A Simple Chessboard with a Twist

The smallest chessboard I make only uses two triangles in each square. When I do this, because of the way I cut my triangles, the grain of the wood is going from corner to corner on each square. When you see other chessboards the grain is going from side to side or from top to bottom on each square. It does give a twist to the way the chessboard ends up looking.

This chess board is 8 1/4” square. Each square is just over 1” and is made with 2 triangles back to back. Two types of wood are in the chessboard. The dark square is “Bubinga” from Africa, some call it African Rosewood. The light square is “Hackberry” from Missouri. There are 128 pieces in the over lay using two kinds of wood. The edges are rounded with no border.

Also on the back, I signed it, listed the wood, and dated it. After the date the words “Foot Cut” lets you know it was made on the foot powered table saw.

Here is a more straight-on look at the Hackberry and Bubinga chessboard that I have shown at the top here;

Below is another Hackberry and Bubinga chessboard that the Hackberry had some dark streaks running through it. I was able to get 3 chessboards out of it similar to this one;

The next chessboard uses Hackberry and Walnut;

This next chessboard uses Hackberry and Wenge. You may have noticed I like to use a lot of Hackberry; I like it when it has just a little bit of sap stain in it. It has a slight gray tone to it then. It really shows up when you use it with the Wenge as on this chessboard, but I have found that when I use it with Walnut, the Walnut gives it more of a brown tone in stead of the gray it has with the Wenge;

This last Chessboard has the narrow grain Wenge with Purpleheart;

Thank you for looking,
Robin Tucker, the maker of Wood Mosaics

-- It’s not so much what we know that causes the trouble, it’s what we know that’s not so.