New wood grain Mouse Pad chess boards

Do you prefer square or rounded corners?

EXCELLENT looking boards. Thank you for asking for our input. As a PLAYER and not just a collector this is very appreciated.

I like rounded corners but square corners are fine too.

Nice looking boards.  I really like the Wild Burl. 

I believe Glen Butterman had a number of wood print boards that looked really nice.  I recall a Cocobolo color and Walnut Burl board.  Since he his no longer with us, did anyone buy any of those boards and can post pictures so Shelby can see them?

Do you prefer the grain of the wood running by rank (horizontal) or file (vertical) the old Drueke boards seemed to always have the grain of the wood horizontal, but I guess it is a matter of taste.

And No this is not advertising. Mr Lohrman and other from time to time do us a service in the equipment arena, and this is the book & equipment forum. 

Also many of us have been waiting on the Ultimate set for years and he is the one that is trying his best to bring this set back, so that is Not advertising either.  

The Chess World is a much better place with manufacturers and vendors like Shelby.  What a boring forum this would be if we didn't discuss the cutting edge products for the chess community on this forum. The V-TEK brought chess clocks to new heights. The Butterman board is a great product and I firmly believe one or two will last you for many many years and always fold flat after being folded up for 6 months or more and clean up nicely. 

Hi Shelby,

so you're going to have 2 dark square patterns on the same board?

So as he did yesterday, Shelby emailed me images of the above mentioned chess board designs.

The above is called Redwood and Wicked Burl

And this one is called Wenge and Wicked Burl

Eyechess:  What do you think of these color combinations?

Well, I like the first two, that I posted yesterday, quite a bit.

I prefer my boards to be a bit lighter overall.  I just think of the pieces I will be putting on the boards.  The Walnut Burl and Oak will work great with my Noj Walnut sets, and my Sheesham/Golden Rosewood sets.

The Wicked Burl and Oak will work excellently with any of my sets where the dark pieces have any red in them at all.  This would include my Rosewood, Bud or Blood Rosewood, and my Red dyed Noj Dubrovnik II sets.

While I like my Ebonized sets, I just find myself attracted to using my above mentioned sets more than those.  And when I do use the Ebonized sets, I am using Wenge, Rosewood and other darker woods for the board.

These last two boards that Shelby has put together would, in my opinion, call for the Ebonized or darker pieces.  Perhaps I'll get the Redwood one for my Official Staunton Ebonized sets.  We'll see.

Eyechess:  Do you use your NOJ sets for tournament play?

I definitely do use all but my HoS Morphy set for tournament play.  In my opinion I only want a Chess set to use and play Chess.

I converted the first images that Shelby sent to me from pdf to png and those are the ones I posted earlier in this thread.

I'm busy today but I got 2 of them changed to jpg because for some reason the png files would not load today.  The other 2 didn't open up correctly, a few times for each, in my LibreOffice.  The pdf that Shelby sent has the border on the picture correctly.  I do not have the time today to find a different program to convert these files better.  However you certainly can get the idea.

Above is the redwood and lightwood

Above is the wenge and lightwood

This is the wenge with rosewood and lightwood

And above is wenge with rosewood and oak

Shelby,

A year or so ago I put together this maple & padauk file that I thought would make a nice printed board. The original jpeg file is 4000 x 4000 pixels. If you're interested I'll be happy to share the design without charge. If anyone else is interested let Shelby know.

I like that, Lou.  Shelby you ought to take him up on this.

 Hi Eye (sounds like I'm in the navy),

I like the color combo. It's hard to find portable boards with wood grain designs that work well with woods like sheesham and the lighter colored rosewoods. I like playing with wooden pieces, but I'd prefer not having to drag along a wooden chess board everywhere I go.

I like the loubalch design!

 I agree.  The loubalch is pretty great.

Shelby,

I have over a dozen different wood pattern jpeg images (see list below). Each of them is 800 x 800 pixels, from which you could construct a complete board that is 6400 x 6400 pixels. Since a file that large is a bit of overkill, I've reduced my file to 4000 x 4000 pixels, which more than enough.

As to the board being made up of only two repeating images, that was intentional. There is a peacefulness and tranquillity in a pattern of repeated images, like Escher's tessellation prints or a zen garden, below.

I never liked boards the were too busy, even if they are real wood, I find them a distraction. I much prefer the contrast of a peaceful field upon which a great struggle will ensue.

Here is a list of the individual wood images I have: (2) ash, Asian teak, bloodwood, ebony, formica, maple, orange, (2) padauk, rosewood, walnut, wood panel, zebra wood.

You could, of course, start with the original 800 x 800 pixel images and crop out sections to use in constructing the board.