I started playing go around the sometime around mid 2020. It was in a covid lockdown, my then girlfriend, now wife was pregnant with our first child and I was already bored of the Playstation 5 I had bough to kill time during the lockdowns.

For the first months I played online, tried a few apps before ending up on online-go.com, but after playing alone against bots and then strangers I wanted to play against someone I knew. Naturally my wife was my first victim. I tried getting her to play online but that didn't go so well so I decided I needed a proper board, since my wife is more of a board game player rather than a video game player.

We had just renovated the kitchen of the apartment we bought that summer and had installed a oak countertop with an extra large sink, which meant I had an extra large piece of oak just laying around. I know gobans are traditionally made out of cypress, fir or other "softer" woods usually but oak is nice and this was just supposed to be something to play on for a while until I got a proper board from abroad. Using a circular saw in on my 5th floor balcony, sorry neighbors, I cut the slap to the correct size and polished the edges with some sandpaper.

I had some pieces of oak cutoffs left so I decided to make some small legs for the goban. I know it's not traditional on thinner gobans to have legs, but hey, it's my goban, I do it how I like it.

After polishing the top to a nice smooth texture I drew the lines on with a thin sharpie and a ruler and then sprayed the table down with lacquer to give it a nice glossy texture and save the lines from fading off with use.

The project was a big success, I got my wife playing, and not just playing with my every night for some months but interested enough that she signed up on online-go and we have had corespondents matches going on daily for several years now.