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As a new member of the American Cribbage Congress I became enamored with the "tournament" style cribbage boards that I found the local club using. I have owned a fine walnut 3 track round trip cribbage board since I was a kid, however, these boards caught my attention. The boards are simplistic in design, 60 holes out and 60 in with the winner holes for pegging out. Besides being less confusing to play on, the beauty of the board is that they don't ruin or hide the figure of the wood. When the club president mentioned that they needed to buy more boards I remembered my Dad making cribbage boards from many different materials when I was a kid. I said "don't buy anything yet, I think I can save the club some money by making the boards myself." So was born SCM Tourney Boards.
With my Dad's help, I made the first batch of boards for the club (and still make some now) from the maple that I could buy at a local hardware "superstore". Today I make the boards from a variety of woods, all hand picked for their figure, grain patterns, and beauty. I generally try to select wood that might not be used by other more experienced woodworkers due to the dimensions of the piece.
The tournament boards range in length from 18 to 21-inches but most are 20-inches long. They are generally a true 3-inches wide and 3/4-inch thick. The grassroots special board is a maple board made from a lumber mill 1x3 cut 18-inches long. I hand fit a slide to cover the peg storage recess in the bottom of the board. I also make the better known twice around boards, with 30 holes out and back, from pieces of wood that are too short to be a full length tournament board these boards are usually around 12 to 15 inches long. I am currently making both tournament and twice around folding boards, and a few once around 3-track boards. The 3-track boards are not tournament boards but I could not pass by the beautiful piece of maple that I am making them from.
