Could be terrible - brass and walnut dominos

I’ve got an idea around making a set of dominos. I know Rockler sells templates for cutting 1"x2" dominos along with the placement of the pips, but walnut alone would only weight about half what nicer domino sets weigh.

My idea is to sandwich a layer of brass (somewhere between 1/16" and 1/8") between two layers of walnut. That would bring them to the right approximate weight at a total thickness of 0.5 inches. And it might look really neat with a kind of racing stripe around the edge.

I can epoxy the layers together, but it feels like I have two options:

  1. cut the pieces individually and epoxy them at final (or slightly over) size. That allows me to use wood tools for wood and metal tools for metal, but the glue-up sounds like a nightmare.

  2. glue up the sheet and then cut out the individual dominos. This makes the glue-up potentially easier, but I’m not sure about what tools to use to cut the pieces. I know I can get a metal-cutting blade for a table saw, or a blade for a bandsaw, but I’m not sure what the implications are for cutting metal with wood tools or wood with metal tools (nor if this is a no-no regarding DMS tools).

Whichever method I choose, I need the dominos to look as identical as I can make them in order for them to be playable, so I have to be able to make precise repeatable cuts. Then I have to figure out how to do consistent shaping of edges and corners.

Anyone tried anything like this? Any advice?

Are you hard over about putting the brass between the layers? It seems to me you could use a denser wood … African blackwood, for instance, is 79.3 lbs/ft3 whereas walnut is only 38. By the time you buy the brass and epoxy, the blackwood might actually be less expensive.

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I’m still in the “How could I…?” phase rather than the “Should I…?” phase.

No, I’m not married to the brass/walnut combination - I just already have walnut and epoxy, and I thought it might look cool (and make a neat gift for some of my domino-playing family members).

That being said, with a heavier wood, I might be able to figure something with a router bit with a v-groove around the perimeter and do a wire inlay to get the same aesthetic (if I even want to do that… tiny pieces and all).

More elegant to me would be to do the Pip side in brass and the back side in Walnut. Take the Haas class and you’ll be on your way to making dominoes.

As an observer in such ventures, brass is soft and, much like aluminum, should work readily with the same tooling as wood. I say go for it!

Maybe a project for the shapeoko which can handle brass and wood. You’d want a good jig to use for the two sided workholding but that’s normal for that sort of thing.

OK, I have to admit the brass “racing stripe” would look nice.

I don’t think it’s a technically difficult project. You can use end mills to cut wood and/or brass. Biggest challenge is going to find a committee that will allow you to machine wood and metal on the same machine.

I agree that you should make the laminated brass/wood sheet first and then do the cut outs (your option 2). You’re never going to get it aligned any other way. You will need to heavily “score” both sides of the brass and the sides of the wood that will glue to the brass in order to get some “tooth” for gluing. Picture making a bunch of cross hatch cuts with an Xacto knife/file edge. Epoxy seems like a good choice. Your brass may get warm/hot during the machining and you don’t want a glue that will let loose when it gets hot (like CA glue). After gluing, send the wood/brass sandwich through the thickness sander to have a nice, smooth parallel “blank” of your desired thickness.

The pips need to be a diameter that matches a standard round router bit or ball nose end mill. I don’t know anything about domino pips, but I suspect they aren’t deep enough to qualify as a full hemisphere, so you have some latitude here. Similarly, you want the width of the “dividing line” to match a known bit … either a small end mill or a V-shaped bit.

IF the woodshop committee permits it, this would be a fairly simple job on the Multicam. Cut the pips/dividing line, then cut the profiles. I would use a two flute 1/4" end mill instead of a router bit to cut the profiles. Leave “tabs” on the bottom so your dominos don’t fly out of your work piece. The tabs should be thin enough that you’ve completely cut through the metal, and then you will hand finish the tabs.

In theory, the small Shapeoko 2 is also capable of this. It’s easy to learn and easy to use. @jphelps is teaching a Shapeoko class tomorrow and there are still a few spaces open.

However, there are a few caveats about the small Shapeoko.

  1. It’s a low HP router so you’re going to have to make a lot of very shallow cuts and it’s going to take a long time. This can be easily programmed.
  2. Spindle is small. The largest bit you can use is probably 1/8" … even if you can hold a 1/4" bit you probably don’t have enough HP to drive it cleanly.
  3. A limitation of using small bits is the cutting depth of the cutter. Length of cut (LOC) on a 1/8" cutter is typically 1/4" or a little less. In other words, you’re not making a half-inch thick domino if you go this route.
  4. The gantry tends to move around when you change bits, so your first cutter may not be well aligned with your second one. Try to program it so you need to use only one bit.

On the Shapeoko, IIWM, I’d use a two flute 1/8" ball nose end mill for all the cuts. You can cut the pips with that, the dividing line at lesser depth, and you can still cut the profile with a ball nose end mill. It’s just going to dig into your spoilboard (yes - you need to provide your own spoilboard, you can’t just dig into the machine base). You still need to leave tabs.

I didn’t realize dominos were two-sided … if there’s nothing on the back side of your dominos then it’s much easier to do.

Machine shop will not allow you to machine wood, so if you take David @Photomancer 's suggestion, you will be gluing the wood to the brass after machining. HAAS also has the longest learning curve of the options.

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Work holding would make it a hassle to use any of the cnc devices. Just use a hard board or acrylic pattern and a flush trim the wood and metal sandwich on the router table. Make a little holder with a small toggle clamp on top that exposes two sides at a time.

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It it was me I would make sheets of your sandwich. Then machine the pips and edge profile in wood using either wood cnc. Then rough bandsaw the pieces out. Then flush trim with your own bit and a jig on the router table. Then round over with another jig on the router table.

That way all the metal cutting is done with your own bits and no cnc.

I agree with Ian… Create a wood and brass sandwhich, cut out and process blanks traditionally(router table), then set them in a custom fixture to cnc the pips.

With all that said, this isn’t a beginner’s hill to climb.

Jay, Dominos are NOT two sided. You would be able to see everyones values.
@jphelps

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But some people like to engrave their name, initials, logo, etc. on the back side.

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You could also epoxy the wood brass wood sandwich together then etch the pips and domino shapes on the laser. Then fill the pip holes with epoxy and brass powder, rough cut on bandsaw, finish at the router. If you go the laser route, you could also make a template the exact shape of the domino in acrylic that you could use with a flush trim bit on the router. You would need an jig or small piece holder. Cool project.

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Good discussion and I’ll add a bit more:

  • We allow wood and brass on Shapeoko 2 so you could do it in pieces or all in one as you had mentioned without any pushback from committee.
  • Shapeoko 2 uses an ER11 collet so 1/4" shank on downward is what you can use and 1/4" works just fine in my experience. Great for removing a lot of material much faster. I’m not seeing that need on dominos though. With a 1/8 endmill in wood you could cut out a domino in a few minutes.
  • depth of cut on most of our endmills, and the ones I’ve bought for myself for DMS use, is 3/4" so I’d think A-OK as a domino cutter.
  • personalize those dominos! Hence the flip jig.
  • I think all of the other suggestions are good and may be better overall. Hard to say without trying them all :wink:
  • Still an opening for class tomorrow night if you want to come and learn the machine and see what you might do with it. We make a small thing in class each time, maybe we can try and knock out a prototype domino,
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As a domino player, I agree that personalizing the back of the dominoes is a good idea. If that a particular domino happens to have some interesting wood grain on the back I might be able to recognize it from across the table. Not that I am a cheater, just a sucker for curly chatoyance. Some kind of design on the backs would mitigate that somewhat.

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I signed up for the class tomorrow so I can check it out

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