I have been asked by a Cousin, if I could make him some Othello playing pieces.
In essence these are very simple round disks, dark one side light the other, and they number 64 in total.
He has asked for circa 50mm diameter and 6mm thick.
The simplest would be to turn a parallel 50mm spindle, and slice off 6mm slices, then stain one side.
Obviously that would not be very attractive, so I was considering a slight dishing on each side, and some decorative circular grooves, this would help them lay flat and be more decorative.
However, if I do it as above, a disk of 50mm dia, an 6mm think in end grain, would be weak and liable to crack.
So then I thought it must be made from cross grain, which makes the blank/s much more difficult, but the resultant 50mm x 6mm thick cross grain disk would be liable to warp and still be relatively weak and liable to crack.
The ideal would be two cross grain 3mm disks and laminate them with the grain perpendicular to each other, that would give the strength and stability, and using two different woods would give the 2 colours required naturally, however, this would be twice as much turning work, plus the extra laminating work, bearing in mind I need to make 64 pieces thats quite considerable, and knowing my own limitations I suspect that there would be enough difference in sizes and errors in the lamination to spoil the effect of the finished article.
Does anyone have any suggestions, of how to go about this?
Only alternative I can think of is to use ply wood and cut out circles with a hole cutter, then sand up the edges.....but then they are not turned pieces.
