From the Workbench

When most people imagine a custom wooden heirloom, they picture a thick solid slab of walnut or cedar. However, cribbage boards present an unforgiving engineering challenge: over 360 tight peg holes drilled in micro-spaced geometric rows.

If solid lumber takes on moisture during humid summers or dries near a fireplace in winter, the grain moves across its width. Hole diameters become slightly oval, causing metal pegs to pinch or tilt.

In our Langford shop, we build with cross-laminated Finnish Baltic birch cores. Because each veneer alternates grain direction by 90 degrees under high pressure, seasonal expansion is virtually zero—ensuring the peg tension you feel on day one stays identical decades later.

A customer named Erin reached out with a special request for her 92-year-old grandfather in Suffolk, England. Whenever she makes the 3.5-hour drive to visit, playing cribbage is the highlight of their time together.

She asked us to engrave their family heraldic crest on the playing face alongside their private family shorthand—"20.40.60.80"—which meant "I love you" in their own playful language. Hearing how moved her grandparents were when she arrived with the board is the exact reason I run this workshop.

Nothing ruins a weekend at the cabin faster than opening your cribbage board only to discover the pegs were left behind in a drawer back home.

To solve this permanently, we CNC-rout a recessed pocket into the underside of the board sized specifically for a standard deck of Bicycle playing cards and heavy metal pegs. A crystal-clear 3mm cast acrylic door—secured by a central brass thumbscrew and etched with "Made with Love and Laserbeams"—rotates smoothly open with a quarter turn.