Lacing Cards

 I was approached a couple weeks ago by a lady from one of the local churches

and was asked if it were possible if I or someone from our wood club would be interested in making some lacing cards for their church.  Their idea was that they wanted some cards made out of wood less than 6 inches in size.   They were looking for 24 cards of various shapes.  Some squares, some circles, triangles, and whatever else that could be made.   They planned to have the third and/or fourth graders paint these cards and put stickers or pictures on them.   Once that was done they would place one of those lacing cards along with a colored shoe lace in each of the activity bags that they had on hand.  These activity bags are to help entertain 2 or 3 year old children when they come to church.

   I volunteered that either I or some one in the club would do this, but between us - I really had no idea what a lacing card was.   That is when the research began on good old google.
There is a lot of info out there on how to make various lacing cards plus several YouTube videos.     I also went to a local hobby store to see if they had such a item for sale.   They did.  So I tried to peek through the package to see what those looked like.   (They were pretty nice.  $19.95 for a bundle of twelve.)



   No, I did not buy those.  I just slipped the box back on the shelf and went home.
    I started out by making a couple templates out of some hard board.    The first samples I made were square in shape with holes around the outside.  I then make some samples out of some scrap quarter inch thick plywood pieces I have laying around.  I took about four of those square samples to the lady "with the plan" to take a look at to see if that was what she had in mind.   A quarter of an inch was thicker than a lot of those I saw on you-tube or in the store.   She like them but asked if I could make them with slightly bigger holes.    She was thinking of using tennis shoe laces which may not thread easily in the holes that I had made.   That would not be a problem although the hole size I was using was similar to the samples I saw in the store.    (Oh well,  so much for research.)  


  Well, I got a little wild making up sample cards.  I did have a lot of 1/4 inch thick plywood pieces laying in my wood scrap pile.    Plus one of my wood working buddies gave me some of his 1/4 inch scrap he had on hand.   (I'm still working on my goal for 2017 to reduce the size of my wood scraps in storage.)  

   For somebody who does not like sanding, I found myself doing a lot of hand sanding.     Plywood when cut leaves an edge that could generate a small sliver.  (Yep! I tested that out a couple times myself.)   Plus I must of drilled over 200 holes.   The good thing is that I  discovered how to drill a nice neat hole without having any tear out on the back side from the drill bit.
    This lacing card project was just an educational lesson for this old retired wood worker.  ( I wonder if I will retain any of this new stuff I taught myself?)

   All in all I made a little over 50 of these things.    For a simple task it returned me back to my old high school geometry lessons.  For example, how many holes can be equally spaced around the outside of a circle?   What angle do you use to get three equal sides to a triangle?

    I gave the lady about thirty six of these so called "Lacing Cards".    A mixture of the four different patterns.    I kept a few back for grandma's toy box.  

What I do know now is if you ask me anything about lacing cards,  I am now quite informed   (But don't wait too long to ask!!!)