How to Make Perfectly Carved Wooden Chess Set / Pieces at Home
Chess sets with extraordinary designs are made of different materials such as metals, plastic, wood, alabaster, glass, marble, camel bone and stone. Stone chess sets are mainly made of alabaster and marble. Plastic chess sets are basically colorless because of the polymers found in them. Colorants are added to the pieces while making them, so that the chess pieces appear attractive. Metal chess sets are made of alloys like zinc, tin, copper, bronze, brass, aluminium and pewter.
Wooden chess sets are used nowadays for decoration purpose as well as for playing. Wooden chess sets offer a huge variety to the buyers. ebony and rosewood make the most exquisite chess sets in the world. These exotic woods are hardwoods and it is very difficult to carve on. This is the reason why the wooden chess pieces are very valuable and expensive in the market. These chess sets are of very high quality.
There are some reasons why wooden chess sets are very valuable and extremely popular among chess players –
- Thousands of cheap and perfectly functional plastic chess sets can be easily made with moulds but wooden chess sets requirehighlevel of precision and skill. Highly skilled workers turn the wooden chess pieces individually on a wooden lathe and carefully fashioned by hand.
- The chess pieces begin life as shapeless blocks of hardwood. Very dense and consistent woods are used, so that meticulous chess pieces are carved out of it. The complexity of the knight is often the biggest factor in the cost of a chess set, in some casesit can take an expert knight carver up to four days to carve four knights. Chess pieces with extremely detailed displaying strands of hair, teeth, etc are hence costly because of the level of hard work put into them for carving out those extraordinary chess pieces.
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Now let’s learn the theoretical part of making wooden chess sets –
- Designing the chess pieces: The very first step is to choose a design for your chess pieces. You can get a design online, from books or you can think of your design.
- Carving the pieces on wooden lathe: Take two different kinds of woods, one for darker side and forlighter side. You can also choosesame kind of wood for both the sides, the pieces then can be stained afterwards.Now take the wooden block and mount it on the lathe. Start turning and press the cutting tool up to the turning piece of wood, to begin carving it.
- Doing the fine carving: Now this is the most challenging part of chess making process. Carve your chess pieces to perfection using special tools, knifes and your hand. Use your chess design and give those details to your chess pieces.
- Sanding and treating the chess pieces – It is very important to sand the chess pieces, in order to get the smooth and even surface. Chess pieces are then treated with a solution that helps the chess pieces to preserve.
- Final finishing and polishing – Final touches are made and chess pieces are polished to a high shine. Chessbazaar buff polishes the chess pieces to make world’s best quality chess pieces.
Now take all the required tools like pencil, scratch paper, wooden lathe, sandpaper of different grits etc and begin carving your dream chess set or we at chessbazaar will be more than glad to make the chess set that you always wanted but could not find or it was way too expensive to buy one from some other seller. Know More
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