Building a Chess Board

This is a repost of a comment I made on another thread. Several people asked me to repost it here, to share the information. If there's interest, I could write up and document a full board build so people can learn a bit more about the complexities. To give some context, this is a response to a post about buying boards on etsy.

"This is a profoundly interesting thread to me. Glad I found it. I'm a chess player, I've always preferred OTB, never been a computer fan, so I really appreciate nice boards. I'm also a professional custom carpenter and I do woodworking on the side. I figure I'll chime in with a few thoughts on this. 

#1. I don't even consider etsy as a real place to buy woodworking products. The prices on etsy are unreasonably low if you are looking for high quality. Any photo on there can look good. When you are up close and personal it's not going to meet the quality standards of picky folks. I just sold a purple heart and cherry wood board because of the colors and because I was able to deliver it last minute before valentines day. Sometimes that's what a 5 star rating is. 

2. Handmade items will have flaws. It's made by a human, out of wood, with machines that are constantly in flux with their calibration. In some ways I think that adds value to the item. When I build a piece, the price is often reflected in how well it turns out at the end. Did everything go perfect? If so, I'll charge a premium. Is it flawed due to my miscalculation? That's a lower price. Is it flawed due to unique wood characteristics? Maybe that's not flawed at all, maybe that's a higher price. The craftsman just needs to give an honest assessment of the piece and move on. The OP mentioned wanting perfection, but also not wanting to pay a premium. Those things don't go together. 

3. Wood has character. Someone posted an image saying they thought the board had a bad scratch in the walnut engrain. That was actually natural color variance based on the wood, where it was cut, and what the tree experienced in its life. My favorite wood is curly maple, it has an insane amount of character and variance. Some people would find it distracting. I find it beautiful. It's just a variance. 

4. In case you are wondering the timeframe it takes to make a high end chess board quickly and the equipment used: 

a. located and purchase rough sawn lumber. Tools needed: vehicle. 

b. mill it to the clients requested size: Tools needed: Professional table saw: $2000-$3000. Jointer: $1600. Planer: $800

c. Initial glue up: Clamps: $120 wood glue: a few bucks. Must sit in clamps for 24 hours (meaning you need a place to store it and you can't use those clamps for other projects in the meantime). 

d. Pull the board out of clamps, you now have a striped board. You'll need to remove all of the glue with a scraper, and then flatten the board if there was and misalignment in the glue up. (when you apply a few hundred pounds of force to a clamp, the boards can slip and slide out of alignment). If you want to flatten this quickly, you'll want a drum sander: $1000. 

e. cut the board across the stripes, with the exact, flawless, measurement of the original with of each strip. Ideally you didn't use your table saw in the last 24 hours so that you know the setting is EXACTLY the same. Flip every other board, now you have what looks like a chess board. 

f. prepare for the final glue up. This time, you can't have any movement from the clamps. If you want it perfect, mortise and tenon joints created with the domino tool which costs $1000 and will give you perfect alignment of the squares. you'll need to place 2-3 joints in-between every column. 

g. glue it up and wait another 24 hours. 

h. remove from clamps, scrape the glue, send it to the drum sander. 

I. use an orbital sander to get it to final smoothness. (at this point maybe you discover that you just sanded open a knot in the wood. Does this make the board trash?I sure hope not, quite a few hours into the project at this point)

J. Apply your finish. My favorite is a hand rubbed tung oil. It takes me 5 days of hand rubbing the oil in, and then a month for the oil to cure. $80 a gallon. Quicker is an oil wax blend. 1-2 coats in a 24 hour period and ready to deliver in a day or two. $150 a gallon. 

So, you can expect your board to be getting worked on for a week with upwards of 5-10k in tools being invested in it if you are going for perfect. A true craftsman will relish in the challenge of making the perfect piece. I now have enough clamps that I could probably mass produce 100 $95 boards in a week that are nice enough for most, but flawed to a true collector. Fortunately I make my living as a carpenter, I don't ever have to mass produce items to make money. I'm able to be highly selective with woodworking projects. 

I still have the first board I made. Circular saw, torch, hammer, drill. You could probably call it hideous, I would never consider selling it. No one would ever buy it. Plus, too much sentimental value. But, it speaks to what you can accomplish with certain tools, and not with others. 

So all this just to say, take pride in the fact that you are pursuing perfection. Be happy when you pay a premium for it, because the craftsman on the other end is pursuing it as well. 

I'm starting a build for a "perfect" board tomorrow. I'll try to remember to post pics of my first board and this upcoming board when it's finished so you can see the strengths/weaknesses reflected in the various tools I've acquired over the years. "

At this point a response was posted with a question: Since you're a woodworker yourself, can I ask you a question about misalignment? I don't think he does this on purpose. Is it because he didn't check the alignment after the clamps are set?

My response with pictures and a link to the original thread:

Response to alignment and original thread.

This is a very informative post. Thank you for the information.

+1

Hmm, at what price point... well, it depends on what you are getting in the board. 

First and foremost that's a lovely board. You recognize a lot of the lovely craftsmanship upgrades on it, and you paid for all of those. Some of the stuff in the description definitely sounds like fluff, but it looks like a nice board for sure. 

They use the term handmaid frequently in the description, but I would like to know what that actually means to them? Does that mean, handmaid with non-powered hand tools? Or with power tools? Or hands typed the code into the CNC computer to make a machine do the cuts and then hand assembled? Lots of variables there. 

Shipping was probably $50? Maybe more. (shipping isn't free). The materials probably cost around $100 at the most. CNC gets billed at $100-$200 an hour and a pro woodworker will be billing $100-$150 an hour. This could be more of an assembly line worker though, lots of templates. 

For the flaws on your board: The corner tearout looks like its a problem on most of the corners and could be related to an imperfectly aligned router table. When you run board across the router table it stays level, as you bring a corner towards the router bit it can dip, and cause that blemish or tearout. Since this is a repeat problem on your corners they should really fix their machine. 

For the misalignments... I don't see those as misalignments necessarily. Those look like some of the maple strips were cut a little fat to me. It would be interesting to see if you could get a digital caliper out and measure the difference in them. If that's the case, you should be able to identify the fat strip, and it should look misaligned on every square it appeared. 

I'd also like to do a study on the janka hardness of the woods used, how they measured prior to adding a water based glue, how much they expanded when they came in contact with the glue, and how much that expansion differed between something like Padauk, (extremely hard 1725 rating) and Maple (many varieties, 800-1450 rating). 

You can also see the grain orientation on your board seems to vary from cuts that were taken along, and sometimes across the growth rings of the tree. This will affect the expansion/contraction, and the theoretical warping of the board. When you buy a board you are commonly getting plainsawn boards, the cheapest option. Quartersawn will look different, act different, and cost more. 

If you want to have a perfect board, you need a pro woodworker to go shopping for the highest quality lumber, use the highest quality machines, and care about putting their name on the highest level of craftsmanship out there. $1500 would be the starting point for a perfect board. If it says "ships in 1 day" it's not going to be perfect. 

Here's a few pictures of some boards I whipped together on my contractor tools with scraps I had around the shop (I have a $400 saw vs a woodworker would have a $3000 saw). I hope to have a full set of tools by end of year, but I'll always be the handworked guy, no CNC machine desires for me. 

This first board is myrtlewood and walnut. Tons of character.

Second board is purpleheart and cherry. 

This last board was kind of a concept board I was playing with. I like double sided boards, and I wanted to try to have the color change through the center of the board. Unfortunately it chipped when I was working it. So... I played with a bevel idea and you can see the blade drift of my underpowered (for woodworking) tablesaw. Maple and walnut. This is a good example of why a perfect board should cost a lot. There will be failures along the way. A perfect board would require a rebuild. 

As soon as I make a perfect board, I'll post it. 

^+1  The insights of true craftsmen are fascinating.

Wood is stunning. I especially love the myrtlewood and walnut board you built.

+1

When building the Perfect Board® it might be wise to buy extra wood to make 2 extra strips of 8 squares. As I'm sure you know, there will always be that random dark knot or imperfect spot in the grain or color variation in the wood. Nature happens. You can critically inspect and select the best 8 strips out of the 10 at the glue up stage. Wasteful, I know. But you did say "perfect" right?   Great work BTW. Would love to see this thread continue with more updates of your beautiful work.

I became the chess coach at a Steiner school in NSW and asked everyone to make a board as homework after our first session. They could get help, or not, use any material including paper and it could be as rough or as fine as they wanted but had to have the dark squares indicated and the co-ordinates included. This told me a lot about them.

I said I would not include learners and had a 50% turnout. Six years later I did it again with a 100% turnout.

+2

+3

The myrtlewood and walnut will be my focus with my future builds. The myrtlewood is difficult to find in the world, but readily available for me. I think it looks incredibly classy and it will age a lot better than the fancy colored woods will. 

@Malabrigo would you say borderless solid wood board has way bigger chance of warping than solid wood board with frame even when both are good taken care off? Or would you say having a frame doesn't matter much if both are taken care for?

Not as wasteful as you might think. Those flawed cutoffs actually get upcycled into "chaos" cutting boards. Every board I make is a little extra long so I can trim the glued ends, and so that I have a piece or two extra to put into an end grain cutting board. 

For the knots, and grain irregularities... Some people like them, some don't. So in that scenario you have to question what does perfect mean to each person? Which is also why a "perfect board" would be a commissioned piece. 

I'd say matching the grain orientation, doing a good job finishing the piece, and storing it correctly are the most important elements. 

It's critical to remember that you CAN'T STOP wood movement. It's going to happen. That's also the beauty of wood. A really high quality board, will still move. A really high quality board, will move less. So, the craftsmanship you are paying for is more than just the look, it's the longevity, and your responsibility as the owner to take care of it. 

The framed boards strike me as being harder to store. 

Very true. Although I love grain and knots and swirls, sometimes there's that one random dark spot that "gets" me. On the myrtlewood and walnut board, assuming bottom is white, the spot in the g2 square. The grain and dark lines in the light squares are beautiful. I have to keep myrtlewood in mind for any future commissions. On the maple and walnut board, assuming bottom is white, the spot in the d3 square. There are 5 knots on that board that I LOVE, but it's just the d3 spot in the grain that catches my eye. Again, if we're talking perfection here in my opinion of course. In other instances, a spot here and there is perfectly fine. It's nature's beauty.

Those are perfect examples! 

I don't love the d3 spot on the maple/walnut either. 

On the myrtlewood, I love the whole thing except for the full square knot on d4. It's a shade darker and catches my eye. The client who bought it loves it though!

Thanks! 

Hmm, tough cookie this will be as most of us order them online so we can't choose a board with matching grains. All we can do is hoping to get one and when it's not then more tough cookie for us abroad.

Old but good video of a chessboard done right and the high end machinery involved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m1eIB5KPls

@Malabrigo Do you have a web site?