Building a giant scrabble game

So my son and his girlfriend are huge scrabble fans. So I thought I would make a large scrabble game for them. I saw this huge scrabble board in an airline catelog but they wanted $12,000 for it (it was about 10' tall). I thought, I could probably make something that works pretty easily.

Here's the main board. The scrabble board is a 15x15 grid. The board is a sheet of 1/2" plywood (4' x 4'). I made a 1 1/2" boarder around the outside edge. That gives me 45" which divides up to 15 3" squares. I drilled a hole at the center of each square since the board will be designed to stand vertically. The tiles have a dowel in the back that will fit into the holes allowing them to stay put. I cut out a groove where the box lines are with a Dremel 4000 Pro rotary tool (with the Dremel router base). I used a long metal straight-edge and clamped it to the plywood. Then I ran the dremel router along the line. It went pretty quick.


There are one hundred tiles on the scrabble board. I bought a 2"x6"x10' (actual size 1.5"x5.5"x10') redwood board. I used the table saw to cut the board down. I cut it in half (2 5' lengths). Then I rip-cut the board in half lengthwise so now I had four 1.5" x 2.75" x 5' boards. Then I set them on their edge and ripped them down further so that they were .75"x2.75"x5'. I then used the chop saw to cut them into 2.75" x 2.75" squares. Using the router, I trimmed the edge top and bottom. I left a raised square on the top where the letter will go.

side shot:


Top view:


Then I took each tile and drilled a 1/4" hole at the center and mounted a dowel. I cut the dowels in half so I only had to use 50 vs 100.


I bought some peel-n-stick letters and placed them on the top. I was going to paint them on but couldn't find a stensil at the Home Depot.


Next I built 4 letter holders (holds the player's letters). They are about 21" long with a hole drilled every 3" (first hole at 1.5").


Here's the holder with a full letter set and a rule for scale:


I sanded all the tiles so there were no rough edges.
Here's the board with all the tiles on it. I need to pick up another pack of letters for the A & E blocks.


Next on the agenda is to paint the board. I'm going to spray paint the letter/word bonus boxes their corresponding colors and the grooves in the board black. Then I'll add bonus lettering. I may try to spray paint this through a template. I was thinking of making the template out of photo paper, since it's fairly stiff, and print it out, then cut with an exacto knife.

I am going to take some of the left over letters and lay them out so it says SCRABBLE on all sides of the board like you would see on the actual scrabble board.

Then I'll trim out the edge of the plywood to hide the endgrain.
Then I'm going to sand all the edges on everything and coat all the letters, letter holders and the board with shellac to give it shine.

 

This thing is awesome. Subbed!

 

looks good so far and I cant stand the game...lol....

 

dont forget the letter values!

 

I did them with a permanent marker.

 

That is freakin awesome, Scrabble on steroids!

 

Here's the board with colors and lettering. I tried to create a stensil with photopaper but it wouldn't lay flat enough and caused the letters to be blurry. So I just bought some peel-n-stick letters (1/2" size). Doing the letters on the board has taken the longest so far. I left out the word "Score" which is typical on the scrabble board. I didn't feel it added anything and I would have had to purchase more letters. As it was, I bought about 8 packs. Also, when I sprayed the lines, the plywood soaked up some of the paint to the sides of the squares. So I added some thin artist tape to each square to clean up the edges. I still have to add a black star to the middle square.


I added some trim around the outside of the board to hide the ends of the plywood. Next step is to sand the edges and then coat the entire board with a clear coating, either polyurethane or varnish.

 

Thats pretty cool! Props to you good sir!

 

Great job. I am impressed!

Make sure when you add the varnish or poly that you test it in a small area first, to make sure it does not make any of your black lines or colored squares run, and that it is compatible with painting over the stick-on letters. (ask me how I know )

 

Now all you need is a HUGE crown royal bag to put the letters in....HAHAHAHA

 

I'm actually curious if it would affect the letters. I was thinking polyurethane might be better.

 

Hahaha! I knew it was missing something.

 

Looks great, very good idea. I see two very valuable tools in your garage, Newcastle Brown Ale and Jawhorse.

 

awesome work!

 

Love them both!!!