Tabletop shuffleboard

One day in my shop last year I ran across this design for a tabletop shuffleboard in a woodworking magazine. Although nice, I thought I could do better…
I went to my lumber pile, and found a plank of Jatoba, long unused, thought I would use it for a guitar, but no. I cut it into 1.5” thick strips, and glued them all up bowling alley style. The actual shuffleboard area is 48” long, 7 3/4” wide.
After gluing up, I planed and sanded it to 600 grit. With that smooth finish, I applied two coats of Carnuba wax over two days, gaining a super smooth finish that has no lacquer, poly, nothing on it save for the wax. The pucks slide like glass, often going off the back edge.

The tray is walnut, and the legs on the bottom of the tray were found at Lowes, for little money. You need adjustable legs to get it super level. The “pucks” miniature, were found on Amazon. I must admit, the blue pucks are not quite as fast as the orange pucks, something I have not figured out yet, even after numerous measurements and other investigations.

The original plans would have me buy two “pegs” for scoring, I decided to lathe out two, one purpleheart, one redheart. I had the option of putting in either a 15 hole scoring system, or a 21 hole scoring system, I opted for the 21.

The inlays in the Jatoba are White Oak. The original plans had just straight lines going across the board, I decided on radiused lines, made a jig so they would be all the same, and routed out 1/4” thick line that the white oak sits in.
This is because I wanted to create a “risk/reward” system…If you want to slide your puck up the very side of the board, you can enter the scoring area quicker than if you take the safe route, down the middle.

After building it, my wife and I have had mixed reactions to whether we want to sell it or not. So far, it sits on our dining room table, and often as we pass through, we push a few pucks to see how we do!

As always, Copy it if you Want!

-- Tsunami Guitars and Custom Woodworking, Cleveland, TN