At our previous house I had set up simple “Ring the Bull” game in our carport. I used a piece of wood from Joann and some hardware from Ace. When we moved to this house, it got put in the shed and has sat there since. For this year’s birthday/Father’s Day, I decided to get it set up at this house.
The wood had mildewed and gotten dirty in the shed. The bulk of the project was getting the wood cleaned up and finished. I removed all the old hardware and sanded it clean. In the time since first putting it up at the old house, I’ve learned that the bare wood needs some kind of protective coat. I also wanted to give it some kind of design.
I applied a coat of wood conditioner and then put strips of painters’ tape across the face of the board. The tape didn’t stick well, which I wasn’t sure was because of old tape, the wood conditioner, or both. After reaching a threshold of impatience and the tape somewhat staying, I drew an outline of a bull head on the tape. I scored the tape and the wood with an x-acto knife and peeled the interior tape off.
I found a technique for staining patterns while making last year’s cornhole project. By both masking and scoring the wood and using a gel stain, the bulk of stain bleed can be prevented. So I did that again with the ring the bull board. Since I wasn’t confident in the taping job, I was careful to only apply the stain pushing in from the tape edges.
On reflection, I think a better woodworker would have avoided attempts to stain a design. Instead, for the cornhole, would have edge jointed the top panel out of two different colors of wood and, for the ring the bull, used an inlay.
I gave it two coats of stain. Then I removed the tape and applied four coats of Lost Art Press “Shop Finish.”
I mounted the board to one of our carport columns. Instead of tying the cord to a screw eye hook in the ceiling, I ran it through a series of screw eye hooks to a rope cleat. With this set up, I can adjust the length of the cord as it stretches, and I can also pull the ring all the way up to make room for cars in the carport. For tying the ring to the cord, I used this bull hitch, appropriately enough.
This was a nice straightforward project that allowed me to focus on wood finishing, a part of the process I don’t have a lot of confidence in.
