Tiki Toss Backyard Game

It’s full-on summer right now and what does that mean? No, not that it’s super hot outside, ok well may be that, but not only that. It means it’s time to do some backyard grilling. So what are you going to do while you have your meat, or veggies, on the grill cooking? Go back inside and try to stay cool? Of course not, half the fun of grilling is hanging outside with your friends and family, having a few….uh lemonades, and talking. Why not have a little fun and competition to the mix as well. This project is super fun and super easy to build. You only need a couple of pieces of wood, some hardware, and string. I’ve been converting old whiskey barrels into whiskey barrel bar cabinets in the shop lately so I decided to use the staves from the barrels that get removed for the opening to make into the tiki toss game. If you don’t have a couple of old barrel staves laying around you can easily just use a couple of pieces of wood from any big box store.

2 pieces of wood 4 inches wide by 15 inches long

1 dowel 15 inches long and 1 3/8 diameter

2 1 inch diameter rings

2 small eye hooks

2 small open sided hooks

string

The first thing you need to do for this build is to find the middle of the 2 boards and make a small mark. Since these were made from old whiskey barrels I had to use chalk to make any marks that would show up because before they pour the whiskey into the barrels they char the inside of the barrels and that’s what gives whiskey the color you are used to seeing. Now you need to find the correct sized Forstner bit that fits the dowel you have. In my case, I got the 1 ⅜ Forstner bit, and drill the holes for the dowel about halfway through the boards. Now I will change out my bit to a smaller bit and predrill completely through the bottom so that you can put a screw in. I like to add a screw to help hold in the dowel but glue will hold everything together plenty strong, it will just take a little longer to make because you have to let the glue dry when you add the dowel later. Then you need to mark 1 inch in and centered on the piece of wood that will be the top piece of your game. At these marks make sure to predrill a hole with a small drill bit so that your eye hooks can easily be screwed in. You can screw these in now if you want but if you plan on painting the wood you might want to hold off on installing any of the hardware. This next part is a little tricky but super important. Get your dowel and predrill a small hole completely through the dowel 4 inches from the bottom. The hard part about this is centering the drill bit in the very middle of the dowel. You need to get this as close to the middle as possible because you want both sides to be as close to the same as possible. If you are just a little off it’s ok but try to get it as centered as you can. Look at you, you are like halfway done now. All that’s left now is to assemble everything together.

Start by taking a little bit of wood glue and putting it inside the hole you drilled for the dowel. You want to make sure you put enough glue in to coat the bottom and sides of the hole but not so much that you are going to get a ton of squeeze out. Since you can’t easily get into such a tight corner with a wet towel to clean up the glue, you want to try to keep squeeze out to a minimum. If you put too much glue in it’s not a big deal it just takes a little more effort during finishing. Now you put your dowel in and flip it over and put the screw down the middle to hold it all together while the glue dries. Do the same thing for the top piece. The tricky part with this is to make sure the top and bottom pieces are in line with each other. I just laid the pieces on their side so that the table made sure they were in line with each other. If you plan on painting your game now is the time. Make sure that you wipe off any glue squeeze-out and do a little sanding and go to town painting your game. For my build, I wasn't planning on painting it so I went ahead and installed the hardware now.

After your paint is dry you can go ahead and screw in all of your hardware. You want to screw in the eye hooks on the top and the hooks on the bottom of the dowel rod, where you predrilled your holes. Then take your string and tie one end to the ring. Now hook the ring onto the hook that’s on the dowel and put the other end of the string through the eye hook on the top. Pull it fairly tight and tie it. Now before you cut off any extra string give it a couple of tosses to make sure that it’s long enough to hook on the hook. This can take a little time but it’s practice, so you will be able to dominate the competition when your playing against your older sister. After you make sure that the string is the correct length go ahead and make a good knot in your string and cut off any extra. If you really want to make sure it won’t come untied you can put a drop of super glue on the knot, just make sure you don’t glue the string to the eye hook. Do the same thing with the other side and you are ready to challenge your family and friends to a quick game of tiki toss, or ring toss, or hook and ring, or any one of the dozens of names I’ve heard this game called. I used a dark walnut danish oil to finish my Tiki Toss. The outside of the staves are dark and a little beaten already and the dark walnut oil didn't darken them much, but the edges where they were protected did darken enough so that they blended together better.

So a quick run down on how I've been told to play this game.

1. sit apart from your competitor with each person having access to an arm of the game

beside the game there should be 5 marks with a drink of .... umm lemonade in the middle spot

each person tried to hook the ring on the hook installed on the post. For every time that one person hooks the ring you move the drink one mark closer to the other person

when the drink goes past the final mark that person has to drink the lemonade. use a shot of whiskey instead of lemonade if your old enough.