DIY Cornhole Boards

Every DAD blog has to have a DIY post about CornHole boards right?!? I set out a couple weeks ago to build my own set after some minor research on Pinterest. Hopefully you will read this entire post and learn from my mistakes. A set of good boards and some bags could cost nearly $150, so I thought I could make mine for less, and I was right...Until I made a few mistakes.

First, I went to the source, The American Cornhole Association website to get the rules and specifications I needed to be legit. You can go there yourself but the basic requirements are two boards that are 12 inches at the top and 2 and half inches at the bottom with a 90 degree angle. The boards should be 48 inches long and 24 inches wide with a 6 inch diameter hole cut at the top. This hole is centered 9 inches from the top and 12 inches from the sides.  You can see my work in progress below.

SUPPLIES: Essentially you will need Four 2x4's that measure 96 inches in length. Because they are fairly cheap, you may as well pick up one extra in case your measurements are off, uh like mine were... I ended up having to re-cut the legs because I made them too small.  You will also need a sheet of Half inch ply wood. A word of caution. The Home Depot's saw was broken for like two weeks when I wanted to start this project so I ended up getting the pre-cut sheets, two of them, that fit the dimensions perfectly. It was a bit more expensive so to offset the cost I selected some OSB board, which is essentially a bunch of wood chips pressed and glued together. I would not select this material because when I started sanding some of the wood chipped out and gave a rough edge. I patched it up with some wood putty but that just added to my expenses. Also get some lag bolts (4), washers, and wing nuts to secure the legs to the boards.

 The first thing I did was build the frame using the 2x4s. If you know anything about 2x4's it is that they are not actually 2 inches by 4 inches. Be sure to adjust your cuts for that. The long pieces I cut to 48 inches or the length of the top sheet. The short cross pieces were 21 inches and I added the middle piece for support and to take away any kind of bounce the boards might have. It adds a little weight when transporting the boards so you could probably leave them out and be okay. Once I had the frames all nailed together with glue I realized that I should have probably used decking screws, but I had nails and wanted to keep my costs down.  The screws would hold together better in my opinion. Next, I glued the top of the OSB sheet to the frame and secured it with some wood screws spaced about 6-7 inches apart. Once that was finished I found an old paint can that was about 6 inches in diameter and traced it onto the OSB sheet. I used a reciprocating saw or sawzall to cut the hole. Be sure to use a large drill bit to drill a pilot hole and definitely be careful not to cut yourself. The safer way to cut the hole would be to use a jigsaw or better yet the safest way is to get a 6 inch hole saw, but I made due with the tools I had.


Once I had the top sheet on it was time to cut the legs and drill some holes.  I found a tip on one of the blogs that suggested clamping a scrap piece of 2x4 to the top of the board and one behind the leg. The top piece helps with spacing to ensure the legs can rotate backwards enough to be stable. The piece behind the legs just helps with blow out when you drill the hole. Use the right size hole depending on the size of bolt. In my case, it was 3/8 inch. You could also use the next size up to make the hole just slightly bigger to ensure the bolt slides through easily, or just use your drill bit to augh (or is it awg) out the hole. 

NEXT, I found a mason jar lid to use as a template to draw a half circle on the legs. I used my chop saw to take away the most material I could and then follow up with my sander. I would test fit the legs as I went to make sure there was enough clearance for the legs to rotate.  ANOTHER note here is that I also sanded inside the boards where the legs would be placed to try to make sure there was enough clearance. This took a couple hours and don't worry about over sanding here because if you paint the legs and the board like I did, you will find that the clearance disappears and wishing you would have spent more time sanding.

The top of the board in game play needs to be 12 inches off the ground. The first legs I cut were too short, meaning I had the needed height but when I titled the legs back and cut an angle with my miter saw, the became too short. The second pair of legs I cut I made 14 inches, which gave me enough room to put a miter cut on the bottom of the legs so that they are more stable when set up for game play. Sorry I don't have any photos of how I made that cut, but essentially I set the boards up on a table with the legs hanging off. I measured the top of the board down to the table until I got to the 12 inch mark. I then drew a line from the table to the legs to give me my angle and cut with the miter saw. I tested the legs before painting on the garage floor. The good thing about using wing nuts and having the angle cut into the bottom of the legs is that when you set up a game in the grass or on some uneven ground, you can adjust the legs accordingly and tighten the wing nuts.

One thing I experimented with was dipping the legs as opposed to painting the with a paint brush. I have seen this technique used on some DIY vlogs on YouTube and thought I would give it a try. As you can see above, the process does create a bit of a mess, but once the bottom half dried I reversed and dipped the top to have a nice clean finish. Another top tip for you here on paint! I didn't really look until after I already bought some expensive outdoor paint, but I found the oops paint and better yet the clearance paint at my local Home Depot. The paint I purchased was over $30 and the clearance paint was $10. Because I didn't really care too much about the paint job, I wish I could have taken the paint back and bought the cheaper stuff.


ONCE everything was painted I decided to add some handles using some marine rope I bought at the hardware store. I drilled the holes using a 1/2 inch drill bit because the rope was 3/4 inch in diameter and the bigger hole meant I could slide the rope through much easier. I secured it on the inside using some carpet staples and a metal strap I found at the hardware store with some wood screws. I found this handle to be functional but when transporting the boards over longer distances I often just grab the board without the handle. But at least the handles look cool.

On a final note. I found the bags pictured at Walmart on clearance. Actually the main reason for kicking off this project. Although they have an official logo, the bags split on the first day of play and I took them back for a refund. I ended up purchasing some bags off amazon (Link below) that are made of Duck cloth and have the real corn inside. These bags are much more durable and should hold up, plus they come with a 1 year warranty. Perhaps the theme of this post should be "You get what you pay for," because in the end I think everything ended up costing me as much as a set of decent boards would cost on Amazon.  YES, I could have kept my costs down if I was more aware but time became short in supply and well, I wanted to play cornhole so I finished up the boards and got the bags just in time for Fathers Day and ended up having some great games in the backyard with the Bar-B-Que. So let me know what you think and if you have any ideas. Thanks----- Dr. Jim!