I'm going to go ahead and kick this off....
@alecnetwoodworks was willing to make 6 of his racks for me made entirely of cherry wood. Alec was a great communicator with a very reasonable turn around time from the moment I told him what I wanted from the time the racks were shipped and on their way to me.
UPS dropped them off today and I have some early thoughts....
These are definitely a bit lighter than I thought they would be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when carrying multiple racks of chips. The thick, plastic racks can get cumbersome to carry if you're trying to carry a whole cash set of 500 or 600 chips across the room from the cabinet to the poker table. This can be done just as easily with these racks.
As far as the build quality, I'll let the photos judge for themselves. Top notch, definitely made of 100% real cherry wood. The craftsmanship on these is second to none. I ordered 67.7mm barrel racks to fit
CPC chips. For giggles I placed a rack of mint Paulsons in the rack as well, but they fit pretty well too without too much sliding around within the barrel.
The barrel length is uniform in each of the 5 barrels of the rack. The barrels of chips that are loose in the plastic racks are in the wood rack too, and the barrels that are a tight squeeze in the plastic are as such in the wood.
I used my Key Wests to illustrate the differences in the fits of mint, from the factory
CPC's to those that are a little more worn and broken in, but those that still stand on edge (AKA, perfect in my book). The green $25's pictured below are used and more worn than the $1's and $5's that are fresh from the factory mint that are oiled but haven't been put into play.
The bottom of the rack is flat, but there is enough of a hollow area which allows for stacking of racks to take place. The racks stack well, but I will say this; there is a little bit of "slide" if you wiggle the racks horizontally by accident. One would have to be careful in picking up more than one rack at a time to assure you're not playing 100+ chip pickup. If you're mindful of this, transport across the room is a breeze and no different than plastic racks, and is actually even easier because the wood racks are a good deal lighter than the plastic racks.
One other thing that *can* happen is that if removing one rack from the top of another, sometimes I've noticed the "sticking barrel" effect on these wooden racks. I've seen this too on plastic racks too, where a barrel of chips from the rack below when the chip racks are stacked would get interlocked underneath the rack on top when removed from the stack. I don't know how else to explain this, but it happened to me twice in just a few minutes of playing around with racked chips, where I've had this happen with Paulson racks maybe twice in two years total. Not the end of the world, but care just needs to be taken when stacking these racks with chips and when removing a rack from a stack of racks.
Overall, these are well worth the purchase in my book. The customization options are extensive and Alec did say that he has a laser engraver to give these an even more personalized feel if desired. I'm looking forward to placing an order for more of these racks, as well as for racks for 43/44mm chips once I get my custom oversize
CPC chips in!
I wish you all the best in your adventure here
@alecnetwoodworks ! I highly recommend Alec as a vendor here that provided great service and an even better product. Buy with confidence!
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