Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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My name is Jeff, and I am a Dune addict.
[Hi Jeff]
Inspired by the great work that my fellow slaves-to-Dune have completed in the past, I've decided to live my dream and construct a dedicated Dune table.
So why am I telling you all?
Well, I thought that it might be fun to document the process, from conception to completion, and what better place to do so than the 'Geek'? I'll try to be as complete as possible, and will attempt to remember to take pictures as I go along (hard for me to do when I get going on something).
A LITTLE BACKGROUND...
I've been a Dune player for years. Most of my Dune-ing took place in the years following my college days, before my regular group of gaming buddies scattered to the four winds. This was about 20 years ago. Since then I’ve bounced around in all forms of gaming but hadn’t played any Dune until a couple of years ago. I started gathering another local group to play Dune in 2006 and managed to get in a half dozen games, which really lit the passion in me again for this great game. Last year was just too busy for me to expend the effort to get the group together again (after the 2006 holidays), so no games were played, but now I’m back on track and the group is again scheduling regular Dune events.
Oh, and I'm no professional woodworker. I've been blessed with a nice garage-based shop and I've made a fair amount of sawdust while building some household necessities (as well as about three nice projects), so I'm by no means an expert. A lot of this will be good, old-fashioned trial and error.
INITIAL THOUGHTS
The favorite Dune picture on BGG is what inspired me initially:
The look of the board is so striking that I was left wondering how I could do something similar. I have spent hours pondering the possibilities and wondering how I could improve on the design.
One thought is that the board appears to be stained and I would prefer to use different colored hardwoods.
With this is mind, I noticed the following board:
The comments say that this is a hardwood board, but it still looks as if they stained it instead of using dedicated hardwoods. Perhaps it’s just the picture, but it is difficult to make out the different territories and looks like a bit of a mish-mash of colors. I really appreciate the amount of work that went into the board, but I’ll need to make sure that my board is easy on the eyes. I want the strongholds and stone territories to stand out from the dessert territories as well as from each other. I’ll also need to keep in mind that I’ll need to write on the board and make it easy to read.
Finally, I have been inspired by this board:
A dedicated table sounded like a fine idea, and that’s what I have in mind. I don’t use expansions, so I’ll not be needing the cool little auxiliary board, but that won’t be the only change. The table in the picture seems way too small for six people. My group often plays two Dune games per session (when time allows), so we could be sitting at the table for 6, 8, or 10 hours. That’s a lot of time to sit around a cramped little table, so I’ll have to make something a little roomier.
A poker table comes to mind. Something that’s not so big that you can’t reach everything but still large enough for six people to sit around comfortably for the better part of a day.
Okay, so where does one find plans for a poker table?
I found very cool plans online. They are free and very well documented.
Here is the site: http://www.carolscustomfurniture.com/poker-table/index-poker...
[Note: As of May 2008 this link no longer works]
I like the look of the table, but will have to modify it to a hexagon (simple enough).
A few thoughts about the table:
1) The cupholders are, of course, a great idea. Carol’s site points out that you can get inserts at online poker supply sites. I’ve found a few sites that supply nice brass cupholders.
2) The chipholders are unnecessary, but I think that I’ll just make the space deeper and add a little door that will serve as the ‘stash spot’ for spice and cards (we don’t hide tokens).
3) I may include another shallow hole to hold available tokens.
4) The leather-covered insert that Carol fills the central space with will be unnecessary. Instead of the insert I’ll just put the board in the middle, which will leave a ‘void’ between the player’s areas and the board. Maybe I’ll use an insert around the board to make the entire table flush, and making it removable will allow me to add different inserts and use the table for other games.
Next: PLANS…
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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PLANS
I did some research into the typical sizes of poker tables and found that they fall into three basic categories: 48”, 54” and 60”. Yeah, yeah – they come in other sizes too, but these are the most common.
My dining room table at home is round and 68” in diameter. It’s nice when you want to get a big group together, but way too big to reach anything near the middle without a struggle (much less anything beyond the midpoint). This mondo-table served to give me an upper bound to the Dune table, which is to say that I don’t want anything nearly that big. Not only is it impractical in size (and shape), but I’m making a game table, not a piece of dining room furniture.
Wanting the Dune table as small as possible, I looked into the 48” table. Too small. And the 60” table sounded way too big (corner-to-corner it’s actually 1 ½ inches larger than my dining room table), so it looks as though I’m left with the 54” table – at least as a starting point.
THE BASE
The base is what I’m calling the underside of the table. I’m not sure what I’m doing about legs at this point (probably something detachable), so I won’t be addressing that until much later.
Since the table will be wider than 48”, the base of the table will have to be made in two parts (a sheet of plywood is only 48” wide). I’ll need to cut out the two parts and biscuit join them in much the same way that Carol did in her poker table plans (see previous post).
Which begs the question: how many sheets will I need? I had hoped that I could get both pieces out of a single sheet of plywood if I put the inside seam (the widest part) on the outside edge of the plywood. Unfortunately, basic geometry begged to differ.
Turns out, for a table the size I want there is just a little overlap of the two pieces, shooting down my hopes and forcing me to buy another whole sheet of plywood. Well, cheap won out over stubborn, and I decided to shave down the table size just a bit so that I can get both halves of the base out of one sheet of ply.
So putting on my high school geometry hat again, I find that the max length (corner-to-corner distance) that I can get out of the piece is about 61 ¾ inches, which gives me a total width of about 53 ½ inches. Not too bad! Especially given that I’ll be slapping edging around the table and that extra 3/8” should kick me back up into the 54” neighborhood.
plywood cutting plans
The site won't let me use HTML, so I'll have to add the links to the full size images seperately until I can figure out how to make it let me use an external image as a link. Here's this one
So the 54” table seems about right for comfort (making it a minimum size) and also seems to be the limit of what I can get out of a single sheet of plywood (making it a maximum size). Sounds to me like I have a number that I can move forward with. What I think I’ll do at this point is cut out the pieces of the base and try it out for size. If it turns out a bit big, I can always cut it down a bit. This is important to do, because once I buy and begin to assemble the much more expensive hardwood for the top, I’ll be committed to the size and I DO NOT want to waste any of the expensive hardwood that I’m planning on making the top surface out of.
That was my intent when I wrote it, but when I got home I found a nice cardboard box that would serve as a template. One straightedge and a box knife later, I have a rough template that shows me about how big the table will be.
Here's the materials after I cut them up.
...and here's the board mock-up.
Looks like a pretty good size. Roomy, but not ginormous. The wife seems to like the size, so it’s a go! I then cut out a circle that represents the size of the board itself.
I had originally intended on cutting a circular shape into the center of the table to match the shape of the board, like this:
click here for full size image
…but now I’m thinking that the board looks pretty cool with the hexagon shape maintained on the inside edge, like this:
click here for full size image
(two sizes are shown in each drawing as I’m still debating about the ultimate width of the top surface)
It makes a nice contrast with the board and gives a little more real estate for players to store their pieces, place their cards, or whatever.
That's about all I have in me tonight.
Next: Planning the board...
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Have you thought about building, pockets or draws as "shields", into/onto the table? If you are, then now is the time to consider it.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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FNH1 wrote: Have you thought about building, pockets or draws as "shields", into/onto the table? If you are, then now is the time to consider it.
Yes, as a matter of fact. I mentioned this briefly in the first post:
One Fat Pug wrote: A few thoughts about the table:
[snip]
2) The chipholders are unnecessary, but I think that I’ll just make the space deeper and add a little door that will serve as the ‘stash spot’ for spice and cards (we don’t hide tokens).
The dimensions that I have been toying with are 4" x 6", and this is another reason that I'm attracted to the hexagon shape for the center of the table. If I cut a circle into the circle then the 'depth' of each player's section of table is reduced from 8-9 inches to 5 or 6 inches respectively. Seems that cuts it a little close if I'm going to be cutting in a space that takes up 4+ inches of this area.
On each door I'm considering placing a piece of acrylic. It will be affixed to the door by brass screws and will leave enough space to allow a card to be dropped into it for the player's faction. I may also try to incorporate some kind of side shielding so that other players can't peek into one's hidey-hole. This is going to take a bit of thought...
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Scott Woodard
United States
Burbank
California
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Looks more like you're constructing a TARDIS console...
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Nate Johnson
United States
Vernon Hills
Illinois
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He who controls the jellybabies, controls the universe!
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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THE BOARD
I don’t just want the board to be a single surface, but rather a puzzle-like assembly of differently colored hardwoods. I considered doing the whole thing as a veneering project, but I’ve never before attempted such a thing, and I consider it unwise to start on a project this detailed.
So I’ve decided to cut out the individual territories with the scroll saw and piece them together like a puzzle. This appears to be how the first two boards I linked to in the first post made their boards. Unlike the first board, I want a little more detail along the edges. My board will need to be larger than the original board, so I can’t use it as a pattern. I could copy the board and blow it up, but that sounds like a pain.
Looking over the boards that have been posted on BGG, I remembered the very cool board that Fidel Lainez (flainez) posted. A nice, big board with wonderfully defined lines between the territories. I printed out a few bits and discovered that the board is just about 2’ in diameter. That’s just right for what I want to do.
So I printed out the various sections of the map and am going to use them as scroll saw templates. Here’s a pile of printouts…
click here for full size image
…and here are some of them assembled on the floor. I found that I missed a couple of sections and had to print out a few more sheets.
click here for full size image
This morning I laid them out on the mock-up for size. Looks just right.
click here for full size image
I’ll use a ½ inch plywood base and glue the pieces on top of it. The pieces will probably be cut out of wood planed down to 1/4 inch thickness, which will give me a total thickness that will match that of the top of the table (player areas).
I then wanted to use a dark wood (like ebony) to divide the sections, but with the level of detail along the edges this will probably be too difficult, so now I’m figuring on using some kind of fill material, dyed black, between the territories. It may be as simple as dying wood putty and adding it after I’ve applied the first coat of finish. I’m not too sure about how this will turn out, so I’m going to try it out on a piece of scrap before I do it on the real thing (and hope it doesn't look like crap).
Whew! ...quite a project and I'm not even on to the woodworking yet!
Next: ???
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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STILL FIDDLING
I cut out a circle in the center of the table to try it on for size.
Now I can't decide whether to go with the circle or keep the hexagon.
My kids aren't any help either. The boy likes the circle and the girl likes the hex.
Here's the pic...
click here for full size image
The wife breaks the tie, going with the circle.
I hear the Voice and obey...
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Medievalbanquet
United States
Wellesley
Massachusetts
And if you never have, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
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You're nuts. I like that.
Just finishing the book, Dune, for the first time in my life. Wierd, huh?
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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medievalbanquet wrote: You're nuts. I like that.
'cause Id rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sadmen roaming free
And Id rather play here
With all the madmen
For Im quite content they're all as sane
As me
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Medievalbanquet
United States
Wellesley
Massachusetts
And if you never have, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
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Nice.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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The words of David Robert Jones
...oh, and to get back on topic - here are my plans for this week:
1) Purchase a router guide so that I can cut circles. The guide runs just under 30 bucks, but I have a promo card sent from Lowe's that gives me 10 bucks off any purchase of 25 or more. Every bit helps.
2) Buy wood. Yes indeed. I'll actually have something to start hacking up in the next couple of days, which means I can...
3) Start construction of the table.
I'm so excited!
In the meantime, I'm still cleaning the garage.
The accumulation of years has clogged my workspace, but I'll have it back by the time I have a chance to get the wood.
Next: SAWDUST!
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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RAINED OUT
San Diego was way too wet this week to be buying expensive wood and hauling it around in my pickup. I thought that today was finally going to be the day to get it all, but it started to drizzle and I only managed to pick up the plywood for the base.
Well, good enough. I can get that started on the base Sunday and pick up the rest of the wood early next week. At least I can fire up some tools and dirty up the garage a bit.
Why not get started tomorrow? Because I'm PLAYING Dune tomorrow!
EDIT:
Dagnabit! I just looked up the forecast for this weekend...
...so I guess I won't be buying any more wood this Sunday. Which just means less time running around and more time in the shop.
Still - all that lovely Red Gum wood just waiting to be picked up...
*sigh*
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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SAWDUST
I finally got a chance to get into the garage, and although I haven’t had a chance to get over to the lumber yard to get the nice wood, at least it stopped raining so I started work on the lower portion of the table.
I told you there would be sawdust soon!
The first order of business is to hack the sheet of birch veneer ply into the two pieces that will make up the base (of the tabletop). My garage is small-ish and crowded with tools, so handling sheet goods can be somewhat challenging, as you can see…
I have to be careful with this so that I don’t screw up the cut and find myself buying another piece of 50+ dollar plywood. Going back to my trusty plans, I scribbled the necessary lines and set up for the cut.
It has been said that the router is the most dangerous tool in the shop, and you always hear tales about the table saw inflicting heinous damage on the unwary, but I’m always a little apprehensive when handling this little bugger:
There are a few reasons for this.
First – it is usually the first tool I use on a project, and so I may be out of practice.
Second – I often have to cut sheet goods with it, and so I am usually leaning over in less than optimal fashion.
Third – (and most importantly) I know two men, one a contractor and one a woodworking professional, who maimed themselves badly with circular saws. The first cut off his thumb, and the second cut his hand nearly all the way off (and is even now recovering from his surgery).
It’s such a common tool that it is easy to take for granted. I like my body parts, so I’m extra careful with this one.
And here’s my first cut of the project! Woo hoo!
After hacking the sheet in two, I knocked a bit of the extra off on the table saw. When cutting plywood, especially veneered plywood, you should use a zero-clearance insert for your table saw. It keeps the bottom edge from splintering as it is cut.
I also used the tablesaw to clean up the edges that would be glued together. These edges were the outside edges of the sheet of plywood and can’t really be counted on to be square. This was a little more challenging because of the angle that I cut the sheet, but I just added a long piece of straight wood to my tablesaw fence and everything was right as rain. I could have also done this on the router table, but I didn't feel like taking the time to set it up (I've already had to tune-up a lot of tools I hadn't used in a while) and the router has a tendency to splinter the edges of plywood, especially for shallow cuts. Then it was just a matter of using the old biscuit joiner to get everything ready to be glued.
Everything has to be planned out and set up right or I could have a mess on my hands. Once the sheets have glue on them there is no going back, so a little thought beforehand can save a ton of pain after the fact. Here are the pieces all ready to be glued…
…and here it is all clamped up…
It’s still not table-shaped because, well…..it doesn’t need to be. I’ll leave the waste on until I have the top portion ready to go. That will leave me with plenty of ‘wiggle room’ in case anything unplanned happens. Then I’ll trace the shape of the top onto the bottom; cut most of the scrap off with the circular saw; and then use the router to cut it to the exact size.
I’m planning on visiting the lumber yard on Friday, so I may get some good work done this weekend!
Next: RED GUM
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Lisa Vaca
United States
California
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Ahhh! I love the smell of saw dust... but it looks like I'll be a "wood shop widow" for the next couple of months.
Still, I can't wait to see the finished product. It's going to be awesome!
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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RED GUM
I finally made it over to the lumberyard and picked up my Figured Red Gum wood. Three boards, each about 14' long.
Each of the boards was a little too wide for my chop saw to handle, and a little too long to fiddle with flip-flopping the board, so I resorted to the old-fashioned method...
...so I roughed out the boards into this lovely pile...
...and now all I have to do is match up the pairs that I want to glue up. It was starting to get a little dark and I need natural light to match everything up, so that's all for today.
Not much to show for the weekend, but a little work is better than none.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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THE WORK CONTINUES...
I've spent the week doing a little here and there when I could, and I got some really good work done this weekend. Sure, I could blab on and on about it, boring you all with endless descriptions of tiresome details, but I think I'll just show you instead...
I spent some time fiddling with boards to get the best matches in grain patterns. With wood as highly figured as this, I have to be really careful or the glued-up board will look like crap.
Here you can see one of the boards that I'm gluing up and some of the already glued boards in the background.
click here for full size image
While the board were clamped-up I decided to try out my new router circle-cutter. Here's the result:
click here for full size image
Before I cut out this circle, which will be the base of the actual board, I cut out a circle that I will later use as a Crokinole board. I figured that if I screwed it up, I'd rather thrash my Crokinole board than my Dune board. A guys gotta have priorities.
I'm working on the exact pattern that I'll be using on each of the outer 'player areas', but while I'm working that out I started working on what will be the bins that I'll use in place of the player screens.
Here are the bits that I'll be using, with a sample box joint cut...
click here for full size image
...and here are the bits with the box joints cut...
click here for full size image
...and here are the boxes with bottoms included...
click here for full size image
...as much as I'd like to glue them up at this point, I'll wait until I add hinges, lids, trim or whatever. I don't want to start slapping things together only to find that I can't get tools inside to do what I need to do.
There's a bit more, but my wife's calling me away...
...more soon.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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They may not look like much right now, but after they are cleaned up I'll trim each of the boxes with walnut and recess them into the table. A door will be added to each box that will open 60 degrees and will have a place on the back for a faction card.
Soon I'll be picking up the wood to start on the board. I need to make sure that I have all of the wood so that I can plane it all to thickness before I start cutting it up. Once I start cutting the pieces out I won't be able to run them through the planer (without shattering them) and I want to make sure that they start out the same thickness so that I don't have to do a lot of sanding just to get the pieces to match.
I'm really itching to jump in and start on the board, but I know that a little preparation and patience now will save me a ton of heartache later.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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BACK IN THE SADDLE
A week and a half of jury duty put a damper on my woodworking spirits lately, and after that I just wanted to relax over the weekend and do pretty much nothing – but I’m back in the shop and ready to make things happen.
After having given the situation some thought, I stopped by Rockler and picked up some small barrel hinges. This will allow me to hinge the box lids without having to screw anything into the thin wood that I’m using. All I need to do is drill a hole and insert the barrel hinge with a little drop of epoxy.
Here’s a pic of the hinges I’m using:
click here for full size image
…and speaking of picking things up, I finally did some research and decided on something to fill the gaps in the board.
In case you’ve forgotten, dear reader, I’ll be cutting out the territories with the scrollsaw and leaving about 1/16 inch between them, which I plan on filling with some black material.
Looking into it, I’ve found that West Systems makes a two-part epoxy resin that is used in woodworking applications. Just what I’m looking for!
Here’s a pic of what I got (from their site):
Now I’m ready to start working on the board! Woo hoo!
…but what I’ve done in the last couple of days…
I took some scrap maple that I had lying around and made some splines:
click here for full size image
…with which I can attach the walnut trim to the boxes. I wanted to be lazy and just make one pass on the tablesaw to make the groove for the splines, so I planed the splines down to the necessary size. I was reminded how long it’s been since I’ve sharpened my planer knives when it shattered some of the spline material.
Note to self: get those planer knives sharpened!
I cut out strips of walnut, planed them to size, ran them over the tablesaw and now I’m ready to add the trim to the boxes:
click here for full size image
I drilled the trim for the hinges (which needed to be done before assembly), so now all I have to do is miter the corners and glue it all together. I'm also working on the doors that will go into the top of the boxes. Having a limited amount of scrap Red Gum, I resawed a board into two pieces and planed it to about 1/8 inch. I'm in the process of gluing those pieces to some maple (planed to 1/4 inch) to give it enough thickness to take the barrel hinges, and I'm not sure if I'll trim it with something or leave it be. The maple will match the interior of the boxes. I'll probably end up trimming the doors with some more walnut, which means a bit of a delay to go through the whole process again. Given that the doors won't be bearing any weight (the boxes will be hanging from their trim), I won't need to add splines so the trimming process will likely go more quickly. I can hardly wait to see if my doors turn out well, or if they just end up being crap. Only time will tell!
So far this all doesn't look like much, but it will actually start turning into something cool fairly soon.
No, really.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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ASSEMBLING THE BOXES - PT 1
The boxes are coming along nicely. I've got the trim mitered and ready its fits nicely.
Here they are with the trim fitted but not glued:
click here for full size image
...then I made one lid to try it out for size. Here's a pic:
click here for full size image
...and when I first clamped the trim onto the boxes it was a mess of clamps
...but then I got my act together..
So now I just have to chamfer the hinged edge of the box and lid so that the door will open and, of course, make up the other five lids. They are ready to go and just need trim at this point.
Now that the boxes are basically done, I can get to the job of finishing the template for the player areas. This will allow me to knock out the player areas and get the bulk of the table finished.
Oh, and on the board front, my sis-in-law managed to score some really nice veneer for me to make board pieces out of. I was hoping to get some really nice figured veneer, but expected to pay quite a bit for it. This stuff is scrap that the cabinet shop she works for throws away. Thanks sis!
To the left is Curly Maple and to the right is figured Eucaplyptusclick here for full size image
This week I'll be getting my planer knives sharpened so that I can plane the table top without mauling the lovely Red Gum wood.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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UNDER THE WEATHER
From Sunday March 3 to Friday March 8 I was sick as a dog. The flu bug hits me every year or two but is usually only a minor inconvenience (lasting a day or two). This one was really nasty and kept me out of the garage for an entire week!
The lost time really hurts, but I'm ready to get back in the saddle again. First it was rain, then jury duty, then a foul virus. What's it going to take to get this table done???
Before I got sick I had ordered some new game pieces for the new board. After all, the new board will be lovely wood, so why shouldn't the pieces get the same treatment? I was contemplating making them all (cutting out little disks, staining them and finishing all 120), but then I looked around and realized that I could order them much easier.
So as I was getting better they showed up. Woo hoo!
I ordered them from BEDI-Holzspiele and am really happy with both their product and service. The pieces that I selected were 15mm disks (4mm tall) and are only slightly larger than the original pieces.
click here for full size image
Including shipping, I paid 17.50 Euro for them all (which is about 27 bucks). Not bad for pieces from Germany, and I actually ordered 25% extra in case something went horribly awry.
I also went down to Lowes ('cause Home Depot sucks) and picked up new planer knives. I could have had mine sharpened, but last time I had them sharpened they cut the edge at the wrong angle and had to remove too much material when they repaired them, so I was worried that I would have them sharpened only to discover that they didn't fit in the planer anymore.
Anyway, I'm all fixed up and ready to go. I didn't get back in time tonight to fire up the [very loud] planer, but I'll be doing that tomorrow and Thursday - so look for some results by this weekend!
Next: PUTTING THE TABLE TOGETHER!
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Jim Cote
United States
Maine
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One Fat Pug wrote: What's it going to take to get this table done???
Imperial Conditioning? 
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jeff slaga
United States
Denver
Colorado
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I made the second hardwood board that you posted a pic of so I appreciate all of the hard work and thought that you have put into this project. I encountered many difficulties when it came to scroll saw cutting the "puzzle" pieces or territories....I wanted to piece together individual piece of different types of hardwood but it's difficult to get an edge matchup when you start with different pieces and not just cut from one large piece for the whole board. I'm interested to see how you will solve this dilemma....I see that you plan on giving yourself some leeway with some filler material.
I am planning on cutting pieces of laminate hardwood to glue onto my existing board template...as I gave the original away as a gift...btw it was puzzle pieces that were transported in a sack and then assembled for game play. I'm not sure that my picture made that clear enough.
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Jeffrey Vaca
United States
San Diego
California
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Wow - I didn't know it was a big puzzle. That's kinda cool.
I wish you had a picture of all of the loose pieces. That would have been very interesting to see.
I'll be gluing the pieces onto a backer board, but hopefully the gap I leave won't be inconsistent as all hell and look like crap. It doesn't take much to draw the eye and that's a big fear at this point, but I'm making some extra material to give myself a couple of shots at it. Only time will tell.
This reminds me that I have to get off my butt and get some more work done on this...
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love reading this thread :)
as a note here is a cool thread on another dune project that I was impressed with (a retheme).
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1827118
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Posted Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:52 pm
