Back in August I posed this question to Ask Planet Kubb:

DOES ANYONE KNOW THE BEST WAY TO MAKE A KING OUT OF ICE?

A few weeks ago, realizing the tournament was fast approaching and there was plenty of cold to help me freeze ice in my backyard, I gave this idea an admittedly half-assed shot:

(Side Note: The wooden king you see in the following pictures is the king from my set, which is the longest running set amongst any of my friends in Minneapolis and played a major role in making the Tad Kubbler guys and most of the rest of us the players we are today. I need to purchase some wood glue so I can throw out the duct tape and patch it properly.)

So I went in my basement and found a box that fairly close to King sized: 13 x 11 x 4 inches. I cut in it half.

I took the other half of the box and used a box cutter to make it sort of a liner so the size was closer to correct and the sides of the king wouldn’t have creases. I also tried to shorten the interior a bit.

Then I found a plastic bag. The bag pictured here leaked and had to be replaced the next day, but you can see that it got filled with water and I could stick my hand in the water and kind of try to flatten out the folds, but I didn’t do that great of a job of that.

Here we are two or three days later and as you can see, the bag froze in to the ice. This pink bag also wasn’t big enough, which is why the top isn’t square.

On the plus side, I proved that I could freeze a block of ice that was about the right proportions and  although it doesn’t look like much here, I think it would have looked pretty cool if I had carefully tried to get the rest of the bag off using warm water. Also, It may be easier to create a hollow ice king which is closer to regulation weight than you’d anticipate because as the block freezes you can see how much unfrozen water is inside and potentially drill a few holes to drain that excess water/weight.

This was just my first try and with a temperature drop in the forecast, I think I might give it another go.

That said, the main reason I wrote this post is to encourage anyone with the motivation to build a wood frame or something more elaborate. If a really nice looking Ice King shows up at the tournament, and the final teams are willing to use it, I’m certain Eric G will allow it. If you make on and no one else wants to play with it, you can definitely put it in play against my team.