Lombax Scrabble
These photos are to document my quest to create a custom version of Scrabble... in Lombax!
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The tiles themselves are made out of 304 (18/8) stainless steel. They have been machine tumbled to dull the laser cut edges and make them easier and more comfortable to play. The symbols are marked directly into the metal using a black oxidize laser marking system; they should be completely permanent and stand up to scratches, cleaners, heavy use and physical abuse (even moderate sanding) without losing readability. These symbols are also completely smooth to the metal surface; no feeling around in the bag for a blank! The tiles were produced for me by Custom Laser, Inc., a contract laser processing house specializing in large and small scale parts replication and prototyping. Additional potential vendors were investigated and prototypes received, but Custom Laser was the most suitable; they were willing and able to produce stainless steel tiles at a cost comparable to or less than some of the acrylic manufacturers with vastly superior results. They also were extremely responsive to questions and helpful every step of the way. The tile dimensions are roughly 0.740 inches x 0.800 inches x 0.188 inches, matching the Deluxe Scrabble set. They should be completely interchangable with Deluxe Scrabble boards, and I have verified this on both a Deluxe Scrabble set from the 1970s and a Deluxe Onyx Edition set circa 2009. Dimensions were initially approximated from my own measurements of the tiles, but were later reverse engineered from sample tiles provided to Custom Laser. The symbols on the tiles were generated using the lombax font and Adobe Illustrator, with each tile being uniquely drawn in its own file, converted to paths and exported into EPS format. This file was given to Custom Laser and was used to perform the laser marking. The raw font was never shared with any vendor at any time during this project. These are the first prototypes in stainless steel, photo taken by Custom Laser, Inc. |
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Two different boards. The Onyx Edition, purchased in 2009 and a classic Deluxe Edition, purchased sometime during the 1970s. The tiles work on both boards, even though the older edition has a very slightly smaller grid. |
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A close up of some prototypes. You have two groups of the Custom Laser versions, another competitor (done in P95 acrylic) and the original tiles from the Onyx Edition. |
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A close up of some As, including the top one upside down, on the old board. Anyone remember Selchow & Righter? |
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To quote Steven Wright, "I go by thickness..." Both tiles are 3/16ths of an inch thick. |
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Five standard Onyx Edition tiles weigh about 4-5 grams. The scale was going back and forth on that. Roughly 1 gram per tile. |
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Heavy!!! Just like chess players prefer the heft of weighted pieces, I thought the same might apply to scrabble. Five prototype tiles weigh in just about 69-70 grams! At 14 grams per tile, that is a bit of heft. A full set of 130 tiles comes in at 1.82 KG, or 4 pounds! |
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The prototypes looked good, so it was time to submit the final set. Sorry about the blacked out letters... This layout includes all 100 standard tiles, the ampersand tile, my signature tile and one spare of each (except the signature), a total of 130 tiles. |
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Each set will consist of four tubes: "RATCHET", "&_CLANK", and two tubes making up an Extra Tile Bank. The Ratchet & Clank tubes are larger, each containing 51 scrabble tiles. Together, they make up a fully playable scrabble US distribution of 100 tiles, plus an additional (optionally playable) zero point ampersand tile and a special 'signature' tile featuring my avatar. The extra tile bank tubes are smaller, each containing 14 scrabble tiles. These combine to provide one of each playable character (A to Z, with a blank and ampersand). Because this is a custom, one time project, replacement parts will be almost impossible to get; I am planning ahead and giving each set a bank of spares to use if needed. I know how easy it is to lose a tile. In order to make the tubes interchangable for easier packing and shipping, all of the tubes of the same name have identical tile distributions: The RATCHET tube contains 7As, 2Bs, 4Ds, 11Es, 2Fs, 3Gs, 1H, 9Is, 1J, 3Ls and the letters spelling RATCHET. It also contains the special 'signature' tile. The &_CLANK tube contains the remaining letters: 2Ms, 5Ns, 8Os, 2Ps, 1Q, 5Rs, 4Ss, 4Ts, 4Us, 2Vs, 2Ws, 1X, 2Ys, 1Z, 1_ (blank), along with the letters spelling &_CLANK. The extra tile bank tubes contains the A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N and O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z, ampersand and blank tiles respectively. This photo is what a tube looks like. The ruler and the Secret Agent Clank figure are to give you a sense of scale and proportion. The RATCHET tube contains 51 tiles and the FOUND tube contains 14. These are as described above, only using onxy edition tiles to test. The small tube with 5 tiles is just one set of samples - these small tubes will not be used in the final packaging. |
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Some more photos of the packaging tubes, laid out and ready for tiles. |
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Christmas Eve 2009 saw the delivery of two small boxes from Custom Laser, Inc. |
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This is a close-up of the shipping labels. Note the combined weight of the two packages is 102 pounds / 46.26KG! Yes, these were small boxes, but very heavy. |
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Sadly, the interior packages containing the tiles burst open during shipment. It made for a real mess. Fortunately, I only lost one tile (an O) throughout the entire process! And don't bother looking - there are no unpublished tiles (J,X,Z) visible in this photo. |
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This is what I mean by an interior package. This is the block of E tiles, the most numerous of the entire set. I put the ruler and soda can in for scale. |
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Packaging required putting together the various layers of tiles, one by one. This is the first layer for the Ratchet tube, consisting of 7As, 2Bs and 1D. |
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Once laid out, they are moved into a tube, sliding them in very carefully. Here are a few with the first layer in place. |
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Skipping over a lot of mind numbing repetition, here are what the final batches of tubes look like - the Ratchet and Clank tubes, both with 51 tiles each. |
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And here are the banks of extra tiles. The A-N are on the left, the O-Blank are on the right. The banks are identical and in sequence. I displayed two tubes, side 1 and 2, for comparison. |
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Sorry about the dark photo. I was trying to get the weight visible, and the flash just kept washing it out. But it does say that a set is 1.87KG, or a little over 4 pounds per set! |
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And here they are, all packed nice and neat, ready to ship to their final destinations to the utter confusion and bewilderment of fans across at least four galaxies. They are being stored four to a box, due to their weight, and I have five boxes pictured here. For those doing the math, that is twenty sets. The other five are off camera: one in my personal lombax scrabble set, the other four in my safe for another day. |
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But can it actually be played? Yes! Although I strongly recommend that anyone that does so should wash the tiles very carefully with soapy water before playing the first Scrabble game. The tiles arrived with traces of the tumbling powder still evident, enough to stain my hands when handling them for any length of time. It should wash right off, but I was not about to clean thousands of tiles before packing them! |
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For those too lazy to do the translation themselves, here it is with standard tiles. This photo was taken before the lombax tiles arrived, so I did not have an ampersand. Use your imagination. |
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Up until this point, I have mainly been concentrating on the tiles. This is because the tiles are so much rarer and required manufacture. There are already a number of sources for customized Scrabble boards on the internet. And given the number of choices, materials, color schemes and methods of personalization, I decided to let everyone get their own custom board should they see fit to do so. As for me, I picked up a colorless / clear acrylic board from Adjudicator. The frosted look should go nicely with the steel tiles, and I can always add a little customization later if I choose to. |