Brahma Boards.htm

Our good friend and master board maker, Tim Ferrell, suffered a heart attack Sunday, March 16th and passed away. He would have been 57 in May. His family and friends will miss him dearly.

Tim, Randy and I have been close friends for over twenty years. In many ways, Brahma Boards was the best boys club on the planet! We were able to create world class backgammon boards of heirloom quality, buy cool tools and play a ton of backgammon!

Tim and I visited Peoria about six years ago for our first backgammon tournament. The invitation came from Tim’s friend Cliff Mayoh. He was the person who taught Tim how to play the game. It was our first experience playing on tournament size boards. We met Bill Davis, Tak Morioka, Ed Zell and a wonderful group of backgammon players and their families.

Tim was watching the backgammon action during the middle of the tournament and you could see the wheels turning in his head. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said ‘I always wanted to build a big board but I didn’t know anyone would want to play on one or where I would find the checkers.’ (We had not met Carol Joy Cole at that time.)

When we returned to Auburn we told our friend Randy about what we experienced in Peoria. He thought it sounded like a great idea. We started the process of creating the Brahma Board.

One of our biggest surprises was discovering a wonderful group of backgammon players in our own back yard. We became members of the Puget Sound Backgammon Club. These people helped us grow our game, create three ABT events, and have helped promote our backgammon boards.

We knew we wanted to work with wood and leather. Randy came up with the Brahma Board name and Tim’s son, Casey, created our logo.

The first board weighed a ton! I took it to Patrick Gibson’s tournament is LA for some feedback - lol – we went back to the drawing board and built two more. They were lighter and looked good. We knew were heading in the right direction.

The fourth board we built had all of the elements for a serious backgammon player. Randy and I took it to Howard Markowizt’s tournament in LV. The board was open on a table during the Calcutta Auction. When the auction ended I went up to pay for our bids and a man named Mike came up to Randy to discuss the board. He bought it before I returned to the table!

We knew we had something special but we didn’t know how special. All you have to do is look through the pages on this web site to see the beautiful boards we have created and it all started with an idea from our friend Tim Ferrell. We have built over 40 world class backgammon boards for customers in 4 countries.

Tim did all of the wood work and designed the boards. Randy hand dyed all of the interior points, and installed all of the leather. I dyed the exterior leather and managed the web site. It took 35 to 40 hours to build one board.

We aren’t going to take any new orders for Brahma Boards through the summer. Randy and I are going to help Tim’s family through this challenge and help them sell his print shop.

We will need to set up a new shop if we decide to continue building Brahma Boards. We won't make that decision until the end of this summer. Thank you for your understanding

Please contact Carol Joy Cole at: http://www.flintbg.com/boutique.html for any of your backgammon needs.

Randy and I have lost track of the number of hours we played backgammon together with Tim but it wasn’t nearly enough time.

His family and friends will miss him and the backgammon world just became smaller.

In Memory of Our Friend,

Randy & Clyde