Drawing Lines on a Goban
Hans Wiezorke
I am once again experimenting with making a goban.
Right now I try coating the wood with carnuba wax, which makes a nice
finish to the surface. However I get problems when I remove the excess
wax. My lines smear. :-(
So I decided to abandon felt pens and try a more traditional approach.
One method is to apply the paint with a sword.
My idea is to apply acrylic paint with a large kitchen knife. I
started with making a 9x9 Board, so it should be long enough. However
it is very hard to get a uniform line this way, because I haven't
found a way so far to apply a uniform amount of paint to the entire
length of the blade. Can someone please shed some light on how the
paint is supposed to be applied to the sword.
I figure they don't just dip it into a puddle of paint :-)
Any help is appreciated.
BTW: I finally found the right stain to color the wood: very strong
Rooibush Tea :-) Makes a very nice yellow-orange hue when combined
with carnuba wax.
Read u,
Hans
Stefan Hruschka
A few years back I visited a go board factory in the south of Japan and
watched the how a pretty boring looking slab of wood becomes a beautiful go
board. And the master even let me draw a line with the sword-like blade he
was using. First about the sword: I had thought that the idea was to
actually make a small groove in the wood that would be filled with the
lacquer that makes the line. That is actually not the case. The blade only
touches on the wood lightly. The reason why a blade is used, I think, is
because a sharp blade makes a sufficiently thin line and the curvature of
the blade makes it possible to "roll" the sword over the board rather than
"pulling" a brush, so that every spot on the blade only touches one single
place on the board and deposits the lacquer there.
Ok, how to get the lacquer on the blade: the master used a tube of very
thick looking black lacquer and he squeezed an amount that looked like 1 or
2 cm on a long piece of glass (longer than the sword). Then he used a
spatula to draw out the lacquer into a 5 to 8 cm wide line a bit longer than
the length of the sword. I think he spread it out pretty thin. He then set
down the blade on the lacquer. The sword is slightly round, like this ")" ,
so that he can roll the blade over the glass without pulling it. If the
lacquer is spread evenly on the glass it should also be attached evenly to
the sword. Then the on end of the sword is set down on the edge of the board
and the blade is rolled over the board from one side to the other.
The lacquer is spread out in a sufficiently wide line on the glass so that
the sword can be put down many times without touching the same place twice.
To get the lines straight, by the way, a metal frame was clamped on the
outside of the board that had slots in exactly the right places to make the
lines. By using the slots it was impossible to not get a straight line, but
the speed and evenness of rolling motion over the board take practise. I
tried two lines and both smudged or had unevenly thick areas. The line is
drawn almost to the edge of the board, but the outside rim of the board was
covered with paper tape to make sure that the line does not extend too far
to the edge.
So, I dumped all my "knowledge". Please let me know if you have any
questions and good luck with the board.
Gruesse
Stefan
"Hans Wiezorke" <c.u...@t-online.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:861fd37d.02041...@posting.google.com...
Bruce Tomlin
"Stefan Hruschka" <stefan_...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Ok, how to get the lacquer on the blade: the master used a tube of very
> thick looking black lacquer and he squeezed an amount that looked like 1 or
> 2 cm on a long piece of glass (longer than the sword). Then he used a
> spatula to draw out the lacquer into a 5 to 8 cm wide line a bit longer than
> the length of the sword. I think he spread it out pretty thin. He then set
> down the blade on the lacquer. The sword is slightly round, like this ")" ,
Aha. That's useful to know.
> To get the lines straight, by the way, a metal frame was clamped on the
> outside of the board that had slots in exactly the right places to make the
> lines. By using the slots it was impossible to not get a straight line, but
> the speed and evenness of rolling motion over the board take practise. I
I can't remember exactly where I saw it, possibly in an issue of Weekly
Jump manga, possibly on the Kurokigoishi site, but I saw a picture where
a frame jig was indeed being used to align the blade. Also, it was
clear that masking tape had been applied around the edges of the board.
Maybe I've got two pictures confused, because I think I recall seeing
both one where a sword was used, and another elsewhere where a 19-bladed
tool was used. (the latter was obviously NOT Kurokigoishi!)
I do know for certain that the Weekly Jump article showed stones being
cut out of slabs of nachiguro. They just drilled circles out of the
slab. Perhaps tumbling took care of the rest?
Symeon
> BTW: I finally found the right stain to color the wood: very strong
> Rooibush Tea :-) Makes a very nice yellow-orange hue when combined
> with carnuba wax.
Just curious: what kind of wood are you using?
/Symeon
ro...@telus.net
<bruceNS...@fanboy.net> wrote:
>I do know for certain that the Weekly Jump article showed stones being
>cut out of slabs of nachiguro. They just drilled circles out of the
>slab.
That is no doubt the easiest way, but I'm surprised they haven't come
up with a way to cut them at an angle, to get more stones out of less
nachiguro.
>Perhaps tumbling took care of the rest?
IIRC, they machine the puck-shaped blanks down to a lens shape, then
use a special curved abrasive block to hand finish them.
-- Roy L
ro...@telus.net
wrote:
>Right now I try coating the wood with carnuba wax, which makes a nice
>finish to the surface. However I get problems when I remove the excess
>wax. My lines smear. :-(
>
>So I decided to abandon felt pens and try a more traditional approach.
Felt pens are only for the most rough-and-ready board.
-- Roy L
Tad Short
> A few years back I visited a go board factory in the south of Japan and
> watched the how a pretty boring looking slab of wood becomes a beautiful go
> board.
Thank you for the extremely detailed info! When I get around to
making my own goban (or perhaps more) I'll be certain to refer back to
this msg. You've saved me endless hours of trial and error. . . now
it will be just a finite number of hours of practice.
Thanks again.
Hans Wiezorke
> Just curious: what kind of wood are you using?
I use a thin plywood. My goal is to make a hollow goban, that provides
a good solid "tchok" sound, when a stone is played.
Thank you all for your good advice.
Hans
Christiane Stadler/Hans Wiezorke
I just want to sum up my experiences so far:
For wood I used plywood, my next try will be with a thicker one (~20mm) though. The thin plywood tends
to warp too easily.
This plywood was then sanded a little to make it smooth (400 grain sandpaper) and stained using rooibush
tea, giving it a yellowy red look.
The lines come on with a black ballpoint pen, slightly indenting the wood, so that the ink sits in
little grooves.
Afterwards I used some more sandpaper, to remove all the ink that was standing up out of the grooves.
Now comes the surface part: I used a bar of carnuba wax (one of the hardest natural waxes) and applied
the wax with a buffing wheel. I used a rather hard felt wheel. Only very little wax is needed, the
surface is not supposed to be _coated_ with wax, it's only supposed to make everything a nice smooth
shiny matte.
The waxed surface is really cool to put the stones on. My previous attempt had a surface sprayed with
clear varnish, that produced too much friction, when putting down a stone. Now even the relatively rough
slates glide gently into position. Great. :-)
Keep Go-ing,
Hans