More or less, just follow the margins. The "grid" is not supposed to be a perfect square.


The cutout on the bottom is called the "heso". Its apparent function is to help in the drying process over a long period of time and for improved sound quality. Unless you're making your goban out of a solid piece of kaya and planning to let it dry for 20+ years, I don't see the utility of adding that feature.


One in each corner...

_________________
"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

That's one less thing that I am not going to have to deal with.

What I meant about the position of the legs was, is there a measured spot that the legs are supposed to be in? a Standard?

So far I have found one guy on the web who is willing to make me a single piece of laminated maple in the 18"x17" size, which will be further cut, out of maple.

Or on the other hand I can go to home depot/Lowe's and get some hardwood plywood and glue sections of the wood together.

Which to do...?

I made one, from birch, which is a bit hard for this purpose, but nice pale wood. Carving the legs took a long time, about 100 hours, but they are the nicest part of the board.

A couple of pictures: http://www.pbase.com/jtkarvo/goban

Wow, great job on that board, especially the legs!

Wow, amazing!

Start with Home Depot/Lowe's and work your way up. With some cheap, pre-glued together pine wood from Home Depot (I think it's meant to be for a table top?), I made a few boards summer of 2003:

I'm trying to decide I if I want to go this route or just wait for YMI to get the bamboo floor gobans back in stock.

Right now, I'm leaning toward buying because the prices, as compared to building, are still going to be quite similar and the floor goban comes with stones.

@kex: magnificent work on your goban.

That summer of 2003 consisted of endless sanding and staining the wood with nasty chemicals --
if the pine was untreated, the ink would bleed terribly.
So I had to first sand (by hand, since I lacked any power sanding tools),
then applied the right combo of staining chemicals (after some experimenting to find a working mixture),
then made each line by hand (naturally with a ruler, and using a professional drafting pen and ink).
Each line took about 5 minutes (because it took time for the first layer to dry before another could be applied).

Of course, professional carpenters would be able to do a much better job in much less time,
(especially if they have nice tools like laser lining technologies)
but when I started, I had zero woodworking knowledge and skill, so it was a ton of (blind) work.

One lesson from the few months was: a professionally made Go set (e.g. Kuroki)
embodies hundreds of years of craftsmanship, experience, and quality that cannot be matched.

After that summer, whenever I see a good quality Go product (e.g. from Kuroki),
I think, what a bargain.

That about sums up what I was thinking when I started to really thing about the cost of everything.

thanks for the advice.

For this purpose, I used hare glue. Just dilute it with water and apply. Then sand lightly and reapply.

Not a nasty chemical at all, unless you start thinking about the source of it

Did you mean "hair" or "hare?"

Not trying to be a jerk, but wondering what kind of glue you used.

I meant hare. It is a natural glue, I think made by cooking hare bones.

If you search woodworking sites and ancient usenet woodworking groups you will find many helpful pages on how to build a traditional, Japanese floor board. Pine will be good practice but it tis too soft for a playing surface.
The cutout on the bottom surface remains a mystery. As a woodworker, I promise you, removing less than 1% of the mass of a huge block of maple, spruce or cedar has absolutely zero effect on the resonance or drying of the remaining 99% of the wood.
A huge block of wood, even if laminated from dozens of slabs or sticks, requires total seasoning. There are only two ways to prevent movement in wood: your let all moisture naturally migrate out of the cellular structure (10-15 years) or you replace the water at a molecular level with another substance like a polymer.
You really do not want to use any abrasives on your board, you should learn how to use planes to shape and finish all surfaces. Planes are wonderful tools, not to be taken lightly.
Strongly urge you to locate a local woodcraft club.

David Boise id

_________________
David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

Just need to say: You'all are awesome... pretty darn friendly forum here. I'm considering making my own goban as well; although, I may just find a big enough hunk of older wood and cut the board out of this. I don't have the a machine for engraving the lines, but I imaging a straight piece of steel and wood burner would get the job done.

The bigger questions for me are how to find an appropriately aged and dried hunk of wood to start with. I will be moving to Adelaide Australia in a year, which is very dry, and I'm a little concerned about cracking, etc.

Just my random thoughts, but a fun project to consider. I'm currently living in Japan, so I will probably pick up a used goban here either way, they are relatively affordable and plentiful here.

-J

You can play via the web... when I lived in the US, I would set up my board and then start a web game on dragongoserver.net. Then I would follow along on my goban at home, so when I walked pass, I could look at the board and think about my next move(s). Worked better than looking at the computer screen all the time for me ˆ.ˆ

Beautiful board.

-J

Some things not discussed yet.

Suitable woods
It makes sense that the woods traditionally used for making gobans are the best for that purpose in the lands where go was traditionally played. That does not mean that when we consider all the different woods of the planet there might not be some from distant parts of the world that might not be quite suitable. I believe that board makers have begun considering closely related species from relatively nearby. But there are a lot of tree species.

For example, somebody said "pine too soft" but was probably thinking just of "white pine". I rather suspect that a species like "yellow pine" would be too hard. If the rather hard yellow pine or eastern hemlock aren't too hard, well they both would be available in large diameter trees. In other words, the harder "softwoods" and the softer "hardwoods" might be worth experimenting with. Cut a board and see what impact with go stones does.

Drying
If there is some common forest species that would be suitable (right hardness, grows to large diameter) and especially if a common species it might be possible to find some "standing dead". Those often have good portions which is why standing dead trees are sought by wood sculptors who also don't want to have to wait decades for large chunks of wood to season.

For example, suppose hemlock were a suitable wood. Well in much of its range being killed by wooley angelid so not impossible to find a 3+' diameter tree standing dead for some years.

I used to have CAD files of various goban grids of international standard (Japanese, Chinese, Miniature). I probably lost them in an install, but once I get some time I'll redo them. They were rasters of an accurate grid overlay, so they're suitable for use with a laser engraver (although I'm told raster gets you lower resolution, it should be fine for this use).

_________________
Sincerely, Chad R. Sobodash

Here’s a Web site with goban grid files in diverse formats (GIF, PDF, EPS) and also with a script to make your own:

http://www.gungfu.de/go/gobans/konstruktion/templates.html

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?