It all began with an idea from a friend, our combined enthusiasm and my creative talent in all its glory. The idea was to build a set of "extremely nice" cornhole boards with "the Indianapolis Colt's muscular horse painted on one board and the Cincinnati Bengal's tiger painted on the other." I am one for challenges, and I knew right away the paintings were going to be my greatest challenge, seeing that I hadn't picked up any brushes in years. However, this did not deter me from accepting!
Having realized what I just agreed to, it was time to start building the boards. Now is where parts of the "extremely nice" come in. I opted to use all hardwoods in the construction instead of going with a traditional pine wood (soft wood) frame with a piece of generic plywood for the tops.
Hardwoods used: poplar, mahogany, maple(cabinet grade plywood)
Next step was to rip, cross-cut, sand, rout, drill, sand again, probably cut some more, glue and back to sanding. After a few hours prepping all the boards for the frame and legs, I wanted to go above and beyond the plain ol' look. Soooo, time to try my skill at inlaying a darker wood against the lighter poplar wood. Now, I have never ever tried this, but how hard could it be, I asked myself.
It turns out that some careful planning, measuring and just a pinch of common sense was all I needed! Yay! In the course of the inlay process, an idea popped in my head to use the mahogany(same wood as inlay) as a trim board for the perimeter of the top. Now the frame will match the top, not to mention hide the exposed plywood edges! Yay #2
Time for assembly!!!
(notice trim around top, inlay on frame, and inlay on legs)
Assembly finished! On to the painting!
(nervousness and intimidation soon follows!)
After repeatedly telling myself, "I can do this!", and my wife realizing she's not allowed to use the dining room table any time soon, I began.
Quick Note - yes I do have a garage where I could have painted this, but why give up a comfortable chair in our comfortable dining room to stand in a cold garage! I started the Colts board first since I actually had a picture to look off of. The outlining in pencil went good. "I can do this!" The first layers of paint are turning out good. "I can do this!" Layer, after layer, after layer, after layer...looking better and better! "I can do this" changed into "I got this!"
Then...oh no...I did not have any reference pics, of any Bengals version, of what I had just done for the Colts board. Sooo, my can do attitude thought, why not use the Colt's body and banner, and then make up a tiger head, a tail, change the jersey color, replace Indianapolis Colts with Cincinnati Bengals, and replace the large Colt's horseshoe logo with the actual Bengal's tiger head logo. Yeah, Yeah! I got this! Couple brush strokes later...I present to you my version!
Shhhheeeewwwwwww! Painting finished! That took longer than I expected! After staring at the boards for what seemed an eternity, it was time to put the finishing touches. Lastly, I added a team logo on each leg brace, polyurethaned all wood that did not have paint, and took about a bazillion pictures before I had to deliver them. Oh, I stared at them a little bit longer too!
In conclusion, the result was an ecstatic customer, a happy wife that can use the dining room table, a proud artist, and two sick looking cornhole boards!
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