Grand Adventure

Work on the bean bag toss game finished today. Suprisingly to me, I squeezed this in during halts on the poker table. Per my usual, I underestimated the time it would take. I did have a good feel for project steps and it was well within my tool and skill level to complete. The materials used was one sheet of 5/8 plywood, and I was okay using the cheapest level here. I used a thinner plywood because of having to cart these things around.

The total cost of the project was about $60, including the bean bags and orange paint. This is about $75 less than what you’d pay online, making this project a money saver. Many of my wood working projects are actually more expensive than just buying something similar, but in every case the joy is in the doing, not buying.

Note: you don’t have to paint the platforms, and that would save you about $12. I painted my platforms orange and black (GO BEAVS!) and purchased bean bags in an orange and black set. The colors match nicely. The black paint was used on the racetrack for the poker table too, so the cost was absorbed.

One of the tricky pieces to this project was the angled cuts. If I was in LaPine I’d have my table saw with angle jig and the cuts would be very precise, and exactly the same as the previous cut. Here I had to draw a template and then redo each line for subsequent cuts. Since I was using my jig-saw (probably could have used a circular saw, but I’m not too good at plunge cuts) each angled side piece is slightly different from each other. It doesn’t show too badly after I painted them so I’m not worried. The set is definitely functional from that standpoint.

However…the bags don’t slide so well on the surface of the platforms. Ones you can purchase have laminate top options, making it a possibility to slide the bags into the hole. Mine might flip-flop into the hole. I hope to fix this later using some furniture polish. I asked a worker at Home Depot about a varathane covering to the paint, and he said it would make the paint turn white. Too risky to try to get a smooth/slippery top.

I originally planned to use my new Dremel tool to cut the holes. It has a hole-cut jig. Without sharing all the gory details, the Dremel just can’t get it done. (it’s always smart to do test cuts when trying a novel thing…in this case it saved me mucho time not having to redo things). The cost of a 6″ diameter hole saw would have been about $50…nearly doubling the project costs. So, I used my trusty jig saw to cut the holes. Not as crisp, but still functional and it kept the project inexpensive.

One thing I did that I haven’t seen on other bean bag toss sets is I installed handles on one side of each platform. They are *much* easier to move around this way. I’m happy about that, and how they turned out.