Building a knock hockey game can be as simple as you want to make it. There are many plans offered over the internet for free that are adequate, but they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. I spent a lot of hours developing my knock hockey boards. I don’t make them now, but I do offer the plans I developed after hours and hours in the shop refining the heirloom boards I sold for a few years. I still have hopes of bringing my special board back to life. In the photos you can see the workmanship and care that went into one of my knock hockey wooden game boards.
Homemade version of Knock Hockey (NOK Hockey) wooden game
I’ve seen plans for free that require inexpensive materials that are held together with glue and nails. Hardboard is used for the surface and inexpensive white pine for the side rails. The blocks in front of the goals are not sized right in proportion to the surface area and the goal mouths. In the long run it probably doesn’t matter to a kid as long as he has some kind of stick and puck to play with and some kind of surface to play on.
Views of the Monster 3x4 Knock Hockey Game
When I was constructing my version of the original Carrom NOK Hockey game I took it to the next level. Carrom’s board has been around for decades and is fabricated with hardboard, pine, long bolts and nails or maybe screws. I have yet to put my hands on one up close to disect it. I have links to these boards on my website because they are available and pretty cheap. It’s not where I wanted my business to go however. My boards were made of 5/8″ cabinet grade baltic birch (BB)plywood for overall stability and durability. The sticks were made of 1/2″ BB plywood or maple and I even made a few custom cherry sticks and pucks. Mostly the pucks were out of hard maple. The joints were all glued and screwed with the screws countersunk and plugged with maple plugs. It visually made a nice contrasting effect in the game’s appearance. The surfaces of the game were sanded down to 220 with a pad sander and then down to 400 grit by hand. The lines and goal areas were made of custom peel and stick .002 vinyl which if you tried to take off the wood surface would actually rip the plywood. The surfaces were then oiled with 2 applications of tongue oil, dried for 24 hours minimum, then hand polished with 0000 steel wool and waxed with bowling alley wax. Combining this method of finishing the surface and finishing the maple pucks the same way achieved an amazingly frictionless air hockey type puck movement. This could never be achieved by coating the surface with some poly or plastic finish. There is just too much friction. So now you know my secrets which I reveal in my plans anyway.
My most popular Knock Hockey board complete with Red Line and Blue Lines.
So all you do it yourselfers… good luck with all the free available plans out there and the information I added to make your knock hockey dream board come true. You can purchase my plans by clicking on the navigation bar for the plans. You won’t be sorry.
