Blog of Ice: Dart Cabinet

During one of our shopping trips, Carina and I saw an extremely cheap dartboard set (around $4). We decided that we will include this in our jordkällare-game-room-cave (more on that later - but see picture here) and bought the set. Once home, we found that the quality of the set may reflect the price. The darts are made from a cheap plastic and not extremely straight - one even had a broken point that I needed to sharpen. After playing a few rounds with a plywood board as backing I decided that we need a very nice cabinet for this set. I thus build the cabinet shown below. There may be a bit of a discord between the quality of the set and the cabinet but overall I am happy with the outcome. The cabinet is made from stained pine plywood and the picture and scoreboard from birch plywood.

Finished dartboard cabinet

Cheap dartboard and darts - note the one dart has a shorter point...

Initially I thought that I will quickly build a plywood box to house the board and call it a cabinet. However, when I started to plan it I thought that doors that have a arch to the top may be nice and from then onward the whole thing took on a life of its own. At many steps a simple element became more elaborate and following is a few pictures of how this cabinet evolved from a box rather than just being built.

After quick glance online I saw that most dartbord cabinets are a square box with 2 doors. I thus started by cutting the back and sides using the pine plywood and 2x4 cm beams.

Simple box at the start

As mentioned the doors was where I started to change the whole thing from a mere box into a cabinet. This was of course due to the images on the interwebs of classical cabinets (I later found more information on cabinets and saw this video by DIRESTA - the video also inspired met to continue building something a bit more elaborate).

I therefore decided to make doors with arched tops. After I squared the doors I drew the top of one door and cut it on the scroll saw. I used this first one as template to mark and cut the second door. I spent a bit of time to sanding the doors together to get nice edges that are exactly the same.

Doors with arched tops being sanded

Checking that everything is square

I decided to stain the cabinet but first wanted to add a bit of detail to the front of the door along the edge. I made a cutting tool to cut along the edge and leave a thin line. This did not turn out as nice as I thought but I did have a straight line all around the edge of the doors. Using the Dremel with a I spent one evening carving (and then sanding) small half circles along the line. It looked much better but did take more time than i initially thought I would spend on the details on the door edges.

Adding detail to the door edge

I tried a light oak stain and added two coats.

Testing the stain on the backside

I found some hinges that were removed from a sandbox. I straighten, cleaned and drilled counter sink holes.

Old bent hinges

Hinges like new after some work

Checking fit of hinges

At this stage the project was already out of hand. A picture in contrasting wood across the two doors therefore seemed and OK addition and I started to look for pictures indicating that this may be a dartboard cabinet. I found a few and the simple picture was redesigned into something more complex. I spent a bit of time to edit all the lines to ensure that the whole image will not fall apart when done cutting.

Picture for front and scoreboard stuck to birch plywood

Cutting on the scroll saw

Broken...!?...nope - only half done

Cat critically evaluating progress

Image done

At the same time I realized that we have no idea on how to actually play a game of darts. After more searching online I found a common and seemingly popular game called "Cricket" ( more information on the game here). This necessitated that a scoreboard was included in the inside of the cabinet. I thus designed the scoreboard. I did not want a chalk board and sanded the scoreboard in the middle section. This created a groove for a paper to slide in where we could write the score.

Cutting of scoreboard done

Groove to be sanded marked

Lastly I made some shelves to hold the darts and a pencil. Here it helped that the scroll saw table could be tilted. I drilled holes for the darts, cut a groove for the pencil and stained and glued the shelves to the door.

Slanted shelves

Testing fit of darts

After all the parts were cut I added 3 coats of lacquer to the cabinet and 5 coats of spray lacquer to the image and the score board.

Shiny door

When all the parts were dry and shiny I fitted the doors to the cabinet and glued the picture parts carefully to the doors. Luckily everything seemed to fit nicely.

Right side of picture being glued to door

I glued the score board to the inside and the cabinet was done.

Final clamping

We tested the cabinet in the basement but Carina is hesitant to throw darts towards it (she thinks it is nice in the current condition and will not improve with the addition of holes). If we get a generous offer I will thus sell it ;) - Otherwise the plan it to place it in the jordkällare - and possibly buy better darts.