a convex chess board

You should be able to remedy this by mounting it in a tongue & groove frame, adding a finish to both sides.

I think when moisture from the glue dries out, it should settle things down. the moisture is the problem.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

Thanks Dick. I already has the frame and it is kind of T&G (the board is the T and the frame is the G). I don’t think finishing this both sides will help, as the problem is with the difference between the hardwoods and the plywood. it might reduce the problem somewhat.

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

Mosh, you can always tell folks that you coopered the edges to get the radius. LOL. Ok, so maybe that wasn’t very funny. I’m sure the T/G frame will help flatten it a lot. Good luck.

-- I love the smell of sawdust in the morning....

This happened to me also when I made my chess board. If you will glue a piece of hardwood to the opposite side with the grain running in the same direction as the chess sqauares it should flatten out. When you glue solid hardwood to one side of a piece of plywood you need to do the same thing to the opposite side of the plywood. If you try this, be sure to leave it clamped for a few days.

This solution worked for me.

-- Mike

or just add the design as a new element to the game… if someone rocks the board they either #1 have to play the pieces where they end up, or #2 lose a piece (opponents choice)

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso -- http://blanchardcreative.etsy.com -- http://snbcreative.wordpress.com/

If you wanted to keep the board thin you could cut your kerfs for relief and veneer the back. When you vaccum press or caul and clamp it should hold straight. You may want to try making your own veneer to keep it thick (about 1/16 or 1/8”). I’m not sure if keeping it thin is that important to you though.

-- Patrick

I don’t know what these hot shot wood workers are thinking but here’s what you can do next time this happens. I know you have already fixed the board. So keep this in mine for the next board.
You just need to glue the same board on the top of the chess set. This would keep everything stable. Well there is a downside to my idea, but you can make trim to fit around the edges. Then its perfect…
See how easy it is when you thing thru a problem .
HA Happy New Year!

-- Dominic, Trinity, Florida...Lets be safe out there.

fender washers and wood screws thru each corner to the table top will make it flat

-- work from your heart and your spirit will live forever

Curious…..I wonder what would happen if you ran it through a planer to take off the plywood backing? Would it then flatten out?

-- Tim: Remember, if it doesn't say Binford, someone else made it.

well, maybe pictures are not worth 1000 words after all.

this board is not slightly, flexibly bent. it is in rigor mortise. it can’t be flattened with light pressure. and we are talking about almost 1cm (depending on humidity) depth. it will probably crack before it can be straightened forcibly.
I havn’t got around to fixing it yet, but i will probably use slightly damp towel and very light pressure overnight to flatten it again.
planing the plywood off has two downsides. one, i am not sure the piece will hold together under a planer because its so thin, two, it will come out even thinner than it was.

this was supposed to be a standalone board.

another modification to this boring game that i thought of was putting the chess pieces on small bicycles so they can use the board as half pipe :-)

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

I still think the moisture in the glue caused the bend. I’d weight it down, & allow it to stabilize.

-- -** You are never to old to set another goal or to dream a new dream ****************** Dick, & Barb Cain, Hibbing, MN. http://www.woodcarvingillustrated.com/gallery/member.php?uid=3627&protype=1

the bending happened 2 weeks after the glueing, when a wave of hot dry weather came over the city, but you may be right (the moisture might have been trapped inside for long). i’ll try just damping it and letting it stabilize under pressure and let you all know.

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

The curve will help the water run off. Swear to people that it is an optical illusion. (My standard answers for things that are sloped, uneven, not level etc.)

-- A famous poet once said: “There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, the name is wood. Sweet, ever beautiful, earth grown wood. It warms my heart and brings a tear to my eye.”

Leave it like it is, in most chess games it my provide the only movement for hours at a time.

-- Ron Central, CA

I’d go with it and try to make something else out of it like an ashtray. Either way looking forward to the post of the fix.

I had the same thing happen to me with an inch and a half thick beech workbench top. I built the bench in the basement over the summer and put a single coat of danish oil on one side. As soon as the furnace came on in the fall the top began to curl. I had mistakenly put come popular battens across the back of the top. About a week later I heard a loud bang from the basement. When I went to explore I found my beautiful beech top slit from one end to the other, completely unsalvageable. Lesson learned: You can’t mess with mother nature or wood

-- Jim Westbrooks

UPDATE:

Putting a lightly dump towel with light weight on the top cause the board to straighten within 2h (actually its is even curved a bit to the other side).
I am waiting for it to become flat again and will cut the plywood and hope that this will sort this out.
will keep you posted!

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

Nothing new I guess, but have you tried dampening the plywood, run a hot iron over it to get it really hot. Don’t be stingie with the water either. One of two things will happen. 1. it may weaken the glue between the wood and the plywood and the board may come off. 2. You may be able to compress the center of the board enough, after soaking and heating the plywood, that it may be bent out, but you may have to leave it in a vise for a week or two, even maybe a month to see if it will come out.

That’s what is hard about doing something like this project with thin pieces of wood (variable at best and unstable) attached directly to a more stable piece of plywood. But depending on the core of the plywood, you may be able to get it good and wet and hot and get it bent back down. I would say though that you may be putting this one in the scrapper and remember to cross your grains for the next project.

Also, I don’t know how quickly you glued these up after cutting them, or how quickly you finished the project after it sat there all pretty, but when you plane wood and cut it down to pieces, try and let it set for a week before touching it and let it sprawl out all over, where ever it is gonna go. At least if it goes everywhere, it does it before you put all the effort into building a project. It’s going to move, just leave extra on each side so you can cut for it. David Marks from DIY-Woodworks did a similar project and he does a good job showing the cross grain pattern for this board you are building. Game board (WWK-441) http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/ww_decorative_furnishings/article/0,2049,DIY_14441_2278237,00.html

As far as the finish…let it set for atleast a week or two before putting a finish on it. And with projects made of pine, let them set for a month and a half. The wood will develop a beautiful character and shading that you can build upon. But if you finish the wood right away, you may not like the outcome after the wood ages a little bit. Especially with the pine. It may look good leaving the shop, but a couple months later it will yellow and now, the finish that was custom colored to the color of the wood at the time, doesn’t look so hot. I know I know, it kills us to see that stupid project, all purdy and everything, sitting in the corner, not being finished, but it is better in the end to let it get some air, move around and get to its final resting spot and then finish it.

I wish you success with your future chess/checker boards!

-- Do we do this for purpose or passion?

Todd : Thanks for all the information – I didn’t think about ironing the board to get it straight! :-)

Might try weakening the glue joint although I used one of the cross polymers glues that are highly resistant to water (not exactly exterior grade, but water resistant).

The board was acclimatized both before glueup and finish (I am a lazy woodworker, so usually time flies between stages). One problem that someone pointed out was that I finished only one side (to protect the surface). I think the bent happened because of very severe humidity change here. we have a spell of hot dry days (its summer here!).

As for the post about the game board – this guy used REALLY thin strips, vaneer really, so he actually did not have the problem I had. BTW, his technique involves gluing end grain (well mostly endgrain) thin strips. my experience is that this does not work very well. maybe because it is plywood and if you select the grain layout carefully you can get only 50% endgrain. I used biscuits.

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

cutting slots in the bottom did not work. I removed the plywood with a router. will finish the bottom as well and see how it goes….

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

Mosh, when I made my board with individual pieces, I set them in alternating directions, (walnut north/south and maple east/west). And the plywood base is set inside a T&G frame. That was 9 years ago, built in CO, 4 years in TX and now last 4 in MS, and no cupping to date.

-- Pat

I currently think that my most basic mistake was finishing the board from one side only. I am still fighting this board, almost won….

-- The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...

Moshel,

Nice board, love the contrasts! Just gotta turn some pieces to go with it!

After seeing your post on Souichiro’s forum How do I fix a Veneered chessboard that’s backing “cupped”

i thought I would take a look at your project that you have the same problem with…#

So, i think that although Todd is on the right track he has it turned around… the wood you glued together, with what looks like about a 5 to 8 mm plywood is that the wood has contracted and bowed the plywood right along with it…. what makes the wood contract? less moisture in the wood. So pure theoretically, if you wanted to temporarily correct this, flatten out the board a little, you would have to add moisture to the solid wood chess board side… I am even guessing if you let enough moisture soak into the wood, i would actually start to go past flat and curve in the other direction.

It is quite a bit harder to keep what you have glued there together, than the veneer chess board by Dale (Souichiro), because even though veneer has enough strength to curve up to 28 mm or more one sided man made boards, there is no way, ever, that a 5 mm plywood can hold solid wood that appears to be 3 times or more the thickness… You could try a symetrical build up as well, although, but when it comes to laminating materials in a marquetry form as you have done, and keeping them straight, I do not have much expierence… but I think gluing some wood of the same thickness or more on the other side might do the trick…. hard to say.

I really hope it turns out, and would love to see the end product!

-- Nicholas, Journeyman Cabinetmaker, Partenkirchen, Germany