For a game I'm developing, I would like to make little circular tokens made from mat board about 1.5 mm (0.06 inch) thick. Their dimensions are 15 to 20 mm (0.6 to 0.8 inch). These things are standard issue game components: think of the 'money' or 'population markers' in many games and you have a near-perfect idea of what I'm after.
However, after a few experiments I found that my hands are not steady enough to cut such small yet good circles in mat board this thick. The circular cutting tools I've come across cannot handle both the thickness of the board and the size of the circle. I've also tried using a 'holpijpje' (lit.: 'hollow little tube')---this is the Dutch word for a carpenting tool with which you can punch out small circles in thin pieces of wood or carpet. The mat board doesn't like being treated this way: it tends to split across the edge, and the edge itself is not really straight but slightly skewed, as if the counter was sliced off a cone rather than a cylinder. (This is hard to explain in words.)
Can anyone offer suggestions or tips on how to produce a small number (250) of high-quality tokens?
Hrm. There's two things which caught my attention upon reading this. Most people I've mentioned the problem to bring up the words 'copper pipe'. Is there something special about using copper? Or is it just the fact that whenever people think of metal pipes, they think of copper ones? Second, you mention that there are different varieties of mat board. That is something I hadn't thought of yet. As far as I can tell, there is no foam core in my board: the edge is a very even gray. What type of quality should I get? Mine is just the el-cheapo generic gray A0-sized board from an art store.
Looking at the little disks I made, I have come up with a better description of the most important problem: the split edge. The mat board I use is made up of many thin layers which are normally invisible and pressed together very firmly. With your fingernail, you can split those layers apart, but it takes an effort. (You would be able to tear the board in half in such a way that you end up with two pieces of the same size as the original, but half its thickness.) However, after punching out the disk, that splitting becomes much easier, and sometimes already happens inside the hollow tube because of the friction between the metal tube and the board.
Now of course noone in their right mind would try to ruin game pieces on purpose in the way I described, but I was thinking of the wear and tear they are subject to when people are picking them up from the table. Perhaps what I described is simply a consequence of small pieces, that they are simply structurally weaker because of their size. Which brings me back to the question I wrote down above: which board quality should I buy?
Anyway, I really appreciate your answer as you gave me some new ideas which I would like to try out.