I had a piece of slab left over from the kitchen table project, and so I decided to try something a bit different. Instead of building another simple table, I decided to embed a crokinole board right into the slab.

The raw piece of sycamore was roughly 4×4′ square, and 3 inches thick. The first step was to fill a few cracks with epoxy, and then flatten it out. I built a router sled using aluminum angle brackets and some scrap wood, and then a simple rail system to use as a reference point. With a surfacing bit, I web back and forth over the entire thing 1/16th of an inch at a time until it was all flat.

Next I made a simple circle cutting jig and used a 2 inch bit to route out the gutter. I used the same surfacing bit, but in hindsight that was a mistake since it wasn’t designed to plunge into the wood. As a result, I got a lot of burn marks and it took a lot more passes then it needed to.

After I got the gutter down to a depth of about an inch, I had to lower the playing surface. This was the same process as flatting the slab, except I used the table surface as a reference point instead of the rails.

Next I needed to route in the game lines, so I created another template that included the scoring lines, shooting quadrants and bumper positions. The template was based on this YouTube video posted by Games Maker.

After a little cleanup with a chisel, I filled the routed lines with dyed epoxy, then sanded it all smooth.

To finish it, I decided to use Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus 2C on the table surface because I really like the way it turned out on the kitchen table project. I wanted the table to contrast with the crokinole playing surface, so used the Cherry Coral color. I wanted the playing surface to have more protection, and to be super smooth, so I used glossy oil based polyurethane. I thinned it out with mineral spirits and wiped on a whole bunch of very thin coats, sanding between each, and ended up with a very smooth surface.

And this is the final product after adding in the bumpers…