On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 03:41:45 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

snip
I'm going to make myself a walnut/maple chess box when the weather gets
warmer. I've been debating whether to make the pieces out of walnut/maple,
or choose something else, like cherry/ash or whatever I can come up with in
turnable stock.

mo bigger snip

BTW, I have no freaking idea how I'm going to do the knights. None
whatsoever. I couldn't carve my way out of a wet paper bag with a CNC
carving machine.

Truth is, given what a bitch it will be to make all these pieces look right,
I'm thinking about just using the damn plastic ones. They may be plastic,
but they sure look good. Much nicer than any chess sets I've ever had
before, and I've had wood in the past.

no mo snips

I think that the color is only part of the design thinking. I like
pieces with some heft to them. Now, the bottoms could be hollowed and
filled with glued in metal (I think that molten lead would char the
wood), so maybe that makes the heft thing go away.

I've got some ebony around here somewheres and I was thinking of using
some satinwood for the white pieces but might try to scratch up some
holly (or use some apple that I've got but I don't know how well that
turns and holds detail. See, there's another thing - the wood needs
to be able to hold some pretty fine detail without a lot of the small
stuff breaking off later.

Here's the set that I'm using for a model:

http://www.shopuschess.org/cgi-bin/S...548+1073169214

The last chessboard that I made was knocked up from cherry and maple
ply, with a walnut border:

http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/page31.htm

I like the look of the black and white men on the wood board.

Mike Hide would be the man to talk to about carving the Knights. His
carving work is extraordinary, whereas mine is extra-ordinary.

The best tip I was ever given for replicating carving was to break
down the piece into elements that you can understand, rather than
trying to think of the whole thing at once - that's too scary. But
the really good carvers that I've seen go after a piece differently
than that. I'm going to work from the general outline to the details
and work the details one at a time, from the largest to the smallest.

As you said, these particular plastic men look better than any pieces
that I've ever owned, so, if I screw up - we'll always have Plastic.


Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker (ret)
Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet
Website: http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1