How to Make Fire

I've decided to make my own version of "Fire", the board game.



Well, it's not technically a board game.  It's more of a centerpiece, art game.  I enjoy art that actually does something, which is why I own one of these.  But because "Fire" seems so easy to build, I figured I would give it a shot instead of just buying it.  The other reason is that... um... I can't buy it because it's out of print.  Heh.

The first task is to obtain dimensions from somebody who already owns the game.  Check.  A friendly gamer over at BoardGameGeek.com came through for me by providing a series of accurate measurements.  I gave him 5 GeekGold in return for his efforts.  Not much, I know... but I don't have a lot to spare.

So now I've got the dimensions, where do I get the wood?  This turned out to be the hardest part of getting started.  Where does a person get fine hardwood?  If you want 2 square feet of 2-inch thick Cherry, where do you buy it?  See?  It's a tough question!  They don't just have that crap sitting on the shelf at Home Depot.  Well, in fact, they do have a lot of crap at Home Depot, but exactly none of it is high quality wood.  Home Depot did provide me with dowels to make the round pieces.

Because I'm going to accurately paint my version of "Fire", I don't actually need a piece of Cherry.  I'm just going to paint it black, so my main consideration is that the wood is solid, dense, and true.  Because it needs to be about 2 inches thick, you just can't get this at Home Depot.  They did have Red Oak that was 1.5 inches thick, but only 7 inches wide.  I need 11 inches wide.  Damn them.

Luckily, Google googled around the planet and found this site for me, The Woodworkers Source.  I ordered a couple slabs of wood from them in 3 different varieties: Ash, Maple, and African Mahogany.  That was a first for me... ordering wood on the Internet.  I figure that I will use the Ash and/or Maple for the black version (maybe 2 copies) and try my hand at making a cool stained version with custom colors using the Mahogany.  Or maybe I'll make an "Ice" version using whites and blues.  Or Maybe I could use Big Blue Saw to make a clear acrylic version for "Ice".  Neat.  Ideas rule.

I am currently waiting for the wood to arrive before beginning the project.  I don't want to cut my dowels until I see the true thickness of the board wood.