I’ve seen a few recent posts on cribbage boards and I’ve been doing some testing with a couple new board designs. I’d like to curate this thread to ensure you find success with our kit and your next board project.
In a single kit there are enough pins for you to make multiple two or three player boards.
These are steel pins with knurling. Being a long time cribbage player, I love the heavy duty feel of these pins.
It also includes a drill bit designed to be utilized in stable materials.
Stable materials would include anything which doesn’t swell with application of finish or changes in humidity. Aluminum, Richlite, Epoxy, Plastics and other composites.
Making a cribbage board is something that will improve your design skills. It appears to be a simple project while being anything but simple.
How to Enter the Drill into Carbide Create
Click on “Edit” then “Show Tool Database”
Create a “New Library” and name it or utilize a library you’ve previously created.
Right Click on that library and “Add New Tool”
Select “End Mill” then “In” or “mm” your choice.
My Cribbage Drill Settings are attached in photo form. These settings work well for most wood or wood type materials. If you are going to try aluminum or another metal, you’ll want to alter the Plunge Rate when assigning the toolpath.
With your settings entered - Save the Tool
General Advice on Creating the Holes
Hole depths of 6mm to 8mm is about right for pin retention and gameplay.
Total depth depends on the look you want and the thickness of your material. For boards with two-sided machining, you will be balancing the depth requirements for each side. Folding boards and those containing the cards or pins will be the projects containing this balancing act.
For inert materials: Aluminum, Brass, Copper, Acrylic, Epoxy, Richlite and other plastics. Use the Cribbage Drill. It’s specifically sized for the C3D Pins.
For Materials like wood, MDF or anything that responds to moisture in the environment, I’ve done a bunch of testing and board construction to determine a size that performs well. That hole size is 1.82mm Radius
That radius hole is cut with a 1/8" bit, utilizing a Pocket Toolpath. Standard 1/8" settings altered slightly for the specifics of your material will do fine.
If you have a material that swells with application of finish or paint, you may go slightly larger with the holes. Even a .01mm change makes a fair difference in the feel of the pegs.
As with everything CNC, Experimentation and Experience will be your best guides with the specific material you choose to use. Make notes in an Excel spreadsheet if you want to save time on a later build.
Hole Placement
Determining the distance needed between pins will mean balancing a few different factors:
Size of the Board / Number of Players / Your own “Comfortable Distance” for play / Placement of dividers for each 5 points and more.
In the attached file I have included a number of design elements to help you layout your own board design. You can use those as your jumping off point for your next build.
Ask me any questions you have in this thread. I’m here to further your success with Shapeoko and Nomad I will update this top post as questions are asked and answered
On the subject of complexity and learning by making cribbage boards; @Merick01 does some incredible large scale family boards that are works of art. Definitely check out his builds for some inspiration.
Boards of all sizes make outstanding gifts or salable items. Even if you don’t play, exploring a board build or two to learn some design and machining skills will payoff. Give the board to the card player in your life or perhaps a local coffee shop. It might just generate some other business…
This warms my heart that you are offering a cribbage board kit and support for design files!
I feel like cribbage boards is a rite of passage for most woodworkers utilizing CNC capabilities. From simple to complex designs, there is an abundance of learning potential that can be applied to all future projects. There are endless possibilities and no unspoken rules of designing one….other than the old “Form follows Function” mantra we use when putting pen to paper.
When I get home tonight, I’ll share the Around the Bend 3 Player Board design. I would love to see someone tackle it and hopefully improve it!
Right on Maurice. Thanks for jumping in.
One thing, downloading and Importing the .dxf resulted in an import of tiny proportions. The lower left corner is the size which originally imported. For reference the stock pictured is 12"x6". By scaling the .dxf it gets quite distorted.
Can you post a larger DXF or SVG?
I updated my post to include the SVG file. Also attached it below. If you right click and save, it will download the entire SVG file. Original size of the drawing for is 4.875"x12.638"
Unsure why my Fusion360 generated DXF didn’t import correctly into CC. Kevin, I’ll send you a PM to figure out a use case on this. All my other software’s imported the original file correctly, Xtool Creative Space and Adobe Illustrator.
Just wanted to share my results of my very first cribbage board! I used the basic 3 player board file that Kevin attached but modified the layout of the holes in the 180 degree turns to be more circular and symetrical. I did not change the toolpath settings which called for the 1/8" endmill and not the drill bit. The hole diameters work out well with the metal pins from the kit. They have a tiny bit of play but slide in and out of the holes nicely. That reminds me, the hole diameters in the file on the first 180 degree turn were sized slightly smaller than the rest of the holes in the board. I updated those in my file as well. Thanks @KevBarn14 for posting this thread!
Nice job with the full 180 turn at the top. That looks much smoother than my version.
Good catch on the holes at the top being smaller as well. I must have missed that in the update as I was moving parts around. Both the 2-Player and 3-Player Board Designs have been updated to correct the hole size issues.
Thank you to @CheckMarkFabs for catching that problem.
I love the interaction here for Cribbage Builds.
Question for everyone viewing: What other types of projects would benefit from a collaborative thread?
I have enjoyed this thread. I like the cribbage boards from simple to OMG that’s beautiful. Both styles are works of art.
If you continue, how about games. Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, board types of games, heck why not Chutes and Ladders. A 3d Monopoly would be WOW. Or a simple Chinese Checkers with holes for those that don’t have 3D. It is a lesson in presentation for each artist to share with everyone.
and a DXF could be exported from OpenSCAD to use in Carbide Create, and w/ a suitable size for the circles, and a suitable size for a ball-nosed tool could work either as a drill toolpath or pocket.
but anyways before we all move on, we should chat about peg storage. There are lots of options out there. what do people prefer? I’m sure I can dig up the file for this pocket. It was heavily inspired from @MadHatter after a side chat we had a while back.
I made this one a little while ago. Added magnets to a cover so I can create custom inlays as well. Base is Walnut and cover is Hard Maple with a walnut inlay.
