Christmas 2019. Bev’s family does an amazon wish list grab bag thing, where all of our names are randomized and distributed. I pulled Bev’s sister Caroline’s husband Daniel. I saw a dartboard cabinet on his wish list and knew right away it was something I could make and go over the top with haha!
So, I gathered what wood I had, scraps of Oregon Ash, English Walnut, some maple, and drew up a few sketches. This was the most complicated glue-up I had attempted at the time, so it felt a bit daunting. It took me a week or two but I got those doors together. Looking back on it now, it is funny to see the misalignments and the gaps, but then again I had used only free, used or garbage-picked power tools.
We visited Atlanta during the time and I brought the cabinet doors in my checked bag. I showed Gary and he was happy to let me finish the project in his cabinet shop, and was kind to supply me with two beautiful lengths of two different color mahogany, excess material from an old build. I spent a day in the shop, all those incredible, precise industrial-scale woodworking tools and built the frame in a breeze of joy. I hid LED strip lights within the cabinet to keep the actual board well lit during games. Used black chalkboard paint and a successful first attempt at pin-striping with white lacquer touch up paint to make the chalkboard, and of course some 12Ga shells for the cabinet pulls and that puppy was finished!
This project taught me a lot, and I was glad to see Daniel’s face light up when he opened it up.