Beautiful! What is your source for the pins? I know others have these on the site, but I’m finally considering making cribbage board and so, the need.
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Lee Valley has some, at a buck a piece roughly. Otherwise I got a bulk baggie of 60pins from Amazon since I had a few in the queue to make
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Hufflepuff coaster for a co-worker. Made out of color core HDPE. I should have taken a picture after cleanup.
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Here is another place to get cribbage pegs as well. There is a large selection of peg styles to choose from, and a bunch of sizes if you are making boards with non-standard (1/8") holes.
I use the 5/64" (#12) pegs for my portable boards, and I buy the oversized (#16 and #18) for my regular boards as an option for a bit more money, but I buy the #14 in bulk and use that style as the default for my boards.
I have designed - but not yet cut - some boards that have 3/6" holes, wider spacing, and larger sized fonts for people with dexterity issues, and can’t manipulate the “standard” sized pegs.
EDIT: You can also just go to AliExpress and buy them there if you want to save a little bit of $ and wait a couple of weeks for delivery. Most pegs are made there anyway. You are just paying extra for the convenience of not waiting weeks for delivery.
If you are just making a couple of boards for friends and family, it’s not really worth it, but if you are making them and selling them, you can buy 1K pegs for ~50-65% of the price of buying them from a US reseller if you look around and contact the sellers to get a volume discount.
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What is the box with the red green and yellow buttons?
My very first (very boring) brass cut.
A friend asked me to make him some decals/badges for his latest BMW motorbike project. He wanted handed skulls to go in the fuel tank indents. I said I would try and cut them for him but he wanted the “cast” look. However casting brass 1mm thick across a 70mm diameter circle is a non-starter.
I cut the patterns and cast them 5mm thick, then, with trepidation cut the 75mm diameter, 3mm deep pocket. (The background is 1mm).
Far easier than I was expecting. Although it looks like a ploughed field on the photo it is actually very smooth. I used a 6mm 4 flute end mill at 18000 rpm with a doc of 0.25mm. It took about 25 mins. It now weights 42g (1.5 oz).
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Wow, that looks great. I am a little confused. You milled a mold, then cast brass into that mold, yes? If not, please explain. If so, what did you use for the mold, and what does it take to get molten brass? A full kiln, or just a little ceramic cup and torch?
Thanks Chase.
The last picture shows the two patterns I cut in wood to form the mould in oil sand. I didn’t just make these two castings there were a lot of others, 12kg (25lb) of molten brass in total, in three separate melts.
The amount of brass melted also needs to take into account the “sprue”, where the brass is poured into the mould. This is cut off and re-melted for the next pour. They can be seen in the photo below. There are also two incomplete pours to re-melt.
The two wartime BMW badges were made as a joke, I told him that I thought that was the badge he wanted. Not impressed!
The long thin pieces are antique style nails needed for another project.
Apart from the ring and nails, all of the patterns for these were cut on my Shapeoko. A game changer in my casting!
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Very nice stuff you have going there. A lot of fun casting brass, I’ve only played around and made a few items to save money instead of turning it into chips!
If you happen to have a 3D printer you might try what I’ve done.
I was making a rather large tapered object that was partially hollow.
I 3D printed the part out of PLA and got it ready to pour in my sand box mold.
I have an extra kiln besides the one I use for melting the metal. In the kiln the PLA just goes “poof” and you are left with a real nice cavity to pour your metal into. I blew out the remaining PLA with an air compressor.
It’s saved me lot’s of time machining using this process.
Thought I’d share in case this might be something that could aid in your processes.
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Making stuff to make other stuff.
Another of my “If I can do it anybody can” series.
I will never get over the excitement of being able to make the things I need.
In this case, soft jaws. SMW sells ‘em for about $16 + shipping for two so I’m not saving much by doing it myself…but. Good learning experience for me. Like SMW they are two sided so a total of 4 opportunities on each jaw to screw up before recycling.
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This was intended to be technique practice, but it turned out pretty good so I gave it to it’s rightful owner, (our neighbor who just had a baby girl).
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Tried a technique on scrap plywood. The plywood was garbage and has some air pockets in it, and the black glue, but its great to practice the design and cutting techniques.
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Makes your sign look rustic/aged. At least that is what you tell people it was on purpose.
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Well, that is what I told my neighbor…but I know the truth! 
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Figured since we paid for CC Pro that I should probably learn how to use the 3D function. I was super close to looking into my mirror and saying, “Will Adams” three times, but I managed to make something happen on my own.
Napkin holder.
Experimented with a finger cutout on one side… hopefully not doing that again 
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Stamp for my niece, used Speedball linoleum block. #112 end mill for roughing. And #502 engraver for detail.
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What or where is Mt Lorri. I searched and found a Mount Lori in North Carolina but found no Mt Lorri. Just curious where Mt Lorri is.
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Lorri is my mother-in-law’s name it’s a gift for her so I thought it would be fun if it said “Mt. Lorri”. Good catch, Guy.
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