First Chess board!

[Chipman]

This chessboard is a team effort. I have a short stay Korean student at school in my year 9 woodwork class. Most of the class are making chopping boards but he and his friend wanted to make chess boards. I decided to make veneered/marquetry chess boards with them. (This is both my first attempt and theirs as well!)

They cut their strips of light and dark veneer up (English Oak and Walnut... this is all we had that was a suitable colour but the oak veneer is incredibly fragile and cutting across the grain with a knife is practically impossible without it splitting)

I sandwiched the strips between to 40mm widths of MDF, screwed them together and trimmed the veneer to size with the router.

Next, we taped the strips together in alternating colours (5 dark with 4 light) ran continuous strips of tape down the front and then rubbed pva glue into the seams, wiped off the excess glue with a damp cloth and quickly covered it with plastic and placed it under a thick piece of mdf with weights on until dry.

The next problem was how to cut the strips across the grain to get the checker pattern... clearly the knife wasn't going to work too well so a bit of experimenting and I discovered that if I ran tape over both sides where the cut was to be, a sharp roller paper cutter (guillotine) did a pretty good job. So I set up a stop to make sure each strip was cut at 40mm wide and away we went with the cutting. The students got a little careless and destroyed a couple of strips.... the spares! and that explains why the veneer grain does not match as well as I would like.

Then it was peel all the tape off and re-tape the squares together again. This required great care as the the oak veneer is very fragile... with others "helping" a couple more strips got broken but I was able to get them to glue back together without any drama. Some edges were a little rough and had to be tidied up with careful sanding.

Once the strips were taped up again, pva glue was rubbed in the joints, cleaned and quickly covered with plastic and clamped flat. (Must work very fast before it buckles!)

On another day, gel contact was spread on the veneer and a 10mm thick piece of MDF and hammered together using a protective sheet of MDF. The tape was all removed and gone over again with a soft wooden block. Two previously joined sheets of walnut veneer was glued onto the base of the board.

Finally the board was trimmed to size and a walnut edge strip (8mm x 10mm) glued around the edge followed by very careful sanding (my contribution!) 120 down to 320 (one challenge was that the harder oak veneer was slightly thicker than the softer walnut veneer)

All that remains to be done now is the finishing....satin wipe on poly
Next Friday is his last day at school, so it should be finished just in time.


The three of us really enjoyed the challenge and learning experience of this marquetry project... the other student wants to build his top into a box with drawers for the chess pieces but there is no rush with this one...

Cheers,

Chipman

[wheelinround]

Great team work Chipman nice looking board

[artme]

Good work!

Hope it doesn't have a checkered future in front of it.

[Chipman]

Today is the Student's last day and his chess board has been varnished with satin wipe on poly and waxed. Here is a photo of the completed board.



Cheers,

Chipman

[Woodlee]

Very nice

Kev.

[Chipman]

Thanks for the comments everyone.. The student concerned did not see it from when it was made (not varnished) until it had been varnished and waxed and was absolutely wrapt! His brothers are chess champions at their school so he was excited to be able to take it home.

When you see people happy like that, it makes it all worthwile IMO.

And for me, it has inspired me to try some more marquetry in the future.

Cheers,

Chipman