I made this board in 2011 and there seems to be quite a lot of interest in general in homemade boards with the resurgence of BB, so I thought it would be worth revisiting.

I was initially inspired by various boards in the Stadia of the Old World thread, particularly Virral’s board and Rev’s guide on CMON.  I don’t really have any woodworking skills, but luckily B&Q will cut wood for you for free!

Another part of the reason for making the board is to have a larger Elfball board, as a few of my minis are on 30mm and the occasional one on 40mm, so I made a board with 35mm hexes, which happens to have about the same diameter as the length of a BB pitch.

The finished version, complete with Elfball logo:

Then the other side of the board, which contains a B.B. pitch. The bits of polystyrene were packaging from an IKEA wardrobe, and I used a soldering iron and metre long metal ruler to make the grooves. The central section lifts out and tucks at the end so that the case folds up.  The dugout boxes shown open up to double as carry cases:

I first painted the entire thing black.

Then I painted in the white lines, and started putting the flock on by painting glue on to the squares, then shaking off the excess. The stairs on the side also hold the central section in place.

And the board ended up looking a bit like this:

Since making the original version, I’ve also added a couple of score tracks, table football style:

And a few adverts round the outside:

I was quite pleased with it, given my lack of experience making stuff in general.  Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that it’s showing its age a bit, with some of the flock coming off, and there is also a dent in one side matching my son’s elbow!  The board (in its folded up state, as shown below) has travelled the length of the country from Bognor to Manchester, and is a joy to play on (in my humble opinion) as you can rest your arms on the outside and lean in quite a satisfying way.  The dice do bounce quite a lot though, so it’s a table for dice-cup users!