BACKGAMMON BOARD DESIGN...

[KUO ARCH]

I have been trying to buy a backgammon board for a while now, but I haven't
foung one that I like (I am a designer, and quite picky at that!) I have
therefore decided to design a piece of furniture with an incorporated board.
However I have not been able to find a drawing of the board with dimensions (or
that has a scale) to create an accurate board.

Do you have any suggestions???? HELP!

Best
Christina (kuo...@aol.com)

[Albert Steg]

In article <19980130214...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
kuo...@aol.com (KUO ARCH) wrote:

> I have been trying to buy a backgammon board for a while now, but I haven't
> foung one that I like (I am a designer, and quite picky at that!) I have
> therefore decided to design a piece of furniture with an incorporated board.
> However I have not been able to find a drawing of the board with
dimensions (or
> that has a scale) to create an accurate board.

I'm not aware of any magic formula, but a sensible place to start is with
the checkers. Since an important feature of a good bg board is that the
checkers fit comfortably onto the points, I would suggest acquiring your
checkers *first* and then building a board to mAtch them.

I'm not exactly sure of the standard Crisloid checker size, but the nice
old bakelite pieces I use, which are about right for the piece of
furniture you're envisioning, is between 1.5 - 1.75 inches in diameter.
If you go much bigger, a full 2",for example, you'll find your board gets
huge really fast.

So, starting with your checker, the triangular points ought to hold *5*
checkers comfortably , with perhaps just a tip of the triangle peeking
out. At the base, the edges of the first checker should be beyond the
edges of the triangle on both sides by just a tad. What's crucial about
width is that when you put a checker on each of six points in, for
eaxample, the home board, they should all _fit_ , but with just a little
bit of extra play to make them easy to get at. Be care ful not to allow
so much "give" that the checkers slosh around if, for example, you bang
your knee on thre table.

Other than that, I think you're free to be "creative" -- study the
proportions of other boards to get a feel for how much space there should
be between the opposing points -- you want a nice field to roll upon.
Make sure to put a nice bar down the middle wide enough to comfortably
slap a few of your opponent's checkers and balance a cube on.

Good luck!

Albert