I live in Michigan, and so unsurprisingly have a good number of Canadian born friends. One of them has a Crokinole board that he sometimes brings with him to the local brewpub that he inherited...
I live in Michigan, and so unsurprisingly have a good number of Canadian born friends. One of them has a Crokinole board that he sometimes brings with him to the local brewpub that he inherited from his grandfather.
It's a superb way to spend an afternoon, having a beer, chatting, and sliding little discs around. Gets some curious questions from passers by and it's easy to make new friends if you can convince them to try a round. Which is generally pretty easy to do, since it's extremely simple to explain the rules and easy for anyone to try but difficult to master.
I'm in the market for a quality crokinole board for my wife. She's canadian and loves the game and I want to get her one for Christmas. Preferably made in Canada, does anyone have any recommendations?
I'm in the market for a quality crokinole board for my wife. She's canadian and loves the game and I want to get her one for Christmas. Preferably made in Canada, does anyone have any recommendations?
I happen to be acquainted with a crokinole company owner. Tracey Boards is the company. I've purchased several sets of buttons from them, and seen and played on a few of their boards and I think...
I happen to be acquainted with a crokinole company owner. Tracey Boards is the company. I've purchased several sets of buttons from them, and seen and played on a few of their boards and I think they are quite high quality. Also the Tracey family are all really nice people. I met them playing disc golf.
Hah, small world again. My BiL has a Tracey Boards one too, so I can vouch for their quality as well. I was literally coming to the comments to type out a recommendation for them, but you beat me...
Hah, small world again. My BiL has a Tracey Boards one too, so I can vouch for their quality as well. I was literally coming to the comments to type out a recommendation for them, but you beat me to it.
My cousin also has a vintage shuffleboard table that belonged to my Godfather, and it's a really fun game in a similar vein too. I actually prefer shuffleboard, personally, since the pucks have some serious weight to them and it's much closer to Curling than Crokinole is. But shuffleboard tables takes up a lot of room so I can understand why Crokinole is a lot more popular here these days.
That's awesome! I also cannot say this enough: they are such nice people. Jeremy is about my age and he has a number of early adult sons that he frequently is out with playing disc golf. They're...
That's awesome! I also cannot say this enough: they are such nice people. Jeremy is about my age and he has a number of early adult sons that he frequently is out with playing disc golf. They're the sort of people who pick up garbage as they go and leave the park cleaner than they started, give discs to kids just trying out the sport, help people change a tire in the parking lot, etc. I actually had a hard time purchasing buttons from them because he kept trying to give them to me for free. They also all make the boards in this general area of Southern Ontario; they aren't buying and reselling or anything like that.
I don't hang out at my sister/BiL/nephews all that often since they live 1hr away in Carlisle, but Crokinole gets played at pretty much every big party they have. My BIL loves his bar and tabletop...
I don't hang out at my sister/BiL/nephews all that often since they live 1hr away in Carlisle, but Crokinole gets played at pretty much every big party they have. My BIL loves his bar and tabletop sports games though, and they also have a Pool, Bubble Hockey, Foosball and Card/Poker table, as well as Cornhole and a proper cork Dart board, so Crokinole is not exclusively what everyone plays. And I have only played it a few times myself at this point, since I usually gravitate towards Pool, Darts, Foosball (all of which I'm really good at ;), or Bubble Hockey since it's my BiL and oldest nephew's favorite game and theirs is a legit one with an electronic scoreboard.
p.s. But we're moving to Waterdown soon though, only 10min away from them, so I will likely start hanging out there a bit more often and have more opportunities to play some games with them over the next few years. :P
Good luck with your move! I'm lucky - my brother and sister and parents are all within a 15 minute radius of our house, so I can see all the siblings and nephews (I believe they had all boys to...
Good luck with your move! I'm lucky - my brother and sister and parents are all within a 15 minute radius of our house, so I can see all the siblings and nephews (I believe they had all boys to rob me of an excuse to say "niblings") pretty frequently, which we enjoy a lot, so hopefully it's the same for you.
Sounds like they have a great setup for tabletop sports games - I'm jealous! I would like to put a pool table in our rec room, but I think it's not in the cards for a while. We play a lot of foos though!
Thanks. We think we found a place in Waterdown already, and if it works out we'll prob be moving in the next month-ish. So fingers crossed! And yeah, I grew up with a foosball table and dart board...
Thanks. We think we found a place in Waterdown already, and if it works out we'll prob be moving in the next month-ish. So fingers crossed!
And yeah, I grew up with a foosball table and dart board in our house so I am pretty dang good at them too. :P Pool I didn't get into until much later in life, but I spent a fair amount of time at the Crooked Cue, a pool hall on Lakeshore in Port Credit way back when. My sister used to work at the Pump House Grille in PC, so I was there a lot too. Ever been to either? If so, they might be yet another place we have both been to yet somehow never ran into each other at. :P
Our blood family is all mostly in BC and Alberta, so I unfortunately don't get to see them very often. :( But my sister has always been reasonably close by, other than when we lived in the UK, and we have a pretty huge extended family who all live here in Southern Ontario as well. My "cousin" (my godfather's son) with the shuffleboard and a pool table lives about 2 min from us in Georgetown. And all my "aunts/uncles" (longtime friends of my father) and their kids, and their kids kids, live in the Mississauga area and surrounds still too, so we're with them all every Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc.
Okay, I'm actually a bit surprised at this: I have not been to that pool hall. At least part of my surprise stems from the fact that I have played a lot of pool in a lot of places. Waterdown is...
Okay, I'm actually a bit surprised at this: I have not been to that pool hall. At least part of my surprise stems from the fact that I have played a lot of pool in a lot of places.
Waterdown is such a cute town; I don't know how often you go to Toronto, but it's so close to Aldershot as well, so it's really palatable to make your way downtown from there. Heck, even from Guelph, we sometimes just drive to Aldershot and take the train. It's also nice that it's not that far to Mississauga and family, still. And there are so many lovely spots to visit around there, like the Royal Botanical Gardens, or various parks with waterfalls (I think there's even one right in Waterdown?) Exciting! Again, I hope you have a super easy move and enjoy the new spot.
Huh, I don't think I've actually been to Aldershot before despite having been all over Burlington and Oakville, since I grew up just a tad north of them in Lorne Park. I've been to the Royal...
Huh, I don't think I've actually been to Aldershot before despite having been all over Burlington and Oakville, since I grew up just a tad north of them in Lorne Park. I've been to the Royal Botanical Gardens quite a few times over the years, but I didn't know about any waterfalls in the area. Apparently Smokey Hollow waterfall is in Waterdown, only a 12min walk from the place we're hoping to get, and it looks gorgeous! So I am definitely going to have to go for a walk to go see it if/when we move in. Thanks for the heads up!!!
p.s. The place I'm most excited about in Waterdown is the Mill St & 5, since it's been way way way too long since I lived near a place with live music. :P
Nearby live music is awesome, sounds like you're (hopefully about to be) in a great spot. And that general area has a fair number of waterfalls, so lots of things to explore there!
Nearby live music is awesome, sounds like you're (hopefully about to be) in a great spot. And that general area has a fair number of waterfalls, so lots of things to explore there!
Congrats my friend! I'm very excited for you and your new adventure. I hope you have the easiest possible move. Maybe with movers doing the bulk of the work or something. And may you open and...
Congrats my friend! I'm very excited for you and your new adventure. I hope you have the easiest possible move. Maybe with movers doing the bulk of the work or something. And may you open and unpack all of your boxes before we finish (we still have 7 boxes for sorting, 2 years later).
LOL, thanks. It really does feel like the start of a new adventure. It always does whenever we move, and we have moved a LOT over the years. We all seem to start getting restless if we stay in one...
LOL, thanks. It really does feel like the start of a new adventure. It always does whenever we move, and we have moved a LOT over the years. We all seem to start getting restless if we stay in one spot or work at one job for too long. But this is actually by far the longest we have ever been in one spot before (12 years), so we're all extra excited to finally be moving again. :P
Looks like a cool game. Reminds me of something called [Penny Football] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_football) which I play with my son from time to time, and that I used to play with...
Looks like a cool game.
Reminds me of something called [Penny Football] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_football) which I play with my son from time to time, and that I used to play with friends at school in the 1970s quite a bit.
Edit: and now I'm looking up Crockinole boards available in the UK.
Holy crap that video is absolutely insane. I've never seen anything close to a perfect round before. I'm glad I got past their "Canadians won't read this" title. I can confirm that crokinole is a...
Holy crap that video is absolutely insane. I've never seen anything close to a perfect round before. I'm glad I got past their "Canadians won't read this" title.
I can confirm that crokinole is a ton of fun. Whenever we break out our crokinole board, a good time is had by just about everyone involved, no matter the age. My grandfather - my dad's dad - was the family champ; I never beat him a single time in my life, and we played hundreds of bit thousands of games until his passing.
The one downside of crokinole is the cost of the board. A good one runs a few hundred dollars. However, a good one will also last a long time my grandfather's board is significantly older than me (45) and had been passed down to one of my aunt's and still gets played.
I have a board that my dad made for me, which we have had for 15 years or so, and I'll pass it on to someone eventually.
Something I've wondered about, do the boards need any maintenance over the years? I know wood can last forever if well maintained, but I was curious if all the disk sliding scratched them up and...
Something I've wondered about, do the boards need any maintenance over the years? I know wood can last forever if well maintained, but I was curious if all the disk sliding scratched them up and needed occasional buffing or anything.
You can wax them or apply mineral oil, but mostly we just use a bit of wax on the buttons and they don't really scratch from play. Ours does have a big scratch mark on the face of it, but that's...
You can wax them or apply mineral oil, but mostly we just use a bit of wax on the buttons and they don't really scratch from play. Ours does have a big scratch mark on the face of it, but that's because our kids are not delicate with anything we own, and I think they actually put a chair on it at one point. It doesn't have much of an effect on play at all.
I may sand it, reapply the lines, and restain it at some point. I should also say that my board is one that my dad handmade, so I think it's a little less mirror finished than the Tracey ones I suggested above.
I live in Michigan, and so unsurprisingly have a good number of Canadian born friends. One of them has a Crokinole board that he sometimes brings with him to the local brewpub that he inherited from his grandfather.
It's a superb way to spend an afternoon, having a beer, chatting, and sliding little discs around. Gets some curious questions from passers by and it's easy to make new friends if you can convince them to try a round. Which is generally pretty easy to do, since it's extremely simple to explain the rules and easy for anyone to try but difficult to master.
I'm in the market for a quality crokinole board for my wife. She's canadian and loves the game and I want to get her one for Christmas. Preferably made in Canada, does anyone have any recommendations?
I happen to be acquainted with a crokinole company owner. Tracey Boards is the company. I've purchased several sets of buttons from them, and seen and played on a few of their boards and I think they are quite high quality. Also the Tracey family are all really nice people. I met them playing disc golf.
Hah, small world again. My BiL has a Tracey Boards one too, so I can vouch for their quality as well. I was literally coming to the comments to type out a recommendation for them, but you beat me to it.
My cousin also has a vintage shuffleboard table that belonged to my Godfather, and it's a really fun game in a similar vein too. I actually prefer shuffleboard, personally, since the pucks have some serious weight to them and it's much closer to Curling than Crokinole is. But shuffleboard tables takes up a lot of room so I can understand why Crokinole is a lot more popular here these days.
That's awesome! I also cannot say this enough: they are such nice people. Jeremy is about my age and he has a number of early adult sons that he frequently is out with playing disc golf. They're the sort of people who pick up garbage as they go and leave the park cleaner than they started, give discs to kids just trying out the sport, help people change a tire in the parking lot, etc. I actually had a hard time purchasing buttons from them because he kept trying to give them to me for free. They also all make the boards in this general area of Southern Ontario; they aren't buying and reselling or anything like that.
Do you guys play much?
What a delightfully Canadian sentence.
I don't hang out at my sister/BiL/nephews all that often since they live 1hr away in Carlisle, but Crokinole gets played at pretty much every big party they have. My BIL loves his bar and tabletop sports games though, and they also have a Pool, Bubble Hockey, Foosball and Card/Poker table, as well as Cornhole and a proper cork Dart board, so Crokinole is not exclusively what everyone plays. And I have only played it a few times myself at this point, since I usually gravitate towards Pool, Darts, Foosball (all of which I'm really good at ;), or Bubble Hockey since it's my BiL and oldest nephew's favorite game and theirs is a legit one with an electronic scoreboard.
p.s. But we're moving to Waterdown soon though, only 10min away from them, so I will likely start hanging out there a bit more often and have more opportunities to play some games with them over the next few years. :P
Good luck with your move! I'm lucky - my brother and sister and parents are all within a 15 minute radius of our house, so I can see all the siblings and nephews (I believe they had all boys to rob me of an excuse to say "niblings") pretty frequently, which we enjoy a lot, so hopefully it's the same for you.
Sounds like they have a great setup for tabletop sports games - I'm jealous! I would like to put a pool table in our rec room, but I think it's not in the cards for a while. We play a lot of foos though!
Thanks. We think we found a place in Waterdown already, and if it works out we'll prob be moving in the next month-ish. So fingers crossed!
And yeah, I grew up with a foosball table and dart board in our house so I am pretty dang good at them too. :P Pool I didn't get into until much later in life, but I spent a fair amount of time at the Crooked Cue, a pool hall on Lakeshore in Port Credit way back when. My sister used to work at the Pump House Grille in PC, so I was there a lot too. Ever been to either? If so, they might be yet another place we have both been to yet somehow never ran into each other at. :P
Our blood family is all mostly in BC and Alberta, so I unfortunately don't get to see them very often. :( But my sister has always been reasonably close by, other than when we lived in the UK, and we have a pretty huge extended family who all live here in Southern Ontario as well. My "cousin" (my godfather's son) with the shuffleboard and a pool table lives about 2 min from us in Georgetown. And all my "aunts/uncles" (longtime friends of my father) and their kids, and their kids kids, live in the Mississauga area and surrounds still too, so we're with them all every Thanksgiving, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc.
Okay, I'm actually a bit surprised at this: I have not been to that pool hall. At least part of my surprise stems from the fact that I have played a lot of pool in a lot of places.
Waterdown is such a cute town; I don't know how often you go to Toronto, but it's so close to Aldershot as well, so it's really palatable to make your way downtown from there. Heck, even from Guelph, we sometimes just drive to Aldershot and take the train. It's also nice that it's not that far to Mississauga and family, still. And there are so many lovely spots to visit around there, like the Royal Botanical Gardens, or various parks with waterfalls (I think there's even one right in Waterdown?) Exciting! Again, I hope you have a super easy move and enjoy the new spot.
Huh, I don't think I've actually been to Aldershot before despite having been all over Burlington and Oakville, since I grew up just a tad north of them in Lorne Park. I've been to the Royal Botanical Gardens quite a few times over the years, but I didn't know about any waterfalls in the area. Apparently Smokey Hollow waterfall is in Waterdown, only a 12min walk from the place we're hoping to get, and it looks gorgeous! So I am definitely going to have to go for a walk to go see it if/when we move in. Thanks for the heads up!!!
p.s. The place I'm most excited about in Waterdown is the Mill St & 5, since it's been way way way too long since I lived near a place with live music. :P
Nearby live music is awesome, sounds like you're (hopefully about to be) in a great spot. And that general area has a fair number of waterfalls, so lots of things to explore there!
We got the place! Moving in Dec 1, so we're going to be busy busy busy the next few months. :P
Congrats my friend! I'm very excited for you and your new adventure. I hope you have the easiest possible move. Maybe with movers doing the bulk of the work or something. And may you open and unpack all of your boxes before we finish (we still have 7 boxes for sorting, 2 years later).
LOL, thanks. It really does feel like the start of a new adventure. It always does whenever we move, and we have moved a LOT over the years. We all seem to start getting restless if we stay in one spot or work at one job for too long. But this is actually by far the longest we have ever been in one spot before (12 years), so we're all extra excited to finally be moving again. :P
Looks like a cool game.
Reminds me of something called [Penny Football] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_football) which I play with my son from time to time, and that I used to play with friends at school in the 1970s quite a bit.
Edit: and now I'm looking up Crockinole boards available in the UK.
Holy crap that video is absolutely insane. I've never seen anything close to a perfect round before. I'm glad I got past their "Canadians won't read this" title.
I can confirm that crokinole is a ton of fun. Whenever we break out our crokinole board, a good time is had by just about everyone involved, no matter the age. My grandfather - my dad's dad - was the family champ; I never beat him a single time in my life, and we played hundreds of bit thousands of games until his passing.
The one downside of crokinole is the cost of the board. A good one runs a few hundred dollars. However, a good one will also last a long time my grandfather's board is significantly older than me (45) and had been passed down to one of my aunt's and still gets played.
I have a board that my dad made for me, which we have had for 15 years or so, and I'll pass it on to someone eventually.
Man I've never seen the game being played and even I was more hyped up than those guys. What was up with that slow ass reaction? That was awesome!
Something I've wondered about, do the boards need any maintenance over the years? I know wood can last forever if well maintained, but I was curious if all the disk sliding scratched them up and needed occasional buffing or anything.
You can wax them or apply mineral oil, but mostly we just use a bit of wax on the buttons and they don't really scratch from play. Ours does have a big scratch mark on the face of it, but that's because our kids are not delicate with anything we own, and I think they actually put a chair on it at one point. It doesn't have much of an effect on play at all.
I may sand it, reapply the lines, and restain it at some point. I should also say that my board is one that my dad handmade, so I think it's a little less mirror finished than the Tracey ones I suggested above.
I dislike headlines that make assumptions about what I know or don't know.