These hinges would be so cool!
But precision is key…
1 Like
I don’t think so. Isn’t your wood too tender for these?
1 Like
I don’t know. My wood is quite tender, yes.
Metal vs wood you know what to expect in some months and anticipate. magnet is interesting way, wood vs wood too (woodwork)
The metal link of my own japanese folding board went wrong, was nailed on the back, i replaced it with a glued tissue advantage:easy to replace if i need later and perfect alignement. but that can’t be applied to a 4 pieces board.
You can only do 2x2 and then another way to link the 2 parts of it.
2 Likes
Do you have some spare scrap wood? I would recommend practicing with a variety of potential joining options before committing on the main project.
4 Likes
I will. 
1 Like
Haha valid - what I mean is a small indent on one piece, and a small protrusion on the other that fits into the indent. This would definitely be more difficult to do if you’re already worried about your ability to precisely drill, though.
1 Like
How thick is your board? How bigger as a goban?
This could be done with dowels glued only on one side.
I looked for tricks online to have a guide for holes and maybe I could make a very simple gig to help with that.
20 mm.
Standard size.
Yesterday I took a closer look to my friend’s 4-pieces goban: it’s made of MDF with one couple of magnets for each side (each piece of mdf has only one magnet on each side, which sticks to another magnet on the other piece).
It holds together but isn’t very sturdy. It needs a flat table underneath, otherwise it moves a little and can’t stay flat.
In a nearby store I found these magnets.
10 mm diameter.
They’re quite expensive: 2€ each. They come with short steel bars to stick with.
They’re very strong, so 4 should be enough.
If I manage to build my gig, I could use both magnets and pegs: firsts for holding it together, seconds to align properly, just like @polar-bear said.
5 Likes
I think you have already been given some good ideas for the magnets and pegs to hold the board together.
Have you ever heard of a hand planer? I think that would work well for you as they are usually fairly inexpensive. Here is an example of what I am taking about and watch the video in the product description to get an idea of how it works.
2 Likes
Hand planes are amazing tools, but they must be sharpened and tuned accurately to give good results.
I spent hours watching videos about Japanese woodworking and the magic of their tools.
I don’t have a plane nor sharpening stones nor experience on how to sharpen.
I tried sharpening a chisel once with very basic tools and the results were terrible! 
I probably will use that chisel in this project though.
3 Likes
All in all if you go for some woodwork, are you completly against asking for a professional? For him it should be a small task, maybe not that expensive (Well at least get better suggestions as mine)
Asking a professional is an option, but now I have my cheap piece of wood and my project.
Let’s see how it goes.
Yesterday I bought my magnets. Now I should start cutting and see if I can make 4 tiles that match each other.
If my project is successful I’ll have my portable goban and something to be proud.
If I fail, I’ll have something to show to a professional woodworker to explain my ideas.
6 Likes
I eagerly look forward to watching the process of your project, @Lys! It is certainly very unique and interesting.
In the meantime, the awakening of this thread has inspired me to work on a couple of new projects in the not-to-distant future:
1). I talked about the sharpie incident with my homemade goban quite some time back in this thread and would like to give that a try finally. For those who missed, I turned out unsatisfied with the darkness of the laser-etched lines produced in the project and eventually found myself using a sharpie to bolden the lines. It actually worked out amazingly but unfortunately, I made the poor move of having my brother help without giving him sometime to practice and clear enough directions. Thus, some excessive sharpie did not line up properly. It is directly on the polyurethane finish, so I will first try to remove the sharpie with some kind of agent. If that does not work, which it likely won’t, then I guess I will have no choice but to sand down into the finish to remove the sharpie, and refinish the board.
2.) I have recently gotten into lapidary and been working actively on different projects at my local rock club. My dad and I have huge amounts of common opal and fuchsite that are looking for some use. It will be a huge project, but I am looking to hand cut and polish these into my own homemade go stones. The common opal will be for white stones, while the fuchsite will be used for the black stones (the variety we have is a much darker green then the typical emerald green). I think we can expect this to begin at least a few weeks from now, as I need to do some prep work.
I look forward to working on something new myself and don’t hesitate to give any advice or ask specific questions about certain details!
4 Likes
Omg! Sounds amazing… and an amazing amount of work too! 
I can’t wait to see some of these stones.
2 Likes
If you could share a few pics…
Sounds all great!
1 Like
Thanks for the support guys! Yes, the stones in particular will take a lot of work, especially considering that I can only work on it for a couple of hours on Wednesday once a week. (I don’t have the personal equipment for it). I imagine that it will take more than a year to complete in entirety.
I will show some pictures of the board later, and I will also take some photos of the fuchsite and opal to show what I am talking about. Currently I am working on making bookends with the fuchsite and it is about 50% of the way there so I will share a picture later of that too.
5 Likes
My work bench, my saw, my piece of wood
I’m quite happy with my cuts.
I also managed to do the work without injuring myself, which is very good! 
I made this jig to guide dowel holes.
Let’s see how it goes…
9 Likes
Hum.Wait, isn’t that a 12x12 ?
Joke aside, this board is great, right size, clear lines, esthetic legs and judicious choice of color.
Are you going to a 19x19 now?
Happy gaming on it!
2 Likes