Mahjong set, made out of wood
About
This was my magnum opus for a while: a wooden mahjong set made from scratch out of maple and padauk. The wood was milled to size and glued to make a classic dual tone sandwich. Then the designs, prepped in Adobe Illustrator, were engraved with table saw clearance between all tiles, sanded to minimize scorching, masked and painted in multiple coats, and finally cut out to form all 152 + spare tiles. Next came the hours on hours of hand sanding and rounding out all the edges. In hindsight, a router to filet the corners would’ve been more efficient but at the time I thought it might be too dangerous for such small blocks. Finally the tiles got a few layers of matte clear coat for protection against the elements while maintaining the natural wood touch.
The box was designed so that the cloud print wrapped around continuously and perfectly aligned. The joints are slotted miters, and made out of padauk and maple to complement the tiles.
Video showcasing the full set, linked here.
Skills
Woodworking jig design, Planning around alignment and tolerances, Rote mindless manual labor