I made some proof-of-concept stones from play-doh (I didn’t have clay on hand). I just made balls of roughly the appropriate size and squished them into shape with a mold cut from a ping pong ball. Making a stone is very fast and the results are decent in my opinion. It’s hard to tell if it works that well with clay, which might stick more to the mold.
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Great work! I’ll try a with a ping pong ball and let you know. Also I am asking a relative who knows how to work with ceramic to understand how hard it would be to use that.
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Wow, genius! And your stones look great!
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Let’s ask playdoh for a kit with the molders included (some little manual machine). With different shapes and thickness.
and so promote go through kindergarten !
(I will buy one for myself anyway)
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Great idea! Who writes? I’m going to write to Fila, the company selling the “DAS” clay. They do provide metal molds, but not of the right shape.
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I just devised another super fast method to mold nice stones! Cut two stripes of light cardboard (2cmx10cm) roll the clay between them:
With this procedure I expect a total work time of 12h per 361 stones.
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I made some stones from salt-dough using the ping pong mold. Their shape turned out less nice than the ones from play-doh, but they are durable, cheap and playable. One cup of flour and half a cup of salt yields about a hundred stones which can be made in an evening.
The black stones are painted with watercolors, the white stones are unpainted.
Edit: They turn out much nicer when you occasionally flip them over while drying and baking
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I’ve tried again with air-drying clay and it’s pretty awesome. Results first:
Some turned better than others, because I had to figure out some tricks along the way. The main issues were to prevent cracking of the clay while squishing them into the mold, and getting them out of the mold without deforming them. The solution to both is using enough water. It prevent the cracking, but makes them stick more to the mold. Luckily, wet clay is slippery and the stones have constant curvature, so you can slide them out of the mold instead of pulling them out. Another thing is to get the right amount of clay consistently. The best solution I’ve found was to roll the clay into a cylinder and cutting off equal lengths.
Although, I have to say, squishing them between your palms only yields marginally more bumpy results and is way easier and faster
(palm pressed on the left, ping pong mold on the right)
I’ve painted them with acrylic spray paint, which worked fine and is fast, although the stones lose their nice earthy clay feeling, so watercolors are a different option, depending on what you prefer/what is available. Here’s a comparison:
(front left is acrylic, right is water color/unpainted. Back left are commercial glass stones and back right are also watercolor)
I’ve also made some chunky single convex stones, which are also great
And if you want Go stones with cuneiform inscriptions for some reason, maybe another game, clay is definitely the way to go
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Great job! Yes, to get a consistent quantity I first squash the clay on the table with a tablet or even a large ruler, using a support to get a constant height, and the cut them off with a cylinder. I didn’t have time this week, but I am creating a simple tool to quickly get a nice curvature, made of paper and large toothpicks as a handle. I’ll post some photos when I’m done.
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Ah, I roll the clay between a board and the table, using two other boards as spacers. That way I get a cylinder with constant width and then cut off equal heights using a ruler and a knife. Same result I suppose.
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Here is my “Stone roller”! It helps creating the biconvex shape by rolling the stone in the “gutter” between the sticks.
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New week, new tool! This is a prototype of a circular stone roller: you put the stone inside and make it roll, thanks to the centrifugal effect, the stone gets a nice regular shape. It is useful for finishing the stone so before i put it in, I cut the clay, roll it on the table, pinch a bit the edges, to get close to the final shape. It is made of regular paper, two cone trunks taped together.
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Impressive design.
Especially because that’s absolutly not the way stones are made in Yunnan.
Holy ****, it looks serious now, not just bent paper and sticks! Looks cool, but have you thought about making two parts mold to use it as a coining/minting tool? It might be also a faster solution if you consider making 400 or more stones at once 
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To mint brings the problem of the oven.
If you have the oven, you can use a kind of spoon, enough to get those stones we buy. See video at beginning of the topic. No mold.
The point is, real stones are made by eroding them until they get to the right shape. With self-hardening clay, you have to shape the clay. Btw I can try to make a mold, but I first started with some molds and I was not satisfied by the fact that the clay sticked to the mold, and the shape got ruined when I pulled it out. But it can still be useful to get an approximate shape and the finish it with the roller.
Could associate a kind of bicycle mechanism for easier rolling?
Transparent food film might help to prevent sticking.
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