Round about two years ago, i played “Settlers of Catan” with a couple of friends nearly every week. So naturally, we hoped on the expansions very quick. After playing “Seafarers” and “Cities & Knights” quite extensively, we got the “Explorers & Pirates” expansion. It altered the gameplay, which was a nice shake up. Part of the changes are the gold coins, which you can now earn. There are plenty included, which is nice, but there is no box or any way of holding them during the game. So they scrambled around on the table and it was quite annoying to pick them up.
I wanted to fix that, so I got the idea to make a box, which holds the coins like the holder for the resource cards. On top of that, the coins should be stored in it, so packing and setting them up gets easier.
So I fired up my CAD Program and designed the box. This process was straight forward, especially because I knew from the beginning, that I wanted all parts to be cut out on a laser. I went with 3 mm MDF, because it is cheap, but you can use nearly any material with the same thickness (for example Acrylic or Plywood). The bottom part holds the coins, with the smaller ones in the first row, the bigger ones behind it and dividers keeping the coins from rolling around. The top part is a lid, you hold in place with rubber bands. This prevents the coins from falling out, when packed away. To make it a bit more interesting, i added a nice “Settlers of Catan” image on the top, which came out very nice.
So here are some photos from the final product:
Everything is held together with wood glue, which is strong enough for this application. The assembly went ok, but it was a bit fiddly. Therefore, I made some changes to the design afterwards and divided the glue up into 2 stages, which should make assembling it easier.
I’m very happy with the results, especially because the friend I made this for (who owns the expansions) liked it as well. In addition, it really made it easier to handle the coins during the game and to store and set them up, which was the goal for this.
It was a nice little Project to get started making things. I could use tools and programs, that I know and I’m familiar with and make something nice and useful with them.
If you want to build one yourself, you can get the plans for the box below. It includes a short instruction and the svg and dxf files.
