Dutch Shuffleboard

What is Dutch Shuffleboard? I had no idea either until a night of drinking with some friends and reminiscing about childhood games brought forth a game from his youth. A small down payment later to ensure he was serious about wanting to play again and I was off to the internet to figure out how to build one. It's not an extremely popular game in North America and I had some trouble finding plans. I did manage to find good dimensions however and after a bit of thought figured out how to make some of the key parts of the game.

The first challenge was the disks. They needed to be from a wood that would take a beating and ideally the would be end grain vertical. This meant I had to find wood that was wide enough for the 54mm disks. (I should mention that since it's Dutch, all the dimensions ended up being in mm.) I only needed a small chunk of maple for the disks and the most cost effective way of getting it was to take a natural edge shelf I found at the wood working store and cut it into slabs of the right thickness. I set up a jig for the drill press to hold the slabs and quickly had 30+ disks ready for the next step.

Since this is a form of shuffleboard you want to minimize friction. This meant that the disks needed to be concave so they had a minimum amount of surface area touching the playing surface. I'm sure the professional use some sort of router bit. My plan was to use the table saw to dish out the middle of each side of the disk. I was a bit nervous with the first disk as I figured there was a high likelihood that the disk would go flying across the shop. I tried to clamp the first one but found that if I put the disk into the hole on an angle and then dipped it down slowly and twisted I got the dishing with no surprises.

The table saw did a great job creating the dishing effect however it left a fairly rough surface. Maple end grain is not easy to sand and after some failed attempts at using a palm sander I turned (no pun intended) to the lathe. I have a four jaw chuck and I put a rubber band around the disk to protect it. I then used a drill with a sanding attachment with a foam backing to do the sanding. About 30 seconds per side and all tool marks had disappeared. I finished things off at the router table putting a chamfer on the edges. A lot of steps for a lot of disks.

The design portion I could not wrap my head around was trying to make a sturdy playing surface without being too heavy. I considered a 3/4 inch bottom but it seemed too heavy. In the end I went with a 1/4 inch bottom with cross braces every foot or so. They are rabbited into the sides and screwed in. I considered gluing everything but by the time you have screws in all the pieces running in different directions the end result seems very stable. I'll check in after 10 years or so and see how things are holding up.

I also considered getting fancy with the joinery and dovetailing in the cross pieces. The issue was that I had never seen a dutch shuffleboard and didn't want to get too far down a particular path without being able to reset. This mean the joinery is relatively simple dadoes and screws though as mentioned, screws from the side and bottom into maple make for a very strong joint. The only 'fancy' woodworking was the point system marks on the gates. Walnut dowels into maple holes sanded smooth.

The final result turned out well enough for my first (and likely last) attempt at a dutch shuffleboard. I don't often do a project twice. If I were to do it again I think I would commit to dovetailing or box joints on the sides and maybe turn the back portion into a compartment with a cover to store the disks. The nice thing about screwing everything together is that you can technically remove the playing surface and refinish it. I put on 6 coats of wipe on poly followed by a carnauba based wax. I also have some shuffleboard salt however the wax seems pretty good for a drinking game. Maybe one day I'll got to the Netherlands and check out a tournament.