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[petit-chou.livejournal.com]

Some of you may recall that in my last post I said I'd be making Scrabble tiles. Well, they're done.


Tiles on the carpet (those were the first letters I could grab, I swear)

I made Scrabble tiles. Zach is a Scrabble freak and we have a gihugic Scrabble rug in our bedroom. It's just like a regulation board, only giant. Sadly, it didn't come with tiles. We've lamented this over and over...so I decided to make them. I got some pressed wood planks at Dunn Lumber the other day upon the recommendation of the cool guys who worked there. I got five pieces, 8 feet long by 3.5 inches wide. They were rounded on the edges, and the faces were painted with white primer.

At Kate's, I marked the lengths and she hacked them into 3.5 inch squares with her circular saw. We rocked out to Arabian dancey music. It was good. There are 100 tiles in a Scrabble game, so we cut 120 to be safe. Then, she went inside while I sanded. I popped in They Might Be Giants' Mink Car and Greenday's Dookie and set to work. Belt sanders are great and afford me the ability to shimmie while I work. It was classic -- my breath was coming out in little puffs (it was COLD out there), dust was flying everywhere, and my ass was shaking all over the damned place.

After sanding the sawed edges of all the tiles, I came in for a moment. Kate snapped a few pictures of me in all of my sawdustyness. Rad rad rad.


The dust was literally in little piles on my glasses stems and my sweater was a JOKE

Back out in the shop, I tested out the two options for doing the letters. Kate had a dremel, which was our original plan, but the depth on a dremel is variable (it's like a spinning pencil, so it cuts as deeply as you press) and didn't look so hot. She'd rigged up her drill press so I could move the tile around underneath the drill at its set depth. At first, it was too deep and my attempts were PITIFUL. My H looked more like a K. However, once we made a more shallow dig, it worked like a dream.


This is the whole setup. I am SO MANY KINDS OF ENVIOUS of her drill press

Then, for a few hours, I made letters. Lots of them. Freaking giant quantities of some of them. I discovered that G's were the worst to do and all of mine are a little wobbly. Also, the tiny numbers in the corners weren't too much trouble, except for the 4's. 4's are a bitch because of the sharp angles. Once when doing an M (which has a point value of 3), I moved the drill bit too close to the rounded edge of the tile and it skipped away from my control, ending up drilling my thumb. I nearly flipped out, until I noticed that my MIGHTY THUMB CALLUSES (for someone with soft hands, I have great calluses) had saved the day. No damage. Sweet! When doing big batches of certain letters (like E's or O's or R's), I felt like such a little factory worker and it was pretty fun. Laverne and Shirley got NOTHIN on me.


Some of the tiles on the workbench -- see the damned 4's?

Kate brought me tea partway through, which was super great (even though it was VERY HOT). I had to work without a mask because I needed to blow on the tiles every so often to see where I was drilling. So, unfortunately, I inhaled huge amounts of sawdust. It hung in the air like fog.


I had to pinch each tile really tightly in my left hand and push it around while holding the drill down with my right. My hands were hot pink and sore at the end of my night

Once I finished, I cleaned up the show, came back in, used their (glorious) shower, and had some tasty Pho. Five and a half hours in a shop is a lot. Then, it was off to the Haiku D'Etat. Man, I could hardly contain my pride and it is SO HARD not to tell Zach about it. That night, I took some pics of the tiles on the carpet. They look gorgeous and fit like a dream. See? I am so incredo-pleased and SO thankful for Kate's help.


Scrabble, anyone?

So, that was Sekret Project Number Two (I think -- there are so many secret projects at this time of year). I'm really happy. I've got to go get cooking now.