Shopsmith Forums

My daughter and her boyfriend have gotten into chess big time. For Xmas she is giving him a fancy House of Staunton set of of chess pieces but, to save $$, I volunteered to make the board. The project is relatively easy and fun.

After jointing and planing stock in two contrasting species, set your rip fence to your preferred square size (mine are 2.25") and rip 4 dark and 4 light strips to width. Leave your rip fence where you set it while you glue up the strips into a zebra (alternating) dark/light pattern. I used the Shopsmith double bar clamps for that.

After the glue is dry, get one of the edges that's 90 degrees to the direction the strips are running nice and square to the direction of the stripes. This will be your reference edge (I used a track saw) and then go back to your table saw and and using the same rip fence setting as before, put your reference edge against the fence and rip your board into 8 strips -- making sure you are cutting across rather than with the zebra stripe pattern. Assemble your strips back in the order you cut them and the rotate every other strip, and voila, you have alternating light and dark squares. Glue it up again and you are done except for the final sanding and finish.

Mine is made from maple and what I believe is bubinga (donated by a brother in law some years ago). It came out ok. During final glue up a couple of piece got off set a fraction -- perhaps 1/64th to 1/128th of an inch so if you stare at some of the corners where those squares meet, it isn't perfect. I also ended up with a slight arch in the center of the board despite using the Shopsmith double bar clamps. At over 17 inches wide, I don't have any practical way to plane this flat (I'm terrible with hand planes and so I'm going to live with it. With the arch up the board sits flat and doesn't rock and the arch isn't pronounced.

Here it is sanded but not yet finished.

It will get some varnish.

I'd like to put either felt or flocking on the bottom of the board. Anyone have any recommendations on how to do that?

I believe we are our best critics, it looks good , as to the felt I have used spray adhesive in the past , one old trick I have used is to add a border to the piece and on the underside between the border and the board leave a grove and tuck the felt in , it makes for a nice finish to the felt edge after it is trimmed . I would post a picture but they were all given away as gifts several years ago .

This looks great! Based on "Gale's Law," I don't think you should have called attention to those slight errors at the corners. I would not have noticed them, but since you called attention to them...

Two thoughts on the center arch: If relatively easy to push flat you might consider adding a structural base that pulls it flat. Similar but prettier to how some of us have pulled our MDF router tables flat. If it's solid and only slightly bowed you might make a simple sled and 'plane' it with the conical sander. Nick demos something like that for veneer in a Sawdust Session IIRC. I have not done this, so not sure if the width might become problematic if you go for 100% correction. IIRC Nick's version had a width limit somewhere in the 8" range but I don't remember exactly why. And it's going to involve relatively coarse cross-grain sanding so there's that. I don't see arch in the picture.

Edit - Disregard cross-grain sanding comment, not sure what I was think'n there. It involved squares with alternating grain, sort of the opposite of this...

- David

Great work. No experience with felt or frocking but I used 1/8" cork glued down with contact cement on the one I made a couple of years ago. I used some narrow trim on the bottom so the edges of the cork were not fully exposed. It has worked out well so far.

Looks great !

You could try wetting the top surface and letting it dry out to remove the warp.

b

I've used this product from 3M to re-attach fabric headliner with good success.

Great Looking piece!

I have long wanted to try one of these. Nice to see one finished and I'm sure it will be even nicer when given a coat or two of finish.

John

Well, here it is with the chess pieces my daughter purchased.

Really very nice!

Looks great-I'm so bad at that game ..its what keeps me from making one