One of my favorite additions to games is custom poker chips. They can be used for any number of different things, like soldier tokens in Kingsburg, control markers in Ethnos, commodities in Jaipur, or currency in any number of games, but most notably relevant to this tutorial, For Sale. Building chip-rack to hold custom poker chips is a pretty straightforward process, especially if you’ve followed any of my other tutorials to build card boxes or bit boxes.

On that note, this tutorial is intended as a supplement to my Graphics-Wrapped Chipboard Boxes tutorial. While the process detailed here can be adapted for making all kinds of poker chip racks (and other accessories), the design I lay out in this tutorial is specifically built for inclusion in a custom card box built using my other tutorial(s).

This also means there will be parts of this tutorial that assume your knowledge of previous tutorials. While I will go into a lot of detail here, I won’t be re-hashing the nitty gritty details like why certain measurements are the way they are, or how to glue two pieces together easily. Please reference my previous tutorials if you need that information.

The rack we’ll be building in this tutorial will have three wells to hold exactly 60 poker chips, which is perfect for my custom Jaipur and For Sale boxes, but can be easily adapted to handle more or fewer chips. For example, the rack in my Splendor box has two rows for exactly 40 chips, which just happens to be how many chips are in Splendor.

MATERIALS NEEDED

INITIAL MEASUREMENTS AND CUTTING

If you’ve followed my previous tutorials, you know I standardized the sizes of all of my boxes. The internal space of the card boxes is 72mm wide, so card risers and accessory racks will always be 71mm wide, in order to fit in that space snugly after wrapping visible parts in linen paper.

The beauty of this measurement? It perfectly fits a stack of 20 poker chips. I really wish I could say I did that on purpose, but it just happened to be a bit of serendipity. I found out after I’d made the custom poker chips for Jaipur. When I started contemplating making a custom box for that game, I was brainstorming different ways to store the poker chips. I dropped a stack of chips into another box I’d built just to test, and lo-and-behold they fit perfectly. That’s when I designed this custom chip rack.

So, we’ll start by cutting off a 71mm wide strip of chipboard from which we will cut several pieces.

Virtually all poker chips are 40mm in diameter, especially the blank chips designed for stickering, like the ones I link to in my Custom Poker Chips tutorial. The wells in our chip rack will round out to roughly 41mm across; snug enough to hold the chips well but not so tight as to make the chips hard to remove.

After tons of measurement and trial-and-error, the easiest way to accomplish this size is to mark your chipboard base every 43mm and use those guides for placing the dividers in the chip rack. The thickness of the chipboard, when finally installed, brings the width of each well down to roughly 41mm, give or take fractions (which is plenty close enough for our purposes).

So, the first thing you’ll do with that 71mm wide strip of chipboard is make three marks, every 43mm, like so:

Use those markings to draw three lines across your base. The third line (at 129mm) will be where you cut, so you’ll end up with a base piece that looks like this:

Next, we’ll create the side walls and dividers for the chip rack. As mentioned before, poker chips are 40mm across, so we’ll create walls that are just over half that at 22mm. This way, enough of the chip is exposed that they’re easy to remove, but the walls are high enough to keep them from tipping over. So, start by cutting a 22mm strip of chipboard, which we’ll proceed to cut into smaller pieces.

NOTE: Depending on the size of your chipboard, you may need to cut two 22mm strips to accommodate all the smaller pieces we’ll need.

For the long sides of the rack, you’re going to repeat the exact same process you used for the base: make three marks on the strip at 43mm intervals, and cut at the third line. Do this twice, so you end up with two 129mm x 22mm strips, both with two lines to mark where dividers will be placed, like this:

Since we’ve cut two full-length side walls, the end walls and dividers will all be the same size. Remember, we always have to account for the width of the chipboard on either side. We can’t just cut the end walls and dividers at 71mm, or they’ll be too long. We subtract 3mm (chipboard is 1.5mm thick, x2), giving us a measurement of 68mm x 22mm. Cut four pieces off of your 22mm strip.

When you’re done, you should have a base plate and six wall/divider pieces, like this:

ASSEMBLY

Break out your glue! We’ll get this whole process started by applying a bead of glue around the entire perimeter of the base plate, as well as along the divider lines we drew earlier, like this:

Next, take one of your long side walls and apply beads of glue to either end and to the divider lines, like so…

…then glue it into place along the side of your base plate.

Because of how we applied the glue to the other pieces, you won’t need to add any glue to the ends and dividers. You can just start putting them in place. Start with an end wall:

Then, using the guide-lines, glue the dividers in place like this…

…and this.

Finish off the smaller pieces by gluing the last end wall in place.

Last, apply glue to your other long side wall at the ends and along the lines just like the first one, then drop it into place along the open side.

And you’re done! Really, you’re finished with the hardest bit. Your chip rack should look something like this:

Let your finished rack sit until the glue dries before continuing on. We’ll be manipulating the whole rack in the coming section, and you don’t want to mess up all the careful construction you’ve just done.

RAISING THE RACK

You might be wondering how, in the boxes I’ve posted pictures of, a rack like this sits flush with the top of the card riser in the box. Obviously a 24mm tall rack would just drop into a box whose bottom half is 50mm in height.

We solve this problem by simply adding riser walls to the bottom of the chip rack. We want the chip rack to be the same height as the card riser overall. You’ll recall the risers in my standard boxes are always 65mm tall.

Start by measuring the height of your chip rack. If you’ve done everything correctly, it’ll be a hair under 24mm tall; we’ll just round up to 24mm. Next, subtract that from our desired overall height of 65mm, giving us a measurement of 41mm. Cut a 41mm wide strip of chipboard from which we’ll make the base.

Remember, the dimensions of our base are 71mm x 129mm. So, were just going to cut walls that we’ll glue to the bottom of the chip rack at those dimensions. I like to do the end walls at full width, so start by cutting two 71mm wide pieces off of your 41mm strip. Then, cut two longer pieces at 126mm (129mm – the length of our base – minus 3mm for the thickness of the end walls).

You should end up with four pieces that look like this:

Flip your completed chip rack upside down and apply a bead of glue around the entire edge.

Grab one of your short end walls and apply a bead of glue to either end…

 

…then glue it into place on the bottom of your chip rack.

Glue the two long side walls in place…

…prepare the other short end wall just like the first one…

…and glue it into place. Your finished, raised chip rack will look like so:

Now, you have a chip rack that’s 65mm tall and will sit flush with the height of your card riser inside a custom card box. The height of the chip rack is not solely an aesthetic choice. It needs to be that tall because it will – just like a card riser in the basic box design – be part of what holds the box lid in place.

WRAPPING THE TOP OF THE CHIP RACK

Just like the riser in a card box, the top of the chip rack will be wrapped in linen paper. This is partially for aesthetics, but also to add texture and friction to the top of the rack to help hold the box lid in place.

Start by cutting a long, 40mm wide strip of linen paper.

If you don’t have access to large sheets of linen paper (mine are 12”x18”), you might need to cut two strips to wrap around the entire circumference of the chip rack.

Next, cut two 30mm x 68mm pieces, like so:

These pieces will be used to cover the top of the dividers, to ensure a unified look for the whole chip rack.

Lastly, draw lengthwise lines down the middle of these two smaller pieces. I’ll explain this later.

Apply spray adhesive to the lined side of these two pieces.

Then, using the line you drew earlier, position one of these pieces atop one of the dividers, centered on the line.

Fold the paper over the top of the divider to glue it in place…

…then repeat for the second divider.

If you’ve built one of the card boxes in my previous tutorial, the rest of this process will be very familiar to you, with a notable exception I’ll describe in a minute. Grab your long piece of linen paper and apply spray adhesive to one side. Position it along the long side of your chip rack, either in line with or slightly above the base plate, like so:

Make sure you have a small bit hanging over so that the opposing ends of the wrap will overlap on the finished product. Now, tightly wrap the strip around the entire top of the chip rack, cutting off any excess at the end.

Cut all four corners of the paper, like so:

This is where the process deviates slightly from building a standard box riser. You’ll have to make four more cuts to accommodate the dividers in the rack. Flip the box on its side and freehand these cuts where the risers meet the side wall, like this:

You should end up with something like this:

Now, go around the rim and fold the excess paper into the interior of the chip rack like so.

Using something stiff (your thumbnail, the edge of a ruler, a bone folder like in the picture), cram the paper into the corners of the box. BE FIRM BUT CAREFUL when doing this, as you can break the joins at your corners, especially where the dividers are glued.

And you’re done! Your finished rack will look something like this:

Now, drop some chips in to make sure they fit (they will):

BUILDING YOUR BOX

If you remember my bit box tutorial, I mentioned that you should always build the bit box and riser for your card box first, because they will determine the size of your finished card box. The same is true for a chip rack. Building the chip rack and the riser should always be the very first step of building a custom card box.

So, once you’ve built your chip rack, build the riser for your cards. In the case of For Sale, the external dimensions of the riser are 71mm x 50mm. Place your riser and chip rack end-to-end and take the overall measurement. In this case, I came up with 180mm.

You might be saying “But Luke, 129+50 is only 179!”. As I’ve mentioned before, there are tolerances to everything we do here, since we’re cutting and measuring everything by hand. An extra millimeter does not surprise me in the least. In fact, when I was building the actual For Sale box, another millimeter crept in there, and I ended up with a box that’s 185mm in total length (because the chip rack and riser were 181mm together; see the box tutorial for an explanation of sizing).

None of this is a problem. Everything will fit fine and snug in the final box because of imperfections in measurement, thickness of glue (sometimes an issue) and the thickness of the paper wraps. I bring all this up simply to illustrate that these things happen, and are normal.

AND YOU’RE DONE

Here’s what my finished For Sale box looks like.

If you’ve followed my tutorials to this point, you’ll now be able to combine my original box tutorial, my custom poker chip tutorial, and this tutorial to create boxes exactly like my custom For Sale and Jaipur setups. Box wrap artwork and measurements for those two boxes are available in my tutorials GeekList, and I’ll be adding information for some of my other, more complicated boxes in the following weeks.

Hopefully this has been informational!

Thanks for reading, and happy crafting!

BONUS CONTENT!

The method described here for making chip racks is essentially identical to the process for building other accessory racks for custom card boxes. For example, with slightly altered measurements, I used the same process to build the custom card rack for my Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game box:

The method of building a platform, then raising it with walls underneath to bring it level with the card riser allows you to build all kinds of custom risers for different sized cards and tiles. This method is used for the tile rack in my Lanterns: The Harvest Festival box…

…as well as the tile rack in my Splendor box.

 

When I post the details of these more complex boxes to my Tutorials GeekList, I’ll include specific measurements for constructing tile racks and risers for custom card sizes. Hopefully it’ll be fairly easy for you to extrapolate the process for those accessory racks if you’d like to build boxes like this of your own.

Speaking of Splendor, be aware that the gem chips in Splendor are actually larger than standard chips, coming in at 43mm instead of 40mm. If you intend to recreate my Splendor build, make the following alterations:

– The measurements for the base plate are 71mm x 90mm. Draw a guide line at 45mm, right down the middle, for placing the divider.

– The rack only has two rows instead of three, so you’ll only need one divider.

– The dimensions of the long side walls are 22mm x 90mm, and the dimensions of the end walls/divider are 22mm x 68mm.

Everything else is identical.

I’ll be adding wrap artwork and measurement info for my more complex boxes to my Tutorials GeekList in the coming weeks, but the info for Splendor, Jaipur, and For Sale are all there now.

Thanks for reading, and happy crafting! Again!

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