How I Made the Great Game of Qwirkle Even Better!
Introduction: How I Made the Great Game of Qwirkle Even Better!
I'll start off by saying that Qwirkle is a brilliant game, very simple rules but requires concentration to score well and win. If you enjoy a fun game that requires some thinking, this is for you 👍
Supplies
1 x Qwirkle game
1 x Router, ideally mounted in a table
Appropriate sized router bit or bits in my case (more info to follow)
Wood glue, I used Gorilla
5 Minute epoxy glue, again I used Gorilla
Ohhh, don't forget the 432 magnets, I bought mine from www.first4magnets.com
Step 1: The Problem & the Brainwave.
The problem (as I saw it) is that the pieces when laid don't always line up correctly, they can get knocked out of alignment very easily and when you're trying to slot a piece into a gap somewhere all sorts of non-alignment carnage can ensue.
Now I do realize that I can be more than a little picky at times but this does bother me.
But I had a brainwave, 'I know, I'll just add magnets'...
I did a little working out (sketch) just to check that no matter the order of placement a North Pole would always line up with a South Pole. I'm pleased to say my thinking was correct.
Step 2: Magnet Choice
One of my concerns about adding the magnets was that as you move a piece into place the other pieces would move to meet the new piece.
With this in mind I went for one of the smallest magnets I could find that would still have enough strength to hold the played pieces in place.
The Qwirkle pieces are 12 mm (0.47 inch) wide, so I went for a 4 mm (0.16 inch) round magnet as this would give plenty of space either side of the routed hole. On the website I was searching there were three different thicknesses, I went for the 1 mm (0.039 inch), there are then two different strengths, N42 or N35 I went for the slightly lower strength N35 version.
This is the exact magnet I went for 4 mm diameter x 1 mm thick N35 Neodymium Magnet, with 0.16 kg Pull
As this was a complete guess I'm very pleased to say that this strength was perfect.
Step 3: Making the Router Jig
For repeatability but more importantly safety I decided to make a quick jig for routing out the holes.
In my router table I have a T track which I used to secure a piece of 5 mm (0.2 inch) plywood over the router, to make the hole in the plywood I raised the router up through the ply while turned on. This makes sure the bit is perfectly centred.
Next was to mark up and attached the guides for the locator, this was done by measuring the pieces width and depth and marking that out on the ply.
I used some pieces of thinker ply offcuts as the surrounds, these were stuck down using Gorilla wood glue.
Step 4: This Is Where the Madness Starts...
With 108 individual Qwirkle pieces there are 432 sides that need routing.
This is where I made my first mistake, I originally tried using an 8 mm (0.31 inch) router bit but this was way too big and allowed for too much inaccuracy in the magnet placement. 622
Thankfully I checked this before routing out too many pieces only doing 7.
I changed the router bit out for a 6 mm (0.24 inch) one, this was much better for magnet placement accuracy but had a different issue. The cutter has a blade on each side but these don't meet in the middle, leaving a small nubbin in the centre of the hole. This meant that after routing out 432 sides I had to change out for a 3.2 mm (0.13 inch) bit and re-route all 432 side again.
The trick here was to make sure that the face of the piece was always facing towards myself, this ensured the hole was always in exactly the same place. After all, the most important part about this whole thing was making the pieces line up when played.
Step 5: Madness Part 2... Glueing
With all 864 routing passes done it was now time for the glue up.
This took more than a bit of practice but check out the video for the final process.
Firstly I aligned all the magnets so they were all north to south, this meant I was able to take one off the bottom of the stack and know it was correctly orientated.
Next mix up a blob of two part epoxy.
The procedure was then as follows...
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