ScrapHappy October 2020: On the Rack

Does what it says on the box

Of an evening at Chez Snail, there are a variety of entertainments to be enjoyed, with some coming out of a box rather than a bottle. One such amusement is Qwirkle, which in stark contrast to our other favoured game of Scrabble, has no interest in correct spelling whatsoever. It’s a great game, simple to understand and uses different parts of the brain compared to Scrabble. You have to match up coloured tiles for points. And points mean, er, very little really.

Unlike Scrabble, the game does not come with any type of tile holder (not a long-lost cousin of the lead singer of Slade) and it is this deficiency I address in this post.

I think it was a pen holder or something originally

It was one of those ScrapHappy coincidences, in fact. A few days before, the Snail had been clearing through her office/sewing room/SnailCave and had come across a piece of an old easel she used to use when teaching. Most of the rest of said easel was propping up the pipe feeding rainwater to one of our water butts. “Can you think of anything that this bit of metal might be useful for?” she asked, and I, in my customary way, had shrugged and put it in my office/workshop/studio/unholy-mess-of-a-room for safekeeping.

If this were a radio programme, there would be “time passing” music now.

Days pass and we are playing Qwirkle in the Limery, tiles balanced end-on, occasionally falling over (the tiles, not us. We sit down to play, it means the wine has less far to travel.). The Snail mentions about having tile racks and a lightbulb goes on over my head – well, it’s dark and the Snail has put the lights on. I head to my writing space/junk pile/guitar store and emerge with the piece from the old easel.

By chance, the tiles fit perfectly. A ScrapHappy post is born!

About to get the chop

Figuring out some support

I cut the metal into two racks and used the rest to provide angled supports. As the tiles fitted exactly into the racks, there was no space for a nut and bolt to hold the supports on so I used superglue.

Unbelievably, there was almost no swearing during this phase of the project. No, really.

Two days later, one of the supports fell off, to absolutely no one’s surprise. There may have been a little swearing then. I used sugru to reattach it. Oddly, the other rack has remained in one piece.

After all that, time for a game of Qwirkle and a long drink!

oOo