About Us

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35 years of carpentry experience goes into carefully creating each board

carrooka inventors
Carrooka is the brain-child of Jack Furnival. Jack is a master carpenter with over 35 years’ experience of creating stunning hardwood furniture; he’s a passionate socialist who wants nothing more than for the world to become a more equal and happier place. Jack works from a small workshop in Leek, Staffordshire, carefully crafting each Carrooka board by hand, whilst listening to Test Match Special on the radio. His creative genius is supported by the more prosaic business skills of his wife George (like George in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, she’s really a Georgina, but that’s far too much of a mouthful). The couple have been married for 30 years, working hard and doing all the normal stuff; trying to pay the mortgage, grow veggies on the allotment and attempting to live the best eco-life they can. This Carrooka adventure is new and exciting territory! They’re hoping that they can build a Carrooka craze that means they can move to a workshop with some heating and hopefully start to train some wood working apprentices, so that Jack’s skill can be handed on to the next generation.

Our Ethos

Jack and George believe that it’s important to make the smallest footprint on the planet that’s possible to make. They’ve also strived to live without ever exploiting others. These two principles guide the way Carrooka is made:

• All timber is FSC approved from carefully managed sources
• Where we have to source parts from overseas, it’s because we cannot find a local supplier.  We ask all suppliers whether they meet ethical base code standards
• We use low-impact water based inks to print the board surface which is kinder to the environment than oil based dyes.
• Our boards are plastic free and posted in plastic free packaging.
• Boards are made by Jack and George, who will one day (we hope) be earning a living wage!
•It’s a business done by bicycle wherever possible.
• We’ll always put a jumper on, before we think about putting the heating on.

THE HISTORY OF CARROOKA

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Jack has been a keen, if slightly lacking in skill, snooker player for some years; he’d have loved a snooker table at home, but tiny terraced house living doesn’t allow for that. One day, while researching table-top snooker games, Jack stumbled across the established world of Carrom- how had he never known about this before!

Carrom is a traditional game from India; a smooth square wooden board, where players flick counters to slide them into pockets. It’s massively popular worldwide with tournaments and clubs quietly playing the game all around the world.

The story goes that when the Brits colonised India, they “discovered” Carrom and absorbed elements of it into the game of Billiards. This eventually led to the invention of Snooker.

Carrooka is the step of this evolution that never happened! Using counters, like Carrom but with rules similar to Snooker; the turning point for Carrooka came, quite literally, by making it turn. Having a spinning board means two or four players can sit at a table and always position the striker (the white ball equivalent) in front of them, making this a fantastic snooker table substitute for small home living.

playing carrooka

Our guarantee

Our Carrooka boards are carefully made with love and attention to every detail. They are UKCA marked so you know they have been rigorously tested to standards EN71 Part 1,2 and 3. Small parts mean that Carrooka is not recommended for use by younger children. We aim to deliver your board in perfect condition, if it arrives damaged in any way we honour your full statutory rights. In addition to this we offer a guarantee for six months of normal domestic use- if your board develops a problem, just get in touch and we’ll let you know how you can post your board back to us for repair. After the six month guarantee, we’re still happy to advise on how to deal with accidental surface scratches or other problems that may occur. Just give us a call or drop us an email.

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