Hi,

Totally bored and found some old maple and walnut that inspired me to make a chess board. I decided to take the cowboy approach and….well….It looks pretty cool, but very un even.

I ripped 4 pices each of the 2 woods, glued the strips and ripped these and glued the final board together. What I found was it was easy to get all the pieces lined up. My board is basically perfect in that way.

I also found out it’s real hard to keep the wood together so it’s many different levels. Worst spot was almost a 1/16″. Unfortunatly I glued it up to fast and while it looked ok when just strips when squares several mistakes doubled themselves and well..I get to practice my belt sander and scraper skills for a while<G>

I noticed after the fact there has been no How-To articles in FWW on chess boards. Seems straight forward enough but I had to solve several problems along the way. I did find a thread or 2 and most seemed to be concerned about expansion. I figured 2 1/4″ squares of maple and walnut should be ok.

I used 3/4″ stock. I like the look of a thick board. I’m gonna make a frame for it and attach it like a table top so it can float in the frame but I’m also considering just gluing and edge or leaving it as-is. I think as-is a drop could snap it.

I had a fun time and need a board anyway. I think I’m gonna try a Krenov type next. All those dowels don’t look like fun but it’s probably easier to control level that way. I have the book but haven’t read it for a while, seems like you’d not want to glue it together, just dry dowels and frame it up. I’d hate to clean out all the glue. I’ll read the article first.

That was my day..

Notrix