Catan Board Making
A laser cutting and resin project
Settlers of Catan is an awesome game and I’ve wanted to make a custom board after seeing inspirational projects online. I started by downloading a template online of another custom board and going through and editing the visuals. The existing visuals were not to my liking so I put together these designs.
After developing my files, I sent them off to the BLDG 61 makerspace at the library. They plugged in the files, cut the pieces, and packaged them up carefully. I know the additional cleanup and packaging steps take extra time so I am very appreciative of their service during COVID.
My board consisted of two layers. A top layer of dark walnut and a sublayer of standard 1/8" plywood.
After designing and cutting, I gathered materials for the next steps — painting, gluing, a resin pour, sanding, and applying a finishing wax. I used spraypaint, Art Resin, and Gorilla Glue.
After the pieces were glued together, I needed to do a resin pour into the negative spaces. I used Art Resin, which turns into a clear, glossy-smooth, hard layer. It is easy to use and doesn’t feel too toxic-y. My wife joined me on this step and we used mini-squirt bottles to fill the spaces.
In our next step, needed to sand the tops and the edges. During gluing, we discovered that some of the exterior edges didn’t line up. At some point during the design, I must have resized a plywood cut tile so we needed to look forward to redoing the edge pieces.
After sanding with rough to ultra-fine grit, the raw walnut was exposed and we got a glimpse of how things were turning out visually. Later, I put on a wood conditioner to show what the raw walnut will look like with the finishing touch.
The finishing touch will be applying a wood protectant. We ordered a special wood wax that was suggested to us and that is currently in the mail. It is called Odie’s Wax and should provide a very nice and hard wax layer.
Because the outside layer needed to be remade, it gave us an opportunity to make a better design than our first one. My wife drew out a design and I brought it into Illustrator and manipulated it so the art lined up across the pieces. I put a few different creatures and elements in so the scenery changed a bit around the board.
We need to cut (and possibly stain blue) the exterior pieces. We are also still waiting for the wax to arrive, but sometime next week we should have a board that is playable, beautiful, and most importantly, made together.
As a bonus, Jenny lost some of her favorite earrings several months ago and was pretty bummed. They were made of wood and featured a vertical tree. I found photos of her with them and recreated them during the first laser cutting step. I made three-pairs just in case she loses another again.
