Thread: chess sets and DIY

I have made two chess sets on my scroll saw doing compound cuts ,steady as you go and you will be happy with the end results. As for timber to use I used really soft woods for the pieces can't remember the species I know that the white ones were basso wood.[I think that's how you spell it]

I have turned a few sets over the years, including an oversized set for an outdoor board and a small travel set for my grandson, with pinned pieces and a perforated board. I don't think there is an answer for the 'best wood'. I have always struggled to get enough contrast between the light and dark pieces. We don't have a lot of choices for black and white timber! The easiest route is possibly to choose a light coloured timber and then dye the dark pieces, but for a 'real woodie' that is cheating! A few of my lessons:

• Pieces from dense, heavy timber have a better feel in my opinion. You can hollow pieces and insert lead for weight, but that is a pain!.
• Choice of design has a big influence on the choice of timber too.
• if you pick a traditional design, the pieces have fine details and you need a strong, fine-grained timber to hold the details.
• I now prefer a simplified design, without the fine detail.
• The knight is the biggest challenge and I have yet to find a design that can be completely done on the lathe - they all need some carving.

I think my favourite set is probably jarrah and mountain ash, even though these are quite course-grained timbers.
CHESS1.jpg
My first set, traditional design, Australian Red Cedar and Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus deodar). The reason for the choice was that both timbers were reclaimed from our old house in the Blue Mountains - the cedar from an old door and the deodar from a tree we had removed. The pieces were very light, so they were hollowed and filled with lead. Timbers were too soft and some of the fine details broke off over time. Still looks good though. Very basic knight made in two parts. The head was cut out on a bandsaw then dowelled onto the base.
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Close-up of the white pieces - these have help up better than the red cedar pieces.
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A more modern design (Mike Piece on Youtube). I now prefer a modified version of these. I think these are mountain ash and banksia, but there is not enough contrast between the dark and light, made worse by the variation of colour in the banksia.
chess4.jpg
My favourite so far. Mountain ash. The dark pieces (not pictured) are in Jarrah, but Red Gum would work well too. This my best knight too. I can't recall, but it looks like I did it in two parts. This design is a simplified traditional, with chunkier features for the courser wood.
One of the biggest challenges is how to hold the pieces for finishing. I am pondering another set sometime soonish and have a new approach inspired by Richard Raffin's use of decorative details as a chucking point. I would then turn the base end first and use a decorative groove on the base to hold the piece for finishing the last tiny bit of the top.
I have a few resources on design and set plans I would be happy to share here if you would like.
I don't know why I am so interested in chess pieces - I don't really play the game unless pressed hard by the grandchildren - who can beat me with their hands tied.
Bruce

Thanks, Bruce, that's a great reply. I think I should have enough Holly on hand for the white pieces, although might be a bit light.
Might have look into some tungsten putty

Tungsten is 1.7 times denser than lead and about 2.5 times denser than a typical steel. The density of lead is 0.410 lb/in³, which means a cube of lead one inch on all sides weighs 0.41 pounds. Tungsten has a density of 0.70 lbs/in<sup>3

Its readily available through sports stores and tackle shops</sup>

Depends on the holly I suspect. Most of the holly I saw while in the Blue Mountains was English holly and was quite grey in colour. The American holly would be great though. Worth some practice pieces.
The putty sounds like a good idea. I did one set with a socket in the base which doubled as a fitting for a shop made screw chuck.

Originally Posted by bruceward51

Depends on the holly I suspect. Most of the holly I saw while in the Blue Mountains was English holly and was quite grey in colour. The American holly would be great though. Worth some practice pieces.
The putty sounds like a good idea. I did one set with a socket in the base which doubled as a fitting for a shop made screw chuck.

Bruce, yes its most likely English and its prone to blue mould etc I have found it will lighten up using lime wash or similar, It was from the Southern Highlands

I was so happy when someone gave me some holy, and so disappointed when I turned it!
Provided the timber is heavier than pine, I think you can probably get away without weights - I am not sure I would bother again unless there was a good reason such as outdoor use where a set might have to cope with wind.
I have loaded a couple of plans as PDF onto a shared space on Google drive just in case you are interested. They will be there for the next few months, but the links could break after that. These are at full size and should be pretty close to scale. I cut them out and take dimensions straight off the plans when I am turning. I think full size is a bit big, so I normally do mine at 75% (scale when you print the PDF).

• Slightly simplified traditional set.
• Set based on Mike Piece's videos.

If you want to go freehand, I found a guide to the sizes somewhere and that is what I have used for my drawings. You could make a much taller king and this technique would give you the proportions for the other pieces.

chess-proportions.png
In practice, you can make the king and queen roughly the same diameter, the bishop, knight and rook all the same and the pawn smallest of course. In theory, the diameter of the pawn is in proportion to the board in that two pawns should fit diagonally on a board square.In practice, the players need to be able to easily grip the largest pieces without knocking over other adjacent pieces and this determines the practicality of the size.
board
scale-to-board.png
Now I am not obsessive about this ... but I wonder if there is a way to make the board on the lathe...[mad laughter]

Bruce

I should have said that the plans don't have all the fine details on the bases, they are usually a burn line, vee groove and possibly a shallow cove. Whatever looks good - plain is also OK of course.

Just a thought, not sure if this would work or not, but could you differentiate between black and white with similar wood by using either a different design for each colour - ie modern vs traditional, or by using some of those details - burn lines etc - to indicate which pieces belong to which player?

Not wood but LEGO.
My grandson sometimes issues his dad a LEGO challenge and this one was a chess set.

Chess.jpg
According to the experts the black and white squares are in the wrong positions

Originally Posted by BobL

Not wood but LEGO.
My grandson sometimes issues his dad a LEGO challenge and this one was a chess set.

Chess.jpg
According to the experts the black and white squares are in the wrong positions

Bob

Easily rectified. The queen is always, at the start , on her own colour. Rotate the board 90° anti-clockwise and replace the pieces as above and you're good to go. Except the black king and queen will need to swap places too.

Regards
Paul

I've had some success with Poplar, although it does require sharp tools. It's a bland wood, prone to furriness, but takes colour well. I like the look when it's paired with aged red-gum for the black.

Drilling the bases and gluing in metal nuts works well for me when it comes to weight, even though others probably disagree. One of the advantages of nuts is that if the hole is slightly undersized for the nut's "max diameter" it makes for a snug force-fit. Instead of glue, I use a dab of neutral cure Silastic (to allow for different expansions) and the hole in the nut makes squeeze out less of a problem. Felt on the bottoms can hide a multitude of sins.

Mind you, I can't say I've ever turned a chess set I've been really happy with. Most pieces, yeah, but I suck at carving the fine details. Especially on the rooks. Being me (ie. stubborn) I've persisted in trying the "profiled ring" approach but w/out much success.

I am NOT going to take the sensible (and easy) way out and only turn the base, carving the rest. When I forget how ignominiously the last one(s) failed, I'll try again.

I just got a commission for the new year to make a chess table for a friend's son. The plan comes from an old Readers Digest DIY binder but still looks contemporary (the table I mean) . It includes the instructions for the chess set and I quite like them, probably because I am of the period. Thought it might be of interest. I would probably make the white from silver ash or crows ash if I could find a little bit, or IanW's favourite white, Mallotus. I have some dark chocolate spotty for the dark.
This design suits my rudimentary turning skills, and I may even forego that altogether and do the dowel with a dowel maker.
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