The Rival Coin

Oh boy, do I have a good rival to carve onto either side of this!

A wooden coin with the carving of a ladder on the side showing, and a snake on the opposite, the ultimate rivalry. It sits on a grey bag with a small tag attached saying that this is the rival coin, with the instructions for the item in small text, sitting on a marble table.

Originally planned to be made from a stone (the candidates of which can be seen in some of the Wand of Wonder pics), ground flat and then round, I wasn't the entire fondest of that (and also couldn't find my old stone coins from childhood when I had access to a table grinder... oh childhood lol), because it would be somewhat fragile, and also difficult to carve a design into with my present tools... but then I realized... I have wooden disks! Aw yus, not only do I even have several of them already cut and not carved with various designs or words, but I (obviously) have the tools to carve these! So we quickly dug out a nice, fairly round disk, and gave it a quick initial sanding to get it nice and flat and even thickness from one side to another (it wasn't quite even thickness initially). By coincidence, through my huntings for the stone coins, I stumbled across a convenient sized grey pouch to use for this item, though I do want to make it a bit shallower for the coin, so it will take a little bit of sewing to snip off the bottom centimeter of the bag.

As per usual, we printed the instructions in little tiny text, which I could attach to the bag for the coin (which was also the purpose of the pouch, as there would be no way of attaching the instructions to the coin directly).

And then came the carving. We penciled on the design to begin with, using google image searches for snake and ladder clipart, and proceeded to use my carving tools to set them into the coin. I then gave it a spray with clear varnish to keep the paint from soaking into the wood, painted in the patterns, and then re-sanded the surfaces to give them a clean wood appearance. As a bonus, the varnish remained around the sides of the coin on the bark to protect the surface of it! A quick snip and stitch of the bottom of the pouch, and it was made a good size for the coin. The ultimate rivalry, snakes and ladders (wiki). Naturally, heads should be the ladder and tails should be the snake, despite that a snake has both a head and tail, but it's mostly tail, so we're going with that. Also ladders are the 'good' thing to get, so that of course had to be the good result.

And with that, the Rival Coin is complete!

Finished January 15, 2025




Did you want to flip the coin?
 A photo of a grey pouch, presently inside out for modification, with the miniature instructions, tiny printed text taped to a small blue plastic square with a hole in the upper right corner, attached to the bag through the drawstring, and beside it a blank wooden disk about an inch and a half across with the bark still attached.The ladder side of the coin partially carved, with the remainder of the ladder showing as having been drawn in with pencil, going up at an angle to the right for style purposes.

The tails side of the coin, which shows a black stencil of a snake in a zig-zag type of position, looking a bit like the letter m, basically a wavy black line going left to right, sitting on a paperboard work surface.The finished ladder side of the coin, beside the opposite side of the instruction tag which indicates that heads is ladder and tails is snake. Technically a snake has both a head and a tail, but I figure it's mostly tail, so it counts as that.

The finished coin, showing the ladder side, sitting on top oft he pouch now size-fit for the coin, with the rival coin instructions attached to the drawstring of the bag, sitting on a marble surface.