I make a lot of chess boards for my Etsy Shop, I’ve been able to sell them all over the U.S. and in other countries. My boards are fairly simple yet have an elegance that apparently people desire. I’ve been asked too many times to count about how hard it is to get all the squares to align, and every time I’ve said “there is a trick to that”. Well here’s the trick. You will need an accurate table saw and fence system on the saw, a very good blade, I recommend a thin kerf Freud combination blade. Make sure there is no pitch on the teeth before you start this project. You’ll also need a good planer and a handle on how to prevent planer snipe. If you don’t know what snipe is, refer to this article I found online. You will want a drum sander handy, it doesn’t have to be as wide as your board, but if it isn’t it needs to be an open ended sander such as the Jet 16-32. If you don’t have a good drum sander handy, a random orbit sander will work, but it’s far more work here and the end result is usually not as flat as you want.
First we choose our stock that we’re going to make our chess board from. I like Maple for the light color almost exclusively, and of the Maples, I like Birdseye, Curly, and what is known as Music Grade Curly. The least expensive of those is a regular curly, however you can get plain soft maple (not curly or music grade) and do just fine. You’ll want the material to be 4/4 thick (Four Quarter – 1 inch+) or maybe even 5/4 (Five Quarter – 1 1/4″ thick). Thicker is better for machining later and still end up with a board that is substantial. I do most of my boards as ‘face grain’ which means they show the grain across the board. There are some that do ‘end grain’ which is a nice way to do them but requires wood that is thicker than your squares are across (2″ squares require a board that is 10/4 – Ten Quarter thick). That might be a project for another blog post in the future.
The alternate wood I use is usually is a version of Walnut, there’s Peruvian Walnut that is very dark, and North American Walnut where I am that is reasonable in price but lighter in darkness, has some lighter streaks sometimes, and is generally more brown than chocolate/ebony. These two wood, Walnut and Maple, work well together. They expand and contract closely enough that there’s little if any problems with the construction of nice boards. Other woods I’ve worked with are Mahogany, Sapele, Purple Heart, Bocote, Brazilian Cherry, North American Cherry, and Katalox.
First, let’s plane our wood to thickness so that all of it has two surfaced sides (S2S in the lumber industry) and one edge joined on a joiner for square and straight. Both species need to be planed to the same thickness for this project. You want to remove as much extra work leveling this as you can as you move along. Next we need to cut our pieces. We need to plan ahead here some, so we need to know how big the board is to be. A board that has 2″ squares will be 16″ across when finished. A board with 2 1/2″ squares will be 20″ across. If we are going to have a 16 inch board, we need our first blanks to be at least 16 inches, plus enough kerf figured for 8 saw cuts, plus enough to trim the glued edge later (I add another 1/4″ to 1/2″ for that), and some to have a margin of error… so I usually cut blanks for a 16″ board at 2″ x 18″, and one of each species at about 3/16 wider for cutoff space, so a maple and a walnut that will be the ends at 2 3/16″ x 18″. I also mark those with a large W for wide boards, that way they go where I need them later on. I always start with dark wood wide board, then alternate light and dark until I finish with the light wide board. I also align the right side as closely to straight as I can to help with the first cutoff. I cut the first edge straight barely taking anything off, that sets up for the fence cuts.
I prepared a video clip here to show my assembling of the first panel for a chess board.
Once the first panel is made, we can sand it nearly flat (get rid of extra glue) and cut it apart for the second glue up. You may see some gluing cauls used, this is to keep the panels straight and prevent a warp or uneven strips that will be sanded away later. Doing this every time you glue a panel like this up will save you a lot of time later on.
Here is a video clip of cutting the glued panel apart for the second glue up.
After we cut the strips with two colors on each, we need to clean those up (we have cut cross grain…so there will be fuzzy edges to deal with). I use something like 180 sand paper on a hand block to knock off the fuzzy wood splinters and ready the pieces for glue up. This glue up will be end grain to end grain, need more glue here due to soaking it up into the wood, and make sure the parts are aligned like you want, you have just one shot at this!! I do not cut any strips wider here because this edge is going to be our final edges, we’ll cut with the grain later on using the extra material we allowed.
This video clip shows gluing the panel together the second time.
Pay attention to alignment here, very carefully!! Press pieces together so that the glue will tack some and prevent sliding. I do not use any mechanical fasteners or biscuits there, I found that causes more problems than it solves for me, so butt joined is it.
Now when we have a dried panel, we can begin finishing, first we need to flatten this and I use a drum sander with 120 grit paper and gently and slowly remove the surface to flat on both sides. Once flat, I move to finer paper ending up at about 220 to get a finish that a random orbit sander can deal with easily. I cut off the edges that are not even across the board using a panel sled, then cut my edge detail that I like using a router table and combination of bits to obtain the profile that I have, then sand to get ready for finish application.
For finish I brush on a polyurethane coating, always do three coats and sand to 320 in between coats. I will post another thread on finishing and my technique of brushing on material using this board constructed here as my target object.