I ripped off an idea for a simple chess board from a book. I changed all of
the dimensions, and ignored most of the instructions, so I don't count this
as building from a plan.

This is one of those out of control, simple-gone-complicated projects. At
first it was just a board to go under a super cheapie $2 chess set on a
camping trip. Now the board itself has had squares kerfed off and stained.
It looks a lot better than I expected, considering the lousy piece of
filthy scrap furniture I made it out of. Well-yellowed, unfinished
Jummywood for the light squares that looks almost like red oak.

So now that I have a surprisingly good looking chess board (by my low
standards, granted , I want to do more with it than planned. Instead of
just building a crude little free-standing box to hold the very crappy,
feather light chess pieces from that $2 set, I want to build this board
into a box of some sort (either as a hinged lid, or as the top of the
carcass for a miniature set of drawers), and populate it with nice pieces.
Nothing _too_ nice, mind you, because this is supposed to be a rough duty
travel set, but something a step above these extremely cheap ones.

I thought about trying my hand at turning a chess set on my drill press, but
while I've had some surprising results making steam domes and smoke stacks
for steam locomotives, I don't really feel up to the challenge of making
all those identical pieces with the crude setup I have.

So I thought I'd see if there are any sets of chess pieces for sale online
somewhere that I can afford. (Yes, JOAT, I saw your idea for the hardware
chess set. I'm thinking about that too.)

If I can find something affordable, that will tear it, but I've had no luck
so far. If I have to spend a lot of money, I'll probably try my hand at
turning on the drill press. More than anything else, I just hate the
thought of doing that much turning on my $300 machine that I can't afford
to replace, and which isn't really built for that sort of use. If I hadn't
sold my old 10" benchtop, this would be a fun project.

Maybe I should also think about one of those hobby lathes relative to the
cost of a chess set. I suppose in the end I _would_ like to say I made
them myself at the end of the day. Though that's a slippery slope too. I
make a really nice set of pieces, and then this stained, kerfed pine board
won't do, and I'll end up with a much more complicated project that will
take a long time to complete. I fully intend to make a nice chess board
some day, but I'm trying to get in one last project before it gets too cold
to use my shop, and the clock is ticking.

Ideas?

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
Confirmed post number: 18038 Approximate word count: 541140
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/