DIY Wood Settlers of Catan Board Made with xTool M1
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Settlers of Catan is one of our favorite family games. We play it all the time and the kids really enjoy playing it with us. Since we have more than 4 people in our family, we have the extended version of Catan. To make the game even more special to us, I decided that it would be fun to make our own wooden Settlers of Catan board with my xTool M1. When I started the project, I didn’t think it would turn out as good as it did. But once again, the xTool M1 preformed beautifully and cut the wood out better than I expected. It still amazes me what this machine can do and that I was able to make a DIY Settlers of Catan board out of several pieces of plywood. It’s a crazy awesome laser cutter, that is for sure!
Here is a quick video to show you how I made this amazing wood Settlers of Catan board with xTool.
This is how I made the DIY Settlers of Catan board. I looked at the original Catan game and tried to get the pieces to be about the same size as the original game. We also have the extension pack, so I used that to make decisions too. Then I went and designed the board pieces. I made the wheat, ore, brick, sheep, wood and desert pieces in another program and then converted it to a SVG file. I then uploaded the SVG in XCS. I sized them to be 3 inches high and 3.425 inches wide. I then situated the board pieces so that I could cut 9 of them in one 12×12 sheet of 3mm basswood plywood. I used the settings for 3mm basswood plywood and sent it to the machine.
As you can tell by the picture, the xTool M1 10W machine does a great job cutting out all of the little cuts. The pieces of wood that were cut, just fell through, I love it when that happens.
Here are all of the different resources of Catan. I love all the details of the different resources. I used my air assist while cutting too, so there are no scorch marks on them, which makes them look even better!
For the back of the wood Catan board pieces, I decided to use a nicer wood. So I went with the walnut plywood because the color is amazing and it has a great finish to it.
The back board pieces are the same size as the other ones, 3 inches by 3.425.
Here is what they look like together. Doesn’t the basswood plywood and walnut plywood just look so good together?? I love the contrast the two woods bring. I could have left the board pieces like this but the colors really help when you are playing the game, so I decided to paint them.
Using acrylic paint, I painted all of the Catan board pieces. You can go as detailed as you want, I went pretty simple because I am no artist and can’t paint very well :). So one color per piece was enough for me. Except I did venture out and paint the sheep two colors.
Here are all of the Catan board pieces all painted and ready to be glued to the pretty walnut pieces. There are 30 board pieces total for the extended version of Settlers of Catan. There are:
5 Ore
5 Brick
6 Wood
6 Sheep
6 Wheat
2 Deserts
For the non extended version, you will need 19 pieces:
3 Ore
3 Brick
4 Wood
4 Wheat
4 Sheep
1 Desert
Here are all of the board pieces glued together. I used a precision tip E6000 glue so I could put glue onto the all of the little silvers of wood so that they would be glued down and won’t break off as easily.
Once I got all of the Settlers of Catan board pieces done, I started working on the wooden numbers that go onto the pieces. I could have used the ones that came with the game, but we have lost a couple of them and wanted a new set of the extended pack numbers. In XCS I designed these numbers. They are 1.25 x 1.25 inches. I had the xTool M1 machine engrave and cut at the same time. I did that by highlighting the circles and clicking the cut button and then I highlighted the letters and numbers and clicked the engrave button. You can tell if they are ready to go by the colors of the design. The purple lines will be cut and the solid orange will be engraved.
Here are all of the Catan numbers cut! You can get that cut file here:
Catan Extended Version Numbers
Now time for the border. You don’t need the border, the wooden Catan board pieces do a good job staying still for the most part but the border definitely helps keep everything in line and tightens the gaps. Using the border pieces for the original Catan game, I was able to design the border. Since my wood Catan board pieces aren’t the exact same size as the original ones, I had to figure out the sizing myself. Once I figured it out, I then cut out the pieces. For the extended version, you will need 6 of longer border pieces and 4 of the shorter ones. You can fit 3 long and 2 short on a 12 x 12 plywood.
This is how the border pieces will fit around the Catan board game. It took a few trial and errors before I got the border just right.
Since the Catan board pieces are made with two layers, I had to make the border 2 layers too. I glued them together and then using painters tape and binder clips, I made sure they were nice and flat and let the glue cure so they would stay flat. Sometimes the plywood is warped and bigger pieces like this won’t lay flat, so this is an easy fix for it.
I painted the border pieces a pretty blue. I was so excited to see the whole Catan board put together!
Since I had just made the whole Catan board out of wood, I thought, “Why stop there?” So I decided that I might has well make some personalized boards to hold all of the roads, settlements and cities. I made ones for everyone in our family and then I also made some blank ones for guests. Once again, I cut and engraved at the same time. The size of these are 3.533 inches high and 4.069 inches wide.
You can get the SVG file for these piece holders here:
Catan Road and Settlement Holder
For these holders, I wanted to use the pretty walnut plywood because I just love the finish of it.
For the Catan piece holders, I cut the back ground piece out of basswood and the front out of walnut, basically opposite of the board pieces. I then glued the two pieces together.
All of the roads, settlements and cities fit perfectly in the holder! It’s so nice to have these because you can see how many roads everyone has left. When you are trying to go for the longest road, you can see if anyone else can beat you based off of how many roads they have left.
The last thing I decided to make was a holder for the resource cards and development cards. I ended up making two sets because it’s easier to have the cards on both sides of the board. When I cut these, I actually had it score, cut and engrave all at the same time. It’s so cool that you can do that. The outside lines were cut, the words and pictures were engraved and then the little rectangles around the pictures were scored. For these holders, I could put everything onto one sheet of plywood except for one set of the side pieces. I had to use scraps for that.
This is what you need for one set of card holders. The dimensions are as follows:
Back piece- 8.074 inches wide and 1 inch high
Bottom piece-8.31 inches wide and 4.047 inches high
Side pieces- 1 inch wide and 4.047 inches high
Middle side pieces- 1 inch wide and 3.929 inches high
I glued them altogether using glue and then painters tape to help hold and set the glue.
Here is the card holder all put together.
The cards fit nicely into the card holder.
And that’s it!! The DIY Settlers of Catan board game is done!
This wasn’t a super quick project, it took me a couple days to complete it but I love how it turned out! It also took a lot of wood, I think I used about 20 sheets of 12 x 12 plywood altogether. 5 pieces of walnut and the rest was basswood.
I made the extended version of Catan, but it can still be used as the original version. You just have to take out the small border pieces and 11 of the Catan board pieces, 2 of each resource and 1 desert.
Either way you play it, with 4 people or 6, it’s still a super cool wooden Catan board!
We have played with this wooden Catan board game a few times. It has worked out great every time. What is nice about the wood board pieces is that they are much more sturdy than the original cardboard ones. The roads, settlements and cities sit perfectly on the wood and they don’t move much, even if someone bumps the board. The border is nice to have too. I decided not to engrave the maritime trades onto the border and just use the extra pieces that came with the game.
I can’t wait to spend countless hours playing this game with my family, it truly is one of our favorites! I’m tempted to see if I could build to it and add even more pieces and make it a 7-8 player game. I’ll let you know if I figure it out :).
**Update**
I figured out how to make a 7-8 player board game! What is great about this game set is that you can build onto it, but you don’t have to use the 8 player board all the time. You can set it up for up to 8 players or for 6 players or just 4 players. It is totally up to you, it is very versatile. Just like the original game, all you have to do is set up the border to the size you want and then fill it in with the resource pieces.
The 8 player Catan board is awesome!! It’s big and so cool!! I loved how many resources were on the board, it was so fun to play with more than 6 people. It worked out so well and I can’t wait to play it more and more.
For the 8 player Catan board, I added 14 new resource pieces:
2 wood
2 sheep
3 ore
3 wheat
3 brick
1 desert
I also added 4 pieces to the border, to make the all the resource fit. As you can see by the picture, the border has 6 big pieces and 8 smaller pieces.
I also had to make new numbers to fit the all the resource pieces. There are now 41 numbers. I made up a new set and you can get it here:
I also purchased a few sets of the roads, cities and settlements off of Etsy since I only had 6 sets.
We played the game and it was so much fun! It went surprisingly quick for having 7 people play. It was so much fun to have such a big board to play on with lots of resources.
If you decide to make the whole set, here are the pieces needed for each version of the game.
2-4 players: 19 resource pieces and the 6 bigger border pieces.
5-6 players: 30 resource pieces, 6 bigger border pieces and 4 smaller border pieces.
7-8 players: 44 resource pieces, 6 bigger border pieces and 8 smaller border pieces.
Happy playing!!
Want to see what else I have made with my awesome xTool M1 machine?? Check out all of my other projects here!
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