Summer Project #1
Not entirely satisfied with the quality or the price (rather expensive) of the Latin Scrabble sets that can be purchased from the guy that made the ones the Centre uses, I have decided that a good Summer project for me is attempting to make my own. Also, I seek to rectify our lack of Anglo-Saxon scrabble tiles, as apparently we have a distribution, but no appropriate tiles. I went down with Mike to Southern Lumber in Redwood City to get some birch for the tiles, but then I ran across this bin of hardwood ends (the parts left over from cut boards) from all kinds of crazy woods (probably not the most rainforest friendly woods to be using, but I am only using the ends...perhaps that is just rationalizing my crime...), so I ended up getting no birch, but, instead, a host of interesting and exciting hardwoods in various colours to make sets out of. It is still hard to believe that the Purple Heart and the Paduak are not dyed, so striking are their colours. We need to chop them up into little tiles next, and then I shall start working on my Carolingian Miniscule, Insular, and other scripts, just to go the extra little way to make these nice medieval-latinist sets. I need to pick up a pyrography kit, as I will be burning every letter freehand, in order to make the historical script characters. Should keep me busy, as I have enough wood for perhaps ten sets, at one hundred tiles each... They should be pretty, though!
