I made these cornhole boards and bags for some entertainment for our upcoming wedding. Popular in the USA, there are official specifications for competition level boards that seemed like a good starting point. Unfortunately these were imperial (2’ x 4’), but I begrudgingly stuck with them.
The construction of the boards is extremely simple:
- The frame was made from lengths of 2x4 square-cut and pocket screwed together
- The board face is simply 18mm ply cut to the appropriate size
- The holes in the boards were made using the small palm router with the circle guide
There is also a standard size and weight for the bags too. The fabric used was a 0.65mm cotton canvas from AliExpress which cost ~£5 for a half-metre. When sewing the bags I left a small hole (2-3cm) on the bottom to fill the bags with corn. After that I used a ladder stitch by hand to close the bags.
The most difficult part of the project was trying to find something to fill the bags with! Traditionally the bags are filled with corn (hence the name cornhole). I had the challenge of trying to buy a small quantity of corn, which is generally sold for agricultural purposes in enormous quantities. Eventually I found a local equestrian and farm shop that sold 20KG bags of French Maize for ~£10. This has left me with 15KG of surplus maize, which is free to a good home if you can make use of it.
Lessons learned:
- Don’t forget to use the radius, not diameter, of the circle when routing out the hole!
- I applied masking tape to the boards to paint the circle, using a pan lid to cut around as a circle template
- It can be difficult to give away 15KG of spare maize!
