Custom
Checkerboard
|
I made
this checkerboard for my Father-in-Law's 70th birthday. The
squares are walnut and maple, each one 2.5". There is a thin
inlay of red oak around the squares, then the outer frame of
walnut. Overall size is approximately 24" square.
It is finished with three coats of super-blonde shellac, followed by
paste wax. It took me approximately 18 hours over 7 days to
complete.
Scroll down for construction details...
|
 |
Construction Details
|
I started
with
rough lumber from a sawmill. The
boards are planed down to 3/4" thick and then cut into eight strips,
2.5 x 21" (four maple and four walnut).
Here I'm running them all through the planner on edge to clean up the
edges and make them all exactly 2.5" wide.
|
|
Next the strips are glued up into one board, as shown below.
[Lesson
Learned: If I were to do this again, I'd do multiple
glue-ups, as
shown in the photo further down. Trying to glue together
eight
strips at once and keep them aligned and flat was - um - challenging.]
|
|
After the glue sets, rotate the board 90 degrees and cut it up again
into 2.5" strips...
|
 |
...then, of course, you flip every other strip and glue it all back
together again.
|
 |
As mention above, it was much easier to handle multiple glue-ups of a
couple strips at a time. Before I did the final glue-up of
the two halves, I ran each one through the planer to clean them
up. This resulted in a lot less sanding afterwards. |
 |
Finally, I added the thin inlay of red oak (that was two additional
glue-ups, by the way) and then the outer frame of walnut, shown
here.
I used a router to ease the top and bottom edges with a 1/4" round-over
bit, and then applied the finish, as discussed above. |
 |
Evelyn and Albert try out his gift during his birthday party at our
place, Memorial Day weekend. |
 |
One final note: I decided to build this exactly one week
before the party. (Like I didn't already have enough to
do!) I figured I would build the board and then just buy a
nice wooden set of checkers locally. (Wrong!)
So on Monday - six days before the party - I started calling around
trying to locate a set of wooden checkers worthy of the board I was
about to build. :) I called every gift shop, game
store, comic book store, toy store, etc. in the tri-state
area. No one had a decent set of checkers - just the cheapo
plastic toy type that kids use. I finally found what I was
looking for on a website:
a beautiful wooden set of basswood and ebony.
Perfect. Except they were located in Portland, Oregon and I'm
located in Delaware. So I had them shipped 2nd-Day
Air. (Luckily, checkers don't weigh very much...)
If you decided to build a chess or checkers board - or are just looking
for a really nice set - I highly recommend The
Chess Store. The woman I spoke with was very
helpful and assured me that the checkers would ship out that
day. The quality of the checkers I bought is exceptional and
their selection is huge.
|
|
Recommended Reading:
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Leave a Comment!
If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. Please use the form below
to post your comment.
Please fill out all fields. It's OK, of course, to post anonymously or use an alias.
Thanks! |
Comment Script
Comments
This comment form is powered by GentleSource Comment Script. It can be included in PHP or HTML files and allows visitors to leave comments on the website.
|
|
|
©
2008
nestlerode.org
Modified on Apr 14, 2008
|
|
|
|
|
|
It would have been nice for you to show how you applied the trim... cut 45 angles etc...
Thanks
Mr. Light
As for the trim, I used a shop-built miter sled to cut the pieces on the table saw. I find this usually gives the most accurate angles. My miter sled looks like the second one shown in this Fine Woodworking article:
www.finewoodworking.com/Workshop/WorkshopArticle.aspx?id=30357
I'd love to hear how your class does with the project! Maybe they could upload some photos to Flickr or Picasa and you could post a link here...