My introduction to Kubb

I got asked the question a couple of days ago: "How did you start playing Kubb?".

Swedes play Kubb at barbecues and at the beach in the way that Americans throw horseshoes or frisbees or the way that Brits play badminton. To Swedes, Kubb is just part of normal life, and in Sweden you can buy Kubb at every petrol station in the summer, to be picked up as you drive to your lakeside retreat. In your Volvo. 

However, to the rest of the world (with the possible exception of Eau Claire, Wisconsin) Kubb is highly niche, and most people will have been introduced to it by a friend, or will have happened across it being played somewhere. 

That latter method was how I came across the game. A couple of years ago, we were staying at a holiday villa in Talland Bay in Cornwall. I was taking the dog for a walk round the site one afternoon when I spotted a blond-haired guy playing a weird wooden skittles type game with his two young kids. I watched for a minute, and decided I'd ask about the game on the next lap of the site. By the time I got back, the (possibly Swedish) family had gone, and actually left the site permanently before I ever got a chance to ask. Carpe diem, folks. 

Anyway, google was my friend, as ever, and by searching for images related to "wooden skittle type game", I quickly found the name I was looking for. A few minutes later and I had ordered a very ordinary Kubb set to be delivered to us on site, with the idea that we would learn the game during the second week of our holiday.

We played pretty much every day once we had our hands on the kit, and everywhere we went we were asked about Kubb. That is one of my clearest comments on Kubb: people are fascinated by it, and everywhere we play, before long, someone will ask what we are up to.

In fact, if you like the game and are looking for people to play, I'd genuinely suggest that you just go to the local park and start playing a game. You'll have people asking to join in before you know it. 

Once we got involved in the UK Kubb Championship, my friend Glenn had some little cards made up, so that when people asked about the game, we could send them away with a pointer to the web site. They work really well. 

Since then, we must have introduced another twenty or thirty people to the game directly, even without the UK Kubb connection,  and most of my friends now have sets of their own. There's just something about Kubb that seems to be appealing and I am delighted to be involved in the ever accelerating spread of this fantastic game. A game that I was so lucky to  stumble upon on a cliffside in Cornwall.  

Kubb set progress

In the first part of this article (a few months ago now)  I talked about my attempt to find a 'Championship' standard size for Kubb pieces. In this second part I'll relate the fun I had manufacturing a working Kubb set without any real skill in woodworking. Or tools. Or wood, to start with. 

I'd spotted that I could get 70mmx70mm square section pine at B&Q at a pretty good price, so I ran up a few test pieces, as much as a way to test the density of the material as anything. I'd already figured that pine was likely to be a little soft for Kubb, and would mark too easily. I cut the lengths up on my old mitre saw and rounded the edges with a 6mm radius round-over router bit. I had made a make-shift router table from a wide plank with a hole cut in it, all balanced on a Black and Decker Workmate. Worked fine.  

First attempt - pine

That seemed to work pretty well, and I managed to create a set of Kubbs that looked the part, were pretty much Championship size and weight, and all without breaking the bank. My dad is pretty handy in the workshop, so I asked him to turn some batons on his lathe. The results were really good, but it's not a process that would make sense for bulk. I figured that I'd have to find a source of ready cut dowels.

We actually used that test set in a late Autumn friendly tournament and I was happy enough.  

But...shaping the King without expensive tools was always going to be the main issue, so in that game we just had a big block in the middle of the pitch. Serviceable, I suppose, but not very stylish. We could do better.

The weight and size were pretty much spot on, but as predicted, they looked pretty beaten up after a day's play. Pine was probably not the answer then. 

Come the winter we upped the stakes a bit and bought in enough timber to make ten full sets, with the intention of kicking off the 2016 Championship in style. We chose Poplar (aka Tulipwood) because it's slap bang in the middle of the density range that I mentioned last time, and it also happens to be the weapon of choice for the US Championship folks.

Chopping up the 30cm kings

I got all my materials from Shaun at G&S Specialist Timber in Carlisle, initially because they can offer dowels in pretty much any species of wood, at any size you need. They were also able to provide the square section material I'd need for the rest of the set. They were brilliant: manufactured and delivered in just a couple of days, great quality stuff. I can't recommend them enough.   

I had come to the conclusion that the 6mm round-over bit that I has used on the test set produced edges that were a little....curvy for my tastes. So I invested in a 3mm bit for my 'Router Plank' (trademark pending) which was big enough to take the very square edges off the kubbs and give a slighter softer look, but still left plenty of grip for the drillers. 

3mm radius rounding-over for better grip when drilling - possibly

The only other change I made was to procure an eighty-tooth blade for my trusty (rusty?) mitre saw to replace the thirty-tooth version that I had used before. This gives a much finer cut and is far less liable to 'tear-out'. I really wanted to protect all that lovely wood that we had splashed out on.

So, I cut the baton lengths down to 30cm and rounded over the ends with the 6mm bit, and then set about the hundred kubbs that I would need. Twelve edges per kubb means one thousand two hundred router runs to do, which I managed over two weekends. 

So....I now have sixty batons and one hundred kubbs, all in beautiful Poplar. Very happy overall. Next step will be oiling them with simple old Danish oil, and working out a way to brand them with our logo. I'll come back to that.  

Now...what about those pesky Kings? Next time, I guess.  

Date for 2016 Event Confirmed!

We are delighted to  confirm the date of the 2016 UK Kubb Championship.

We'll be gathering once again at the New Inn in Farmborough on Saturday 9th July 2016.

The pub has been incredibly supportive of our event over the last few years and we are very please that this continues into 2016.

More details later, but save the day! And in the meantime, why not register your team?

Hampshire Open Championship

The morning of 3rd October 2015 began with a continuation of the extremely welcome, but very unseasonal sunshine of our current Indian Summer.

Huge relief for us as we gathered at Royal Victoria Country Park in South Hampshire for the inaugural Hampshire Open Championship.

Twenty five players of all ages and experience formed into 10 teams and fought out a Swiss Ladder style competition. We had a "Cup" on offer for overall winner, and a "Plate" going to the leading team from the second rank. (Both were actually homemade trophies made of stripwood and balsa - 'Unique', I think would be fair!) The group played for around four hours in a competitive but very friendly atmosphere, punctuated by tea, cake and a few beers.

It was a tightly fought affair at the top of the grid, with "Factor 5000" and "The Numb Chucks" keeping the pressure up right to the end. Finally emerging as Cup winners were the talented pairing of Glenn and Harvey - "The Gaz Watkins Allstars" (mystery surrounds who Gaz actually was, or is).     

Cup winners  "The Gaz Watkins Allstars" and Plate winners "The Gems" with their magnificent trophies.

Plate winners were Neil and Cheryl - "The Gems" in pretty much their first try at the game. An impressive start!

A fun, friendly, sunny way to spend a Saturday. Thanks to all the teams for their support and spirit, and congratulations to trophy winners : "The Gaz Watkins Allstars" and "The Gems". 

More photos from this event can be viewed on the Gallery page here.

Does Size Matter?

If you've played Kubb only once or twice, or if you always use the same set, you may have the impression that all Kubb sets are the same: that they are all a 'standard' size. You'd be wrong. 

Historically, the pieces would have been made by hand from whatever wood was available, and there would have been a pretty wide variation in size and weight. In the world of machine assisted manufacture, a lot of this variation within a set has gone, but it still leaves the question of what is the 'right' size. 

Most sets available in the UK have Kubbs that are around 55mm square, with batons around 30mm in diameter. If you search hard enough, you'll find 60mm square Kubbs in some sets, although often you won't know what you have until they arrive on your doorstep. 

Looking at the VMI Kubb (World Championship) rules seems to reveal a 'Gold Standard' to measure against:

So, 70mm is the World Championship standard. That's quite a chunk of wood, and certainly a lot bigger than the Kubbs in the set that I got from Amazon, with their puny girth of 55mm. The U.S. National Championship rule book (from which our own is adapted) suggests the same size: 70x70x150mm. You'll see that the batons are 44mm diameter, again, the same as for the US competition. That shouldn't really be a surprise, because the U.S. rules have been adapted from the VMI rule book. 

The difference between 30mm batons, like the ones in my retail set, and the 'standard'  44mm batons as used in the U.S. and World Championships, is immense: 30mm feels like a section of a broom handle, whereas 44mm feels like a section of a scaffolding pole! 

Anyway, it turns out that a 70mm Kubb set is pretty hard to get hold of in the UK. These guys sell a great looking set advertised as "World Championship Size" with 70mm Kubbs (yay!) but only 39mm batons (boo!), but I suspect that the shipping from Australia would have killed the deal for me. 

So, what does one do? One makes a set one's self. 

If only it was as simple as that. The U.S. rules also specify a weight range for the pieces:

Its worth pointing out that the U.S. guys basically looked at all the sets that they already had and then decided that, by definition, they were all within the right range. I like that practicality, and although the weight is only 'recommended' according to the U.S. rules, I want something to aim at. 

Just thinking about the Kubb for a moment, we have 7x7x15 cm³, weighing between 300g and 500g. That gives us a density of between 408kg/m³ and 680kg/m³ with a mid point of about 544kg/m³. Working out the density of the batons and the king comes to pretty much the same result. Phew! Sourcing different woods for each component would have been a bit of a pain.

So, we need to find some wood that has a density of .540 (ish). Hmm.

Googling a wood density chart (easy to find) gives a few surprises. Lots of hard woods like oak or beech, that you might have expected to be our friends,  are too heavy, and anyway, we are sort of restricted to what we can get hold of at a sensible price. My plan is to make a bunch of these sets, and I am working to a budget.

European Redwood is pretty easy to get in big pieces (remember we really need 90mm x 90mm for the king) is reasonably cheap, and turns out to be about the right density. Result! 

In my next article I'll relate my attempts at making a Kubb set equipped with a lot of optimism, almost no wood working skills, and very few tools.

Wish me luck!