All right, since you demanded so nicely.... But now that I own the Chocolate Factory I'll have to revert to being the mysterious Willy Wonka.
Here were the first chips I had made 11 years ago. Our cash game chips in front and tournament chips behind. The chips are fairly basic and design isn't my specialty. Fortunately, I'm now a manufacture and not a designer! We've used these chips weekly for about a decade and they still look brand new.
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We play in a barn at my house that I renovated so the home game is called the Poker Barn. There's a ghosted image of the Barn on the inlay. As you can tell, the 5000 tournament chip and $100 cash chip don't match the sets. I had these done recently to test out some ideas. I absolutely love the pink dayglo color and I think I like the 7/8 inlay size better as well.
Here's some of the other things I built. As you'll quickly realize, yes, I'm obsessive. I believe if somethings worth doing it's worth overdoing.
This was the first poker table I built almost 20 years ago. Yes, those are Bicycle cards and chips. We now only use Copag cards.
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While I loved the look of the racetrack I quickly learned to hate the utility of it. It made way too much noise when people shuffled chips on it and I certainly didn't want to encourage drinks on the table with the cup holders. But I made the center section so it could be replaced with different surfaces to try out. I'm not sure what felt this one was in the picture but I eventually settled on 'gaming suede'. There's nothing better. I also designed it so the entire railing can be replaced and I built a bunch of different railings with different fabric to find the best.
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This was with the 'speed cloth' center section. Speed Cloth has too rough a feel for me.
The next version got rid of the racetrack, widened the rail, and used better material, added a card shuffler and added LED lights. The lights are fully configurable with software I wrote and in tournaments I can have them automatically flash at the end of levels, etc.
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But the shuffler was too loud, had to be constantly filled, and got in the way of the cards so I removed it.
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Still wasn't perfect. Too many folks at my home game suck at dealing and would have a lot of trouble dealing from seats at the end. So I built a round table.
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This is what we currently use. It can hold about 10 people but it gets uncomfortable with more than 8. I built it around the max size of gaming suede I could get. It's much simpler for folks to deal and pots are generally within arms length for folks. the biggest thing it's missing is a Poker Barn logo. Like I said, design ain't my thing.
Okay, the Mustang. Classic Mustangs are my favorite cars. When I turned 50 my wife bought me a 1968 Mustang as a restoration project. I had never welded, done any real automotive work and had never painted.
I stripped it down to nothing and cut out all of the rusted parts.
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Then rebuilt it completely
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It took me about 5 different choices of red before I found one that liked. Remember this when I'm crafting a new yellow!
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Then I did infinite spray outs to perfect my technique and learn the best methods for sanding that would give the best shine
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The result:
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Okay, that's all you get. Back to being Willy Wonka!
