A little side project for some friends, AKA cornhole!

   A while back, a couple friends of mine brought up the idea of making some beanbag toss games for a good time at parties and whatnot.  I assumed it would be a super easy project, so I offered to help them make the boards.  I soon found out that the name of the game is cornhole and I soon found some cornhole board plans up to official cornhole specs here: http://www.cornhole.com/freeguideredirect.htm

   I started with a 4'x4' piece of 3/4" plywood and ripped it in half to 2'x4' pieces.  The holes are specified to be centered 9" from the top edge and 6" in diameter.  I thought I could just chuck the fly cutter into the drill press and slowly but easily cut my holes.  It turns out the drill press only has about a 7 or 8 inch throat depth, so that idea is out and I decided that instead of investing at least about $50 on a decent hole saw, I would go the more hazardous route and chuck the fly cutter in a hand drill.  

   This was not the greatest idea, but after a couple drill battery chargings and completely dulling the cutter, I had some pretty decent 6" holes.  A little sandpaper smoothing and the holes were pretty much perfect.  It took a couple hours, but these were exactly the holes I was end up with:

   With the holes done, the next step was to run some 2x4s through the jointer for the edges of the boards.  I was going to pockethole the 2x4s, but couldn't find my jig, so I just cut the 2x4s to length and glued them to the boards.

   Next, I took a roundover bit to the assemblies to smooth out the edges as well as round over the edges of the holes.

    The last step was to cut out some legs.  I cut the angle and pivot point of one leg and used it as a template to route the other 3 legs exactly the same shape and size.  Then, the legs were attached with 3/8" carriage bolts and some wingnuts.  I had a little hardware fiasco when I decided to use the recommended locknuts instead of wingnuts.  The locknuts were impossible to remove from the carriage bolts once they were on, so I had to break out the dremel to cut one of the nuts off the bolt.

   I'm letting them handle the finishing, but here are a few photos of the completed regulation cornhole boards:

 

 

   My friend Nate even bought some bag-o-lanterns to light up the board holes for night playing, but we haven't installed those yet.