Well over sixty years, I wandered around while my dad, grand-dad, and uncle played Cribbage, drank beer, and smoked cigars.
CA and I have taken to playing a game every day. It’s a quiet time together before we dive into reading (or writing or knitting or whatever
CA’s dad, Bill, made us a Cribbage board back in maybe 1974 or 1975. Yes. We’ve known each other for close to 45 years now.
Bill drilled out 186 neatly-spaced 11/64″ holes. This is the diameter of Lite-Brite™ pegs.
As you can see from the picture, we dropped the board and snapped off four of the pegs.
We didn’t try to buy four pegs. They’re usually sold in bags of a few hundred. We don’t know any kids who need (or would share) Lite-Brite™ pegs.
It turns out 11/64″ is just about 4mm. The holes are about 15mm deep. That means 4M fasteners will fit nicely into these holes.
We found a few things in the various parts and tool boxes.
Here’s one variation using two cotter pins and two thumb screws with oversized heads.
(Yes, the board has three tracks even though Cribbage is usually a two-player game. It’s easier to include a third player with this board.)
A common suggestion for hand-made boards seems to be to use rivets. It felt excessive to buy a package of 25 rivets because I need only 6 for a game board.
We’ll try M4 machine screws to compare with cotter pins and thumb screws.
We don’t keep a detailed record of the overall wins and losses. We’re mostly interested in games where a player is left in the lurch. We’ve had a number of skunk games and — so far — one double-skunk, which involves an epic run of bad hands.
We have a spare board, also. It’s a boat. Spares and repairs are our lives.
