In our circle of friends, RISK has always been our excuse to get together and hang out, usually for absurdly long game sessions. One complaint we always had was that the countries on the RISK board were often too small to accommodate large armies (of plastic game pieces). At the time, we had a hand-me-down wood dining table, and I got the idea that I could turn the whole thing into a RISK board, thus vastly increasing the amount of space for game pieces. So I’m here to show you how it’s done!
This is a fun project I did a few years back now, and can be done with pretty much any board game (or another image if you prefer). You have to start with a clean wood surface, free of any urethane or other finish. So for our table, I started by sanding the top of the table until I was down to the bare wood. Then comes the hard part: transferring the image of the RISK board onto the table surface. There are a couple of ways you could choose to do this.
- First, if you have access to an overhead projector, you could print a transparency. Then, simply turn the table on its side, trace the map onto the table top, and you’re done!
- If you’re like me, you don’t have access to an overhead projector, so you have to do it the hard(er) way: using the grid method. Essentially, you draw a grid of evenly sized squares (or rectangles) on your RISK board. The size of each square depends on the size of your board and how accurate you want your map to be (smaller squares give you a more accurate copy of the board). Then, you draw a grid of the same number of squares onto the naked surface of your table. Again, the size of the squares are dependent on the size of your table and the number of squares you have on your reference image, the game board. You then simply trace all of the lines of the map on the game board onto the table, matching the grid lines on the board with the grid lines on the table. This may sound confusing, and is hard to explain without some visual aids. To help you figure out how this is done, I’ve included a link to a video tutorial that explains the whole process. This video is great and covers everything from how to measure your grid squares to how to actually fill in the drawing. The only difference is that we’re drawing a board game and the guy in the video is drawing a zebra.
Anyway, once you have your countries all outlined (with pencil, of course!!), you get to start refinishing your board, most of which is just a matter of preference. Once I had erased all of the grid marks, I started with a really cool blue wood stain. I stained the entire top surface of the table according to the directions on the can. I like the stain because it allowed the wood grain to still peek through (and my carefully drawn pencil marks!) while still giving the impression of water for the game board.
Once the stain had dried fully, I traced all of my country outlines in black Sharpie. I then decided what color I wanted each continent to be and began filling in each country in the correct color, being careful not to paint over my outlines. For this I just used acrylic paint, which is readily available at craft stores, is pretty easy to work with, and is durable. Once all of my paint was dry, I went over all of my Sharpie outlines again and labeled each country with the correct name from the game board.
Lastly, I protected all of my hard work with four coats of a clear polyurethane. That’s it.
All said and done this project probably took me about 25 hours over the course of several weeks. You could probably get it done faster if you have more free time than I do. Because this was our dining room table and our house is tiny, it had to stay in place while I was working. If you have to do the same, do yourself a favor and buy a plastic or vinyl tablecloth to protect your work surface until you finish the project. And remember to put on a killer playlist (or podcast) while you work!