan customer wanted the biggest darned board ever: 31x31.

In case math is not your thing, 31x31 is 961 squares of tile playing goodness. And with real estate that's quadruple the size of a regular board, of course you're gonna have to play with 400 tiles.

The customer left it up to me to figure out the square layout. Lots of options were toyed with including having quintuple and sextuple scoring squares. But in the interest of keeping this as manageable as possible score-wise, I kept the max scoring squares at quadruple letter and quadruple word, just like in Super Scrabble. Manageability aside, there still are multiple places where triple/triples and triple/quads can be played, so when coupled with Bingos and lots of Z's, Q's J's and X's, scores should be astronomical.

The interior 15x15 grid and 21x21 grid are aligned like the standard and super boards, respectively. It then is possible to play a regular game (with the corresponding number of tiles) of standard or super on this board, provided of course that you mentally block out the extra squares outside of the 15x15 or 21x21 grids.

Why 31x31? Because the customer wanted it that way. A perfectly quadrupled playing field would be 30x30, but there had to be a center rank and a center file for uniformity purposes. 'Cause it's not a real board unless there's a black star on a pink square right smack in the middle of the thing.

Construction details:

• Solid cherry playing surface. It was a little overkill on the choice of wood species and simpler (cheaper?) options would have sufficed. But I happened to have some cherry lying around so that's what was used for the glue-up.
• The squares were designed to look like the real things (font and color) and are color laser printouts that were decoupaged onto the surface.
• The SUPER DUPER SCRABBLE name was made of real tiles that were embedded/recessed into the left side of the board.
• A letter distribution table was created and was supposed to be on the right side of the board, but was scrapped 'cause it looked kinda dumb. Perhaps in the next incarnation I'll come up with a better way of creating this table. Seeing the numbers of letters you get to work with would be kind of cool, i.e., Z x4 and E x48.
• Coated in Mod Podge, then poly.
• Lazy susan turntable mechanism underneath.

One more board will be crafted before Xmas, so if you want to give that special gift to that special somehow who has a special thing for Scrabble and a special thing for wanting to spend an entire day on one Scrabble game, then get back to me before December 1. Finished product will be sent UPS Ground on December 14th to allow ample time for delivery.

Any inquiry or order after the 1st will have to wait until the new year for construction.

Dimensions (approximate, 'cause I didn't measure it before I boxed it up for shipment):

30" x 30"

Thickness: 3/4"

While the model above is solid cherry wood, the next board will be constructed of solid maple.

Complete set of 400 tiles and four racks included.

Price: $400, includes UPS Ground shipping to mainland US addresses only.

Send an email to craigwoodworks@gmail.com for inquiries or ordering information.

Again, there is a limit of ONE of these boards to be crafted before Christmas.

Yes, there is furniture here

No, it's not just Scrabble related stuff that I do. Somehow the tile thing caught on and blossomed into something that's not retro or modern or furniture, but it's still wood.

A current project in its final stages:

A full report on this custom secretary desk is coming. Perhaps the first week of December after I deliver it.

The Opposite of Big Scrabble Tiles

Lower case Scrabble tiles? A customer approached me with an idea for a birthday present for someone who simultaneously loves Scrabble and lower case letters. Marry the two and you get:

It took a few weeks of trial and error, and experimenting with tasks that require tiny fingers, all in an attempt to not only cut 100 tiles accurately into the exact tile dimensions, but also to somehow put the letters/numbers onto the tiles so that they're readable. The tiles are pine. The letter/number transfer process is classified.

And then once the tiles were done, I couldn't just throw them in a bag and call it a day. So I constructed a custom sized box to store them in. The box was made from 100% offcuts, which is a glorified term for leftover scrap wood strewn about the shop.

One more set will be crafted before Xmas, so if you want to give that special gift to that special somehow who has a special thing for Scrabble and a special thing for e.e. cummings, then get back to me before December 1. Finished product will be sent USPS priority mail on December 14th to allow ample time for delivery.

Any inquiry or order after the 1st will have to wait until the new year for construction.

Tile dimensions are the exact dimensions of real tiles, so they'll fit comfortably in the recesses of the Deluxe version of the game. Box dimensions are custom.

Wood for the tiles is pine. Wood for the box is random. Finished in a satin poly.

Price: $250, includes priority mail shipping to US addresses only.

Send an email to craigwoodworks@gmail.com for inquiries or ordering information.

Again, there is a limit of ONE of these sets to be crafted before Christmas.

Must Win Now

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

Yeah, right.

This is a customer who's serious about their scrabble. 'Cause you might as well not play if you're not gonna win.

Note: The tiles pictured are the non-routed variety that I no longer make. I only do 4" and 6" routed styles.

The Headboard

The latest addition to the Nelson series, Project Mike: The Headboard.

This was inspired by a customer's request about eight months ago who wanted a slatted headboard. I ended up not making one for that customer, but went ahead and built one for our brand spanking new kingsize bed.

I often wondered if a mattress really did matter when it comes to sleeping comfort. After all, it's just a thing to lay on, right? And I can fall asleep anywhere -- the couch, the floor, the car, the bus, hard surface, soft surface, whatever. So when it came time to replace our 10 year old queen mattress, the woman suggested we go big. Real big. As in King.

Of course this meant scrapping the queen frame too. Now we've got a king (and a split boxspring) that's planted on the floor, sans bedframe.

And to answer my question about whether a mattress has anything to do with sleepability, I have to conclude with a resounding yes indeedy. Now I sleep completely uninterrupted without waking constantly in the middle of the night -- why I thought waking up constantly was normal, I don't know. Now we frequently have trouble getting up in the morning 'cause this new mattress is just so darn enveloping and soft and warm and cozy and squishy and joyful.

Anyway, to the headboard! Slats, all cherry wood, a couple of coats of tung oil (with lots more finishing to do later), and no frame yet. Due to various other projects piling up on my to-do list (a secretary desk, tons of giant scrabble tiles, various turned pieces, and a custom quadruple size scrabble board (to be played with 400 standard scrabble tiles)), I'll have to wait a while before attempting to make a frame. More details on the secretary desk and the ginormous scrabble board are forthcoming.

Dimensions are as follows:

Length: 80"

Height: 42"

Price: not for sale

Cherry wood. Preliminarily finished in tung oil.

To arrange commission of your own slatted headboard, send an email to craigwoodworks at gmail dot com

Flood, Mud and Chaos

I'm dedicating my Big Scrabble Tiles creation to victims of the flooding in the Philippines. 80% of all sales from the 4" and 6" routed varieties of my tiles will go to people in need. Whether it's done directly through family or through the redcross, the funds will surely find their way to someone in need. If you'd like to donate directly, please visit that redcross site.

Why the Scrabble tiles as part of this donation process? 'Cause it's something I can make in both small and large quantities and is more accessible to customers. Larger furniture pieces would be more prohibitive in terms of charitable outlay for customers, so I decided to keep it small. Any amount helps, even one single tile. $10 goes a long way in the PI.

Send an email to craigwoodworks@gmail.com if you have questions or wish to make a purchase.

All details of the tiles can be found here.

Thank you.

More Scrabble Tiles

A few recent orders for Big Scrabble Tiles:

The first batch of the 4 inchers that aren't squares, but are rather a little bit taller than they are wide. Thanks Kent for steering me in the right direction.

These guys are 6 inchers! Big tiles for Mrs. Bucci.

For the guest bathroom perhaps? These are non-routed and are flush to the touch.

Want some? Check out the details here. Available in two sizes: 4" and 6".

The Eames House

Yes, I like Eames furniture. And yes, I admit I had no idea their house was in Pacific Palisades until a few months ago. And yes, I further admit that two years ago I was as ignorant as they come regarding anything that the Eames' ever did regarding furniture, architecture, film, style, life, etc.

In my former life I was a high end audio/video installation professional. In other words, I played with rich peoples' expensive blinky lighted (with buttons and switches) toys. 'Cause he who dies with the most expensive blinky lighted (with buttons and switches) toys wins. And he who has the biggest plasma screen hung on a wall can definitely compensate for shortcomings in other areas. I'm referring to a certain loud-mouthed former NFL wide receiver who will not be named, who just had to own a monstrous 103" behemoth. But I digress.

Anyway, there was a home theater installation I worked on a while back where the guy (not the aforementioned NFL player, but another rich guy with lots of toys) had a cool projector, a bigass screen, and a gagillion watts of speaker amplification in a dedicated theater space on top of the garage. For seating in this home theater, he had a fleet of Eames Lounge Chairs with Ottomans. By 'fleet' I mean at least a dozen of each.

Of course back then I didn't know what I was resting my grubby shoes on, and thought they were just nifty looking matching comfy ottomans with nifty looking matching comfy chairs. They were probably newer repros, but who knows? This guy was oozing overflowingly with wealth that he probably could have gone out and procured a dozen rosewood originals.

The point is that I just didn't know what I was experiencing when basking in the glory of that fleet of fabulous furniture.

Fast forward a few years and after my wife has educated me significantly in the lexicon of MCM, and here we are at the Eames House. Yup, right there on Chautauqua, just a few hundred yards up from PCH. I must've driven up that street dozens of times during my career as an installer, never knowing that right out the truck window there were four (count 'em four) case study houses: Eames, Entenza, West (Walker), and a Neutra.

A few months ago we were watching the second disc of the Eames films collection, the piece entitled House. And then I said, hey I'll google that and see what happens. And yes indeed, this is what I found: http://www.eamesfoundation.org/index.html and it's available for visitation. And we took a visit, just three weeks ago. The only catch is you can't take pictures of the inside.

What was interesting was the little conversation we had with the friendly docent at the door who was somewhat surprised that we're local and from LA. She told us that the majority of the visitors come from out of country and it's rare when a local comes by. Hmm, a comment on the not-so-enthusiastic state of architectural/historical interest among Los Angeles residents?

And during a leisurely stroll through the vast open space in front of the house, we came across some Tonka trucks, seemingly frozen in time. They probably had not been moved since forever as the rust indicated. You could just picture the Eames children (like in the House movie), running around the grounds, then moving some dirt with the Tonka trucks.