Chess Board/Storage Box

This is a chess board I built at the request of a co-worker for Christmas of ‘05. I couldn’t tell you how long it took me to make it because he asked me to make it around May, and I kind of put it off until about the second week of December.
The sides and the dark squares are bubinga, and the white squares are maple. The squares are all individually made because I wanted to put a groove between all of the pieces. I also cut a tongue and groove on all of the pieces, which definitely added a bit of time to the project. Now that I remember, it took longer figuring out what side to cut the groove on, what sides to cut the tongue on, which pieces need two tongues, e.t.c. I’m not positive if my favorite detail is the groove between all of the pieces, or the bottom side of the playing surface being seen when the top is open. Over all though, I think that the extra effort was worth it, the extra detail totally made the piece.
The bottom and interior dividers are made out of MDF, and covered in black Suede-Tex. Suede-Tex is a great product, it makes finishing the inside of boxes incredibly easy, and it looks like it took a really long time.
I’ve forgotten how many coats of teak oil are on the box, but it does have two coats of wax on the sides, and I feel like there is four on the top.
The hinges are Soss hidden hinges. Overall, I wasn’t that happy with them. They didn’t install quite as easy as I was anticipating. The only reason I chose them was that I didn’t want the hinges to be seen when the box was closed, and I didn’t feel like cutting any mortises. If you haven’t used these hinges they ‘only’ need flat holes drilledwhich would have been easier to do before the box was assembled. Since I glued everything up at one time, and cut the top off, that made it hard to drill the holes before assembly. I didn’t put any stops on the lid, I cut a chamfer on the back of the lid and the box to hold it open at 90 degrees.
All of the chess pieces that were going to go into the box were hand made at the school we both work at in the ceramics room. I wanted to make one of these sets for myself, and all of the chess pieces as well, but… Making ceramic pieces isn’t nearly as much fun as woodworking, especially if you have to make 32 ceramic pieces.
If I were to make something like this again, I would make the bottom a lot thicker, because the top weighed a lot more than I had anticipated; Enough so that I was kind of nervous that it could tip the whole thing over.
All in all, I had a lot of fun making this. It was something that was different than anything I have ever made, and even though it was kind of challenging (mostly because of the way that I designed it), it was fun and a good learning experience overcoming those challenges.

-- The Dude abides...