catching up on projects -- LATE xmas! :(

[Rob Young]

One thing leads to another and pretty soon you are way behind on projects.  But I'm sure this is a foreign concept to everybody around here...

Anyway, mostly done with a chessboard for the nephew.  Next step is a box to hold the chess pieces.  Hope to make it Christmas In February for him...

Chessboard is curly maple and (less) curly cherry with a Khaya boarder.  Khaya may be better known as African Mahogany.  The board is made with 1/4" strips instead of uber-thin veneer.  The substrate is 1/4" MDF with a backer "veneer" of 1/4" quartersawn white oak (I'll get a picture eventually).  This is based on the design and pictures found on Paul Seller's web site.  Didn't go all out and make it an official tournament board with 2-1/4" squares.  They are only 1-3/4".  But with a #6 sized set of chessmen, it looks pretty good.

Oil-varnish mix to pop a little curl and mellow the maple.  Then lots and lots of blonde shellac.  Rubbed out and then some paste wax to give a nice sheen.  Decided it shouldn't have a bright shiny finish as that might be distracting.

Underway:


Out of clamps and oiled:


Then, mo shellac is mo better:



Super blonde shellac from flakes, might be shellac.net or Wellman, frankly I don't remember!  But I've been experimenting with methods to apply the shellac to build the base coat before rubout.  Since it is too cold to spray outdoors, I've been padding it on.  Found that using old cotton socks works great.  They are thick and lint free, making good shellac pads. 

After rubout and wax:



The Stanley 358 miterbox got a workout making the pieces for the border:

[MattP]

I like it. And I 100% agree with toning down the gloss for a chess board. Good call.

[colibas]

Looks great! It seems from the pics you have the grain in the squares running all the same direction (though the curl goes the other way). Do you like how it looks, in person? I would do it the way you did, but I'm surprised how many I see with the light and dark running perpendicular. Even Sellers's.

[hbmcc]

Nice ...! The consistent grain turned out very well.

I want to do this--have been for years--but like you, am led astray. I have to design and build the pieces, also. I have a couple of brooms that need to wear out first. Before that, it was making the whole thing a game table, with storage, etc..

[Kansas City Fireslayer]

Nice work Rob. Rubbing out the shellac really gave it a welcoming luster to the eye. It's nice to do smaller projects like these--very enjoyable! A chess board is on my short list of projects and I'd like to squeeze one in over the next year. My 7 y/o girl has really taken a liking to checkers and the household cheap import board is falling apart. I'd like to make one out of an ebonized wood with maple as the contrasting color. WB finish to keep the maple light and bright. Great work.

[Adnick]

Really like that, also on my lists of projects....legacy item.




Andy


-- mos maiorum

[KSMike]

Really beautiful, Rob.

[Rob Young]

Looks great! It seems from the pics you have the grain in the squares running all the same direction (though the curl goes the other way). Do you like how it looks, in person? I would do it the way you did, but I'm surprised how many I see with the light and dark running perpendicular. Even Sellers's.

The grain of the squares is aligned, yes.  This is a byproduct of the assembly method, similar to the way one makes endgrain cutting boards with the funky patterns.  But instead of both flipping end-over-end AND rolling through 90*, one just does the end-over-end to alternate the squares.

This does however mean that the "veneer" (it is thick at just over 1/4") will be glued end-grain to end-grain prior to being glued to the sub-strait.  So things can get a little dicey during the flattening and cleanup just prior to gluing it down.  Had to be as gentle as possible so I didn't wrack things and blow the glue bond.

The bottom side is counter veneered with strips of quarter sawn oak.  A board left over from another project.  


From this photograph, I can see a little bit of a line on the right side where I did a very gentle taper to get the finished board to fit that one groove. Just kept using a #80 cabinet scraper & card scrapers, taking sort of long skewed cuts across the grain to taper it down just a smidge.  Can't normally see it but the camera is picking up the slight surface difference.  Interesting.

[Rob Young]

And things continue to get in the way...  But I have the box done for storing the chess pieces.  Went with a simple design.  Cherry with a maple accent strip (some cut-off from the curly maple used in the board).  The top and bottom are veneered MDF panels.  Bottom panel used some blah-looking sapelle.  But the top is from my mystery veneer stash.  Looks like a curly mahogany family but way too coarse.  



Mitered corners and then slip-liners to hold the lid aligned.



When trimming and fitting long miters, a shooting board is your friend.  


I use a sort of inverted donkey's ear that I can clamp onto my regular shooting board.  Works great but is getting a little bit beat up.



Blonde shellac with a wax topcoat.  Needs to sit in a sunny spot (and be rotated regularly) to get the cherry from salmon to a bit more interesting color.  Didn't use any oil-varnish blend on this one because even sealed up with the shellac, I've been able to smell it on the inside of a box some time later.  The wax solvents have a little smell but that flashes off in a mater of a week on the inside.

In the end, this was an 80/20 project where I used machines for maybe 20%, the heavy lifting and getting things prepped.  But all the final sizes, surface prep and tweaking is hand tools.  Makes for pleasant work in the evenings.

[RonB1957]

Nice job, Rob. Be sure to pack it carefully before shipping it to me.