Mission Style Chessboard

Absolutely beautiful! And, the finish turned out great.

Did you use foam brushes or bristle type to apply the poly?

-- Tom, Surfside Beach, SC - Romans 8:28

I like that board alot, very pretty.

-- Urban logger, http://nelsonwoodworks.biz/

Great chess board. I also finshed the ones that David Marks designed. These look great. thanks for sharing.

-- ICN, Bill, (http://www.beavercreekfitness.com)

Thanks Tom,

My experience with foam brushes is that they cause lots of air bubbles so I used a natural bristle brush and had thinned the poly about 50% with mineral spirits. Then I basically put on a good wet coat and went around making sure that I popped any air bubbles I did see. Then I left it alone and hoped for the best while it dried. I did this board in December and it worked. I tried the same technique in July (when it was humid) for the Firefighter chessboard with nothing but miserable results. It just would not dry without bubbles in the finish. So I sanded it all off and switched to aerosol lacquer to get it glossy. The fumes were nasty but the end result was great.

-- - Scott "handplane"

That is a great looking board.

Nice job.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

Another amazing piece! I like the frame on this more than the mitered blood wood in your other chess board.

-- Women love me.....trees fear me

Im a “chessboard” man myself. They make great gifts. They are large and “showy” and the recipient almost “HAS” to display, (lol). Perhaps you might give a try to WIPE-on polys and gel forms of urethanes. They dont provide as glossy a finish , but bubbles are not a problem.

-- Dan

I really like the board and the “History of Golf” chess pieces are great…...

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

A very nice piece!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

I did not realize that a chessboard could be made in a style.
Are the through tennons real ?

Well, I suppose the chessboard itself isn’t in any style, but the frame can be called mission style. As for whether or not the through tenons are real, I guess it depends on how much of a purist you are. The tenons are real, there are no screws or any other metal fasteners in this project. The tenons are however, loose tenons. I had a Christmas deadline to meet and didn’t want to encounter any problems that might cause me to miss it. I’ve done the true through tenons on other mission style things before and it can be quite tricky to get them to work out well.

-- - Scott "handplane"

I was wondering if the quilted maple and claro walnut solid right thru and if not how thick?

-- Mike, Airdrie Alberta

Chessnut,

Both woods are solid, 1/2 inch thick, resawn from 12/4 and 16/4 air dried pieces I had at home for a couple of years. I cut them 5/8” thick and then left them to further acclimate for several months (because that’s how long it took me to get around to working on it, not because I had some genius master plan to deal with wood movement). After I checked to see they all had uniform moisture content with a moisture meter I jointed, planed, and sanded them to final thickness with a drum sander. The quilted maple wanted to explode whenever touched with a blade.

-- - Scott "handplane"