Chess set and chessboard case

Beautiful set nice job

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

Great set, nice work. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

-- Tom D

Wonderful, this is on my endless to-do list for a friend of mine. Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to turn and carve all these pieces ?

-- 100 fois sur le metier remettez votre ouvrage

Nice pieces, did you use a duplicator for the set? Where did you get the pattern?

-- We are the people our parents warned us about.

Well done.

Very nicely done. I also was wondering about the duplicator?

-- Brian's Table Top Toys http://home.mountaincable.net/~bgraham/

No duplicator involved…just calipers and dividers. When I was in Jr High….ages ago…. I found that pattern, drew it on graph paper and made an identical set. This time around I used that chess set (I still have it) to measure off from. Takes a good hour per pawn, a couple hours for the bigger ones.
I did a much better job this time around carving the knight—thanks to internet image searching for horse profiles!
The Chess board/box was my first box. Took me forever to figure things out and getting the two halves exactly right, aligned, etc. Hard since it had to algin both closed and opened up.

No Duplicator? You are the Man, really nice set.

-- "I gotta have more cowbell"--------Bruce Dickinson

Very impressive work.

-- Bob A in NJ

WacoustaWombat, I bow low in your direction!!

The only chess sets I ever actually completed were created by compound-cutting on the scroll saw (with the board cut on the scroll saw as well). My turned chess men stalled out when I got to the knight. Then I found “Woodturning Full Circle” by David Springett (Fox Chapel Publishing). He presents an interesting method of turning the horses’ heads. he also presents a LOT of very interesting turning techniques that push the boundaries of woodturning. Some day, some day…

-- Gord M, Nova Scotia, Canada

NSWoodspinner, For the Knight, the horse gets turned only in a profile shape…the neck being an inverted cone, The chest/nose/mane was a cylinder, and the ears/upper mane a cone again. Then bandsaw flat. Then dremel and file the features (no dremel back in 1968!).
Adding a few pictures for the Knight construction to a new project…

Very nice work. Maybe I’ll get a lathe and try it someday.