Magnetic teaching boards

[Aeneas]

Does anybody know where one can buy magnetic teaching boards? I live in Europe (Denmark).

Theodor

[leichtloeslich]

Wow, I thought the Hebsacker Verlag would have'em, but appearently not? (Couldn't find them in the shop.)

Anyway, seems easy enough to make one yourself. All you really need are the black and white magnets, not sure where to get those, actually.
http://www.usgo.org/make-your-own-demo-board

[Aeneas]

Thanks for the link, leichtloeslich! Probably I will end up doing something like that. But strange that it is so difficult to find a premade board on the internet ...

[gowan]

You might try contacting Kuroki Go Ishi Ten. They don't list a demonstration board on their website but they might be able to sell you one. You could also contact the Overseas Department at the NHihon Ki-in.

[oren]

http://item.rakuten.co.jp/nihonkiin/c/0 ... =2&#risFil

Nihon Kiin has theirs listed here.

[Aeneas]

Thanks for the suggestions, gowan and oren!

[Bonobo]

For the magnets you might try to search IKEA for fridge (or office) magnets. The ones I have were around 0,50 €, AFAIK, but (gladly) I didn’t have to pay for them. Else, I guess any office supplier should have such magnets.

Also, there shops who sell (and print onto) magnetic foil for cars/trucks, these would probably be my first choice when searching for a relatively cheap way to create my own magnetic teaching board. Templates for printing goban grids you can find here, you could put a background colour or image behind that in any layout or graphics or image editing program.

[danoontje]

A bit late, but hopefully this can still be useful.
Recently I've been making a board as well.
At first I wanted to order some stone from the Chinese webshop Taobao, for example these stones:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=201 ... 6600811478
They have pre-made magnetic demo boards as well.
But I couldn't figure out how to pay, and it seems they do not ship to Europe.
Different "taobao agents" exist to help you buy things there and take care of the shipping for a small fee.
You could have a look if there are any taobao agents in Denmark.

I ended up buying excactly the same stones from taobao, but instead from a webshop in Poland:
http://ponnuki.nazwa.pl/e-go/index.php? ... 9aff06c805

For the board I printed something at the local copy shop on vinyl that contains iron and attached it to a whiteboard of 1m x 1m.
I've attached the pdf that I printed out.

[golem7]

hebsacker have a demo board available now:

http://www.hebsacker-verlag.de/19x19-go ... -4954.html

[msgreg]

For DIY, you might consider "Wooden Domed Discs" available as craft supplies. Add 3/4 inch (19mm) ceramic magnets and a bit of craft adhesive (E-6000) and you have yourself some demonstration stones. Examples of what is available in the US market, see this blog post "Make Demonstration Stones"

Simple conversion to Euros yields about 0.18 Euros per stone, or about 65 Euros per set of 361 stones (plus paint, perhaps automotive or enamel black and white). It required many hours of searching to find the least expensive US source.

Standard 19x19 demonstration stones appear to be about 1.5 inches (38mm). You might be able to get cheaper DIY stones (and heavily increase the work required) by cutting black and white stones out of flexible magnetic sheets (or strips that are wide enough) with a leather punch.

[gowan]

I suppose that anything is better than nothing but in the interest of quality and utility I want to remind everyone of some issues involving magnetic demonstration boards. The main problem is the strength of the magnets on the stones. Most of the demonstration boards I've seen have magnetic stones that are too weak so they fall off the board, knocking other stones off, at the slightest provokation. This problem affects commercial demo equipment and is extremely frustrating when trying to give or view a demonstration. On the other hand, too strong magnets are bad, too, especially if the stones are too thin. It becomes difficult to remove the stones quickly and neatly. Advice: try out your stones before you make a lot of them.

[msgreg]

Advice: try out your stones before you make a lot of them.

Agreed. I would add: try out your stones on the board you'll be using.

The holding strength also depends on the thickness of the metal board to which you are attaching, which is why "magnetic paint" (which is actually "metallic paint" or rather, paint with suspended iron particles) is a poor substitute for a sheet of steel: the paint is too thin to provide holding strength. Something about the magnetic field going through the steel.

On my magnetic board ("standard" magnetic dry erase board, painted), the 3/4 inch ceramic magnets seem to be decent balance. I would *not* try magnetic sheeting on wood (probably too weak) nor rare earth magnets (too strong, and too expensive). I've tried craft 1/2 inch (flexible, round) magnets on plastic single convex go stones (22mm) and the magnet was way too week. It held, barely, if not bothered. As an aside, there appear to be three main thicknesses of flexible magnetic sheeting, which directly correspond to their magnetic strength.

Scroll down to "Magnet Strength - Holding Power" for some examples of three flexible magnetic sheet thicknesses compared to holding strength.