Three weeks ago, I finally completed two chess sets (I made the pieces and storage boxes, but not the boards), for my sons. The woods are maple and walnut, with quilted maple for the boxes. I had been working on them about six months. I have done a fair amount of turning in the past few years, but much of this small detailed work was new to me, so it was a challenge.
I made a couple of router jigs to fit in the lathe bed, so I could cut the crenellations for the rook and the slot for the bishop's miter. I used a 1/16" straight bit for these. For the queen's coronet, I used a small sanding drum on a Dremel to cut the indentations. My lathe has an indexing headstock, which helped with all of these things.
To cut the tiny beads on the bishop, king, and queen, I made a couple of small beading tools out of a 3/16" HSS tool bit from a metal lathe.
The knights were a pain. I am not a carver, not by any means. So I did most of the roughing on various sized sanding drums, and then followed this up with rifflers, and a Dremel for the mane. The eyes were done with a 1/8" brad-point bit, and the mouth with one of those small abrasive cutoff wheels on the Dremel. One reason this project took so long was knight-related procrastination!
The monograms on the boxes gave me pause. (See above about not being a carver.) After much thought about how to go about it, I laid out simple letters and went at them with a round burr on the Dremel.
I parted off 68 pieces (68 because there were two extra queens for each set) of steel rod - 3/8" diameter for the pawns, 1/2" for everything else - and used them to weight the chessmen. I epoxied them in and Bondo-ed them over, then glued circles of felt on the bottom. The pieces were finished with carnauba wax on a buffing wheel. The walnut pieces got linseed oil before the wax. The boxes got linseed oil, five coats of blonde shellac, then a buffing with 0000 steel wool and paste wax.
Turning table legs that will never be right next to each other is one thing. Turning 16 pawns (twice) that will be directly compared is quite another! I learned a lot doing this project, and now I have plans for a third set - for me.
Alex
I made a couple of router jigs to fit in the lathe bed, so I could cut the crenellations for the rook and the slot for the bishop's miter. I used a 1/16" straight bit for these. For the queen's coronet, I used a small sanding drum on a Dremel to cut the indentations. My lathe has an indexing headstock, which helped with all of these things.
To cut the tiny beads on the bishop, king, and queen, I made a couple of small beading tools out of a 3/16" HSS tool bit from a metal lathe.
The knights were a pain. I am not a carver, not by any means. So I did most of the roughing on various sized sanding drums, and then followed this up with rifflers, and a Dremel for the mane. The eyes were done with a 1/8" brad-point bit, and the mouth with one of those small abrasive cutoff wheels on the Dremel. One reason this project took so long was knight-related procrastination!
The monograms on the boxes gave me pause. (See above about not being a carver.) After much thought about how to go about it, I laid out simple letters and went at them with a round burr on the Dremel.
I parted off 68 pieces (68 because there were two extra queens for each set) of steel rod - 3/8" diameter for the pawns, 1/2" for everything else - and used them to weight the chessmen. I epoxied them in and Bondo-ed them over, then glued circles of felt on the bottom. The pieces were finished with carnauba wax on a buffing wheel. The walnut pieces got linseed oil before the wax. The boxes got linseed oil, five coats of blonde shellac, then a buffing with 0000 steel wool and paste wax.
Turning table legs that will never be right next to each other is one thing. Turning 16 pawns (twice) that will be directly compared is quite another! I learned a lot doing this project, and now I have plans for a third set - for me.
Alex
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