- First we select high grade 3/4" plywood. 13-ply Baltic birch is
our material of choice due to its strength and consistently clean
appearance. The quality of the plywood is one of the most important
keys to quality game boards. It has to be strong inside and out.
You get what you pay for with plywood. If you're making homemade
boards you'll probably have to settle for what you can get at big
box hardware stores, and it just might be ok if you select it carefully.
If not, you're only out a small cost. But if you're buying a set
of boards you expect more. After working with different grades of
plywood, we as players would never pay for boards made of the cheap
stuff, so we cannot justify selling it, even it if would mean lower
prices and higher profits.
- The plywood sheet is mounted on the bed of our
3-axis CNC wood router where powerful suction
grips it firmly in place.
- Once the CNC router is programmed with the design for the
parts that make up a particular model of cornhole boards, it
begins the precision operations
that will lead to the finished pieces. It drills holes, prepares
edges, cuts grooves, carves out pockets, slopes in and out of deep
cuts, and finally circumscribes each complete piece and cuts it free.
All of this is accomlpished with a variety of specialized tools, each
capable of an accuracy approaching the width of a sheet of copy paper.
- When all of the pieces have been cut, they are extracted from
the remains of the sheet. Very little material goes to waste!
Each piece is the cleaned, deburrred, sanded, and prepared for assembly.
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- Many pieces require further preparation before assembly.
Hinge holes are counterbored, thicker pieces are layered together,
corners are squared, smaller pieces are hand-cut, and the Flatiron
logo is proudly added.
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Next we round over all the exposed edges with two
special routers, a router table, guide jigs, and several different bits.
Each final piece is then hand-sanded again to smooth out any rough
spots left by the power tools.
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At this point the playing surfaces are given special attention.
They need to be especially smooth and
flat in order to look and play just right. This requires four passes
of sanding with increasingly fine sanding and polishing tools. It
starts with a palm sander, then a random orbital sander, and finally gets
completed with hand-held sponges and pads.
- Assembly of the prepared parts is easy due to the
precise shapes and careful design of the parts. Once they are
arranged and dry fit, it's just a matter of proper gluing, cleaning,
clamping, and reenforcing.
- Next the boards and leg assemblies are given a
final sanding and cleaning. Then they're taken to our spray booth
where they are given a mirror-smooth UV-protected clearcoat,
several coats thick.
- Legs, hinges, feet, corner guards, and latches are added.
And after a final inspection and cleaning, the boards are ready
for play.
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