$60 Cornhole Boards

I built a set of cornhole boards, for my sister's family, out of an old pool table we picked at a old lady's house in the middle Florida.  The table was so badly beat up the only parts that were still usable were the slate, the rails and the bottom hardwood supports.  So I reclaimed the support wood and made my Sister and Brother-in-Law a nice set of antiqued corn hole boards.

Since then my wife has been wanting our own set so we can take them out when we have company over.  So I threw together another set in about 10 hours (see below).  Since, our boards came out so nice I thought I would build another and make a Instructable on how to do it.

I hope you like this instructable and feel free to give me some feedback.

Step 1: Materials:

Lumber:
(2) 1/2" 2'x4' pre-cut boards
(4) 1"x4"x8' pine boards

Hardware:
(1 box)  1-5/8 drywall screws
(4) 3/8" rounded head bolts
(8) 3/8" washers
(8) 3/8" Hex nuts

Tools:
Tape measure
Pencil
Miter Saw
Saber Saw
Drill (w/bits)

Comments

[Dlanca1]

Nice instructable! Very easy to follow.
I didn't want (drunk) people tripping on the legs and breaking them, so I reduced the angle opposite the ground and cut the legs shorter (12'' height from top of the board to the ground). I also attached an eye bolt to the front of both boards and strung a 27' rope between them, so no more confusion on how far apart to place them.
They were a hit last night!
(As for MSU and OSU.. pffffttt made these for some friends. I'm a LSU Tiger!)

[chwbcc]

Geaux Tigers! My wife is from Natchitoches but she's still a Tiger's fan, Me I'm more of a Nitty Lion myself. These look Great! Did you hand paint the logos with a stencil or are they decal?

AWESOME WORK!

[zachs]

I had a lot of fun making these, making a circle with a jigsaw was quite harder than I thought it would be so I just ended up making them both a bit irregular. The set was a housewarming gift for a buddy of mine so I personalized it appropriately.
http://www.instructables.com/files/deriv/FVW/AIQA/HFPTIGEC/FVWAIQAHFPTIGEC.THUMB.jpg

[chwbcc]

THEY ARE AWESOME!!! Nothing like throwing few corn bags at your friend's head while you play!

Do you give out extra points if you cover his face?

Great work!

[sensoh8su]

Great 'ible. I do have a question about the Walking dead board you are working on in the picture. Are you doing a toner transfer of the image or tracing it out and painting it or what? I'm looking at doing something similar and I am just curious.

[chwbcc]

I just printed out the image and taped it to the board then used a Matte Knife to trace the outlines onto the board. The knife cuts deep enough into the board that you can see it well enough to paint.

First I traced the outside edges then painted that entire area white.

Second after it all dried I place the template on the white area and cut out the rest of the black areas.

Third I painted in most of the black areas.

Fourth ( I screwed it all up) I went and added in Grey which covered my blacks and filled in a lot of my lines soooo...

Fifth I free painted the grey and then free painted the black using sponges and medium brushes.

For a while would dry each layer with a blow dryer and then place the template over it to check the general placement of the main details. but that got too time consuming and things were looking really cool so I just free painted the details. I figured I'm not going to be able to paint it exactly like the original so I decided that it would be a tribute to the original in my own style.

I hope that helps.

[derdman]

I am thinking you should do a semi-addition instructable for how you did panting/ transferring with LOTS-o-PICTURES for us visual folk? cant wait to try this out and make great gifts with these! these are AWESOME!
Checked out the pie in the sky as well.. Quality stuff! but too rich for my blood!

[chwbcc]

Challenge accepted! I still need to do the second Walking Dead board. I will work on it sometime over the next month or so. I have school starting for the kids and lots of work already on the workshop table. But I will definately put an instructable up for this next.

Stay Tuned,
Chwbcc

[Schooniedude]

How did you paint that? It looks great.

[chwbcc]

Thanks,

The stripes are just taped off before I started staing the boards.(the base coat is colored staining not paint) Then I taped off more stripes and painted them.

Next I went to a site called Sportslogos.net they have almost every professional sport logo you can think of.

I save the logo I wanted and printed it off at 22" wide, so it would fit on the board which is 22" wide.

Next trim out the logo and tape it to the board.

Now trace all the edges using a matte knife.

This will transfer a nice scored line to the board. Remove the stencil and paint between the lines.

Don't worry about cutting it out perfectly, you can always fix the lines when you start painting.

[Mike_N]

Just curious....did you stain the whole board? Or just that one stripe? And other than for the logos, did you use spray paint?

They look great. I just made a set using a combination of your instructable and some other plans I found on the interweb but like the way yours are painted and want to do something similar.

[chwbcc]

I taped off the area I wanted to be wood then stained the entire board. You can use paint instead of stain but it will eventually chip and wear off. The stain holds up better to the constant pounding these take.

For the White Stripe I just taped off the area again and used paint and a sponge to dab the paint on. I didn't want brush marks, But you could use spray paint but make sure you tape off the entire board so you don't get splatter from the spray.

For the Logos I created a stencil, taped it down to the board and then traced it with a matte knife. The blade cuts the paper and leaves a mark on the wood that you use as a guide for hand painting the design. Then I took off the paper and started painting.

Spray painting the design might be difficult because of the details but I'm sure it could be done. I have some ideas on how to do it but haven't tried them yet.

[chwbcc]

Oh and the entier piece is covered with polyurethane to protect it so the wood areas gets a coats for protection.

[Mike_N]

Ok i see now. I am looking to use purple as one of my colors so not sure I could get a stain that color. Might just make sure I get a good layer of poly on there to protect the pain. Thanks again.

[chwbcc]

You can tint some wood stains to almost any color at lowes.

[chwbcc]

Just a little update:

I finished the Walking Dead Cornhole Board. Check it out in my facebook gallery:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150590088607599.396720.500452598&type=3&l=00926b8b5d

[DIYandSIMPLIFY.Blogspot]

it's def. called cornhole from cincinnati to south carolina. i'm surprised by all teh attention the name is getting. anyways - I went to sportslogos.net, but how did you print the logos at 22"?

Great job, by the way.

[chwbcc]

I used PhotoShop to enlarge them and save them as a PDF the changed the settings on my printer settings to print them on multiple sheets of paper.

I know that not everyone has access to PS, but I think it can be done by opening it up in any photo viewer and scaling it up from there.

The image will be pixelate but that doesn't matter because you are going to cut it out anyway and then you can smooth out the lines.

Try http://pixlr.com if you don't have any other way to enlarge the image. I don't know if there is a way to covert the pixels to inches but there are plenty of websites that can do the coversion of pixels per-inch to help you out.

I am working on an instructable to explain this process too.

[DIYandSIMPLIFY.Blogspot]

I appreciate the response. I tried a few different methods ( I use GIMP instead of photoshop. it's freeware that is basically photoshop....but free), and found one a lot easier. If you have windows, you can open the image in Paint (yeah...i have honestly never used paint once. since like 4th grade.) Anyhow, you can open your image, then go:

PRINT ----> PAGE SETUP ----> in the bottom right you'll see FIT TO SIZE.

Then just type in 2X2 or 3X3, etc. It will print on that many pieces of paper. Really easy. REALLY fast.

[lukev2]

go saints!!!!!

[justin.jackson]

cornhole? seriously? someone should come up with a better name than that.....

[chwbcc]

I know, I don't name them, I just build them...

But as an adult it's a lot more fun to say, 'You wanna play Cornhole?" Then "Wanna play bean bag toss?"

Thanks for the comment. :P

[LtFransky]

Greatest Instructable Title Ever!!

[chwbcc]

:P

[maxhirez]

Well, that explains the Eagles but not the Nawleans part! Of course, I live in Iowa-you'd think if any place was going to fill the bags with corn it would be us!

[chwbcc]

Unfortunately I live in a Divided House... It's sad I know... My wife is a Saints fan. But tt's ok she feeds me Gumbo and Crawfish so I let it slide. :p

[maxhirez]

That's some nice looking finish on those! I have to be honest, I didn't know what I was going to see when I saw the phrase "Cornhole Boards." We called this game "Beanbag Toss" when I was growing up.

[chwbcc]

Me too! I'm from PA and we used to play bean bag toss as kids all the time.

But when I went to college, here in Florida, they started calling it Cornhole because the bags are filled with corn. (not beans). Silly Florida Country Folk! :lol

Thanks for taking the time to comment,

Jerry