Horse Racing Game

3/4" material of your choice cut to 9.25" x 19.5". We used oak. You'll also need two dice, a deck of cards, poker chips, and 11 markers to use as horses.

Shaper Origin with 1/8", 1/16", and 3/64" bits.

I found this game online and created the SVG to make it as a gift. We cut the board to size, eased the edges with a 1/8" roundover bit, sealed and stained, and applied Oramask. Then the board was placed sideways into a simple jig for the Origin. Set up a grid with 1/2" lines. Import the image, rotate it 90 degrees and place it at .5 and .5 on the grid. The lines were all cut with a 1/16" downcut bit at engraving depth (.02"). Make sure to cut on the lines, not inside or outside. Text was done with a 3/64" downcut bit, using small offsets (-.005 or -.01) until the bit would cut clear characters for all text of a given size. The peg holes are 0.2" and 0.4" deep. They are cut with a 1/8" bit in helix mode. TIP: If you're going to finish the board with a poly or something else that might get into the peg holes, consider cutting the holes after applying your finish! Acrylic paints were used to paint the board, then the Oramask removed. Since I didn't think of my tip until later, I finished it with a light coat of mineral oil. We used shelf pegs to make our horses. I ordered some pewter horses to attach to the pegs, but as of this writing they have not arrived. We had to substitute paper horses to finish this as a gift for Christmas. Full instructions for gameplay can be found online, but here is a quick version: You can have as many players as you wish. 5-8 seems like a good number. Remove jokers, kings and aces from your card deck. Line up all the horses at the starting line. Deal all the remaining cards to your players. The first player rolls the dice. Total the dice and move the horse of that number to the first line in the scratched section. All players with cards of that number discard the card and pay 5 cents into the game pot. This repeats for the next three players, with the horses going one row further back in the scratched area and the payment increasing by 5 cents each roll (so 5, 10, 15 and 20). Once four horses are scratched, the race begins. Players take turns rolling the dice. If they roll the number of a scratched horse, they pay the amount (5, 10, 15 or 20 cents) based on what line the scratched horse is on. If the horse is not scratched, it is advanced one peg hole on the board. Play until a horse crosses the finish line. The pot is then split between the players who hold the card of the winning horse.