Initial Measurements

Here you can see the wood I bought for the base, covered in all the necessary items I needed to make my decisions. How long did the pitch need to be? More importantly, how wide did it need to be?

The dice were rolled a number of times as I experimented with different gutter widths, trying to not make the whole thing too "wide" and at the same time trying to get a comfortable berth in which a coach could comfortably throw the dice and not worry about missing the gutter.

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From the other angle, you can see none of the rails are cut yet, and I drew a line on the base with pencil to mark where I was going to have to cut the wood down further. In the end, the pitch ended up measuring 32"x32".

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The rails themselves are Crown Moulding pieces... at Home Depot I found many varieties that were anywhere from $0.80 per foot to around $3 per foot... the type I chose was somewhere around the $1.50/ft cost. This is one place someone could definitely shave some cost from the project, but I really liked the idea of rounded tops instead of flat, rectangular wood. Unfortunately, this was definitely a decision I would change if I had it to do over again... I'll talk more about that coming up when I try to glue everything together.

Getting things together >>

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