Chesshouse Travel Set with upgraded custom 3D printed board - PHOTOSHOOT!

I purchased the Chesshouse 9" Magnetic Milled Leather Travel Set about a year ago. What got me interested in the set was the unique, stubby looking wooden magnetic pieces. No other travel set on the market has this stubby looking style.

Two negatives of this set are the weak magnetic strength, and undersized squares. The board is way too small for the pieces resulting in a cramped playing field. The combination of the tiny magnets under the pieces and the pleather surface on the board results in very little magnetic cling. When you pick up the pieces it barely registers as magnetic.

Undetered, I wanted to design a better board to address these two negatives. Board size and magnetic strength.

All 32 Chesshouse travel pieces have the same base width of 0.75". The board squares are 1.0". An overall 8" board. So while the King base diameter is 75% of the square, so is every other piece and all the pawns. Every single piece is 75% of the square! Resulting in an extremely cramped board. The size ratio rule of thumb does not apply to this set. I sketched it out on paper, did some measurements and landed on a size of 1.125" squares for better fit. An overall 9" board.

Increasing the magnet strength was more challenging. Prying out the bottom magnets and drilling out larger holes for stronger magnets in 32 small chess pieces was way too much work. And the chance for mangling something was high. So I decided on putting magnets in each square of the board to supplement the magnetic strength of the magnets in the pieces. 64 magnets! Not only will the strength be increased, but the pieces will automatically self-center in the center of the square whenever a piece is moved. It's a quite satisfying effect. If you carelessly place a chess piece a bit off-center in a square, the 2 magnets will pull towards each other and automatically "suck" the piece into the middle of the square.

Instead of using the Chesshouse zipper bags, there is storage inside the board to hold the pieces. And instead of a hinge, there are magnets to hold the board together for a more streamlined look.

And since I was 3D printing a board anyway, I might as well use my favorite FUN colors of red and black! This is not a competition board. It's a fun board. MY fun board. (...and my son's).

Enjoy the photos. I already have some additional improvements in mind for Version2.0.

Very cool and very well thought out, I very much like the idea of the self-centering pieces! Nice work!

@BrownishGerbil. Thanks!

As an aside, I'm not sure what the secret sauce is for posting images so they appear in the Mobile App. I'm already reducing the images down to a small 80-60kB in size. So frustrating. This is one of the reasons why I don't post photoshoots here anymore ever since they updated the Mobile App. Ohwell.

@Schachmonkey. Thanks. Yeah, it seems like the images appear fine when the forum is accessed through Mobile browsers, but not when you access the forum through the Chess.com Mobile app. (It's of course fine on desktop). I've shrunk down the images by over 75% in case it's the size. I've deleted half of the images in case it's the amount of images. I'm down to 8 images, all under 100kB in size. And still nothing on the Chess.com Mobile app. Maybe 6 images?? And then I'll just post additional images in separate followup postings in the thread? So weird..

You did a great job! I agree with BrownishGerbil that the self-centering pieces were a brilliant idea. I give the project a 4.5 star rating, it would of got a 5 star if the board was a different color 😉 lol..! Good stuff Pawnerai..

I have the same set but that is way too much work for this old man. I am super impressed what you did.

Awesome work!

I did something similar, but with printed magnetic disk pieces. I think I like yours with proper pieces better. They're probably easier to use than disks.

Thanks guys. For clarification, whereas I lack the equipment and patience to learn the precise 3D printing skill needed to produce a board like this, I did know exactly what I wanted and could convey this to a someone who has the skills to produce the board.

I would've needed to research and purchase the printer. Buy supplies. Make room to store the printer in my house. Invest time to learn from scratch with zero knowledge. Practice. Trial and error printing resulting in a ton of waste. etc... So I found an experienced guy on Etsy who had something that was in the "ballpark" of what I was looking for. And contacted him to work on a commission project. Programming the specs was the time-consuming hard part. But now that the specs are done and saved, if I wanted to order another board with a different color or something, it's a press of a button. There's more to it of course, but the heavy lifting is already done.

Something I did not think of until during production, was that the magnets in ALL 32 chess pieces MUST have the same polarity. Something Chesshouse did NOT have to worry about because the pieces are sticking to a metal board in their product. The polarity doesn't matter in that case. It didn't matter if some pieces were reversed. The pieces will still stick to metal. But when the magnetic pieces are sticking to magnets embedded in the board, the polarity must all be same, or some pieces will stick, and others will be repelled. I lucked out in that only 4 of my Chesshouse pieces needed to have the magnet dug out from the base, reversed, reglued in and refelted. I then mailed him a pawn so he had the piece in hand to test the 64 magnets embedded in the board. 4 dollar postage well spent! Hah.

I still think this set from world chess is better buy than anything out there, imo. Although, there are few minor problems with this set as well.

Can you post your commissioned 3D printer model on thingiverse?

@TundraMike I can forward you the Etsy seller's info if you want to purchase this particular size board for your Chesshouse pieces. It'll arrive in a week or so. He has the specs saved.

Just two important things you have to do. First is to check that all 32 pieces are the same polarity. If yes, you're golden. If no, you got some work to do with a pocketknife. (see comment #9). Second, you'll have to mail a pawn to the seller so the 64 board magnets match up to the polarity of the pieces. He'll send the pawn back to you with the board.

@Pawnerai I won't be going that route as I like the board and pieces for traveling and even have the skinny pieces that are just as tall but without the larger bases. They once had this version and years ago were able to procure me both sets of pieces. Raphael is great when it comes to going the extra distance for his customers.

I do realize the pieces are not very strong magnetically but I just use it on a desk in a hotel room.

Thank you for offer to get me in touch.

It's very impressive what you have done.

DM me if you want the Etsy seller contact information so you can discuss it with him