How to Build a Shuffleboard Court

LESLIE: Vince in California is looking to spend his leisure time playing shuffleboard and wants to build one himself. How can we help?

VINCE: I’m a homeowner with average skills. You know.

TOM: Mm-hmm.

VINCE: And I’m looking to build a shuffleboard court which has got to be 70 feet long and 5 feet wide.

TOM: Wow.

VINCE: Obviously with a very smooth surface.

TOM: Right.

VINCE: The soil is slightly on the acidic side and it’s well-drained. Other than that …

TOM: Well, I mean don’t you want to create a slab for this shuffleboard surface? So it wouldn’t essentially be a concrete slab? And by the way, you said it’s 70 feet?

VINCE: Yes.

TOM: I thought it was 39. Is that incorrect?

LESLIE: Well, 39 is the playing area. I think 60 feet is like the whole surround and you know, the cheering sections.

TOM: (overlapping voices) Oh, with the warm-up area. Yeah. Yeah.

What I would do is – pouring a concrete slab is not an easy do-it-yourself project; it’s something that should be done by a pro. So what I would do is kind of split this into two tasks: the stuff that you have to hire out and the stuff you can do yourself. Getting the ground ready, getting the forms built so that it’s absolutely, perfectly level and properly reinforced is really the job of a pro and you’re going to have a reinforced concrete slab because it will crack. So the ground is going to have to be well-tamped; the concrete is going to have to be poured with a woven wire mesh inside of it; it’s going to have to be the right type of concrete and that’s all stuff you should leave up to a pro to do and they can certainly make it very, very smooth.

Now, once the slab is poured and the forms are removed, then you can set about framing it in to contain the pucks. You can also – there are shuffleboard templates available that can help you do all the painting to get it to align properly and have all the scoring right and all of that sort of thing. But I don’t think pouring the slab yourself is a real good idea because it’s very difficult to pour a slab to begin with and to get one 70 feet long and straight, not a job for a first-timer.

LESLIE: Yeah. Well, and you know what? Also, Vince, if you’re looking for something that perhaps can sit on top of your well-drained yard without major construction, there’s a website called Shuffleboard.com – I mean it’s as simple as that; or PlanetShuffleboard.com; they both take you to the same place. And it’s basically a set that you just sort of lay out. I mean it’s kind of pricey – it’s in like the $1,000 range – but when you get to all the details of it, it might end up being the same thing by the time you have concrete poured and paint and everything.

VINCE: Right. OK. What kind of a paint would you recommend over the top?

TOM: An epoxy paint. It’s going to give you the best adhesion.

LESLIE: Yeah, you want it to really adhere.

VINCE: OK, thanks. Well, you guys have been a wealth of information. Thank you.

TOM: Alright, Vince. Good luck with that project.

LESLIE: Yeah, have fun.

TOM: What a fun project; building a shuffleboard court.

VINCE: You bet.