Reproduction and Real Jaques of London Chess Set

I thought I read somewhere where the "new 1849" sets will have a special type of weighting, I may be wrong.  

Because of our ongoing discussion, I was curious as to the composition of the weights in some of my chess sets. I tested the sets using an extremely powerful magnet. Here are the results.

House of Staunton "Dubrovnik" - LEAD

House of Staunton "1936 Nottingham" - LEAD

House of Staunton "Mechanics Institute" - IRON/STEEL

House of Chess "Zagreb" - IRON/STEEL

House of Chess "Monarch" - IRON/STEEL

House of Chess "Encore" - LEAD

The Chess Piece "Fantasy Knight" - LEAD

The Chess Piece "Elite" - LEAD

The Chess Piece "Royal Padauk" - LEAD

The Chess Store "Zagreb" - LEAD

Alan Dewey "Stubby Set" - LEAD

This certainly isn't definitive, some vendor use both. Steve Livingstone from The Chess Piece told me that he only uses lead in his sets.

I have 3 sets with Iron weights. I am not having any problems with them. I do agree that they should use stainless steel or lead for weights.

I don't agree with this feeling, there is plenty of materials out there, and thinking that you have to deal with the toxic lead or with the rustic iron or else dream of some material that doesn't exist is not a realistic prospect. There is plenty of heavy weigted materials that are not toxic and don't rust, at least as bad as iron does.

For example carbide, I have worked with this material before, it doesn't expand that much on hot temperature, electolite acid barely make an oxidation mark on it, it is really heavy... the down side? it is not as cheap as iron.

I didn't make an extensive search and already found this:

http://www.wiegandwatches.net/mod-parts-and-extras/3oz-tungsten-carbide-stabilizer-weight-1-4-hole.html#

This picture comes from that website, you can see that you can archive the same weigth as steel diging a less deep hole on your chess piece, so talking of a reasonable optimal material to weigth a chess set is not some fantasy material, it just take some research, some knowledge of what is there on the market, and perhaps explain to a costumer that they are paying a premium for getting a material that will not rust after 2 months and in a hot day will not crack open your chess set, I am sure many people would be happy to pay some extra for this:

If lead is so toxic, what about all those kids out fishing with lead sinkers! I would think this poses a greater threat than moving lead weighted chess pieces around a board. Hell, they can even suck on the pieces and they still won't get lead poisoning.

They are getting expose to toxic substances eventually that people will develope some form of kidney malfunction or any other illness related to lead.

It is irresponsible to expose a child to lead on the forms you discribe.

So you are telling me that it have to be lead and they can't use other material to do the same thing?

I would be surprice if i googe something like "non toxic fishing weigths" and find that there is nothing but lead on the market... I also would be surprice if I don't find anyone trying to prevent fishermen to use lead.

There are other materials that can replace lead, but they have their drawbacks. In order to add as much weight using iron or steel, you'd have to drill a hole 40% larger, leaving you with a thinner outer wall that is more prone to damage or cracking. 

If you think handling lead in a responsible way is dangerous, then don't do it. I for one do not, and would feel safe casting lead outdoors.

How old are you?

Playing with mercury is far more dangerous than with lead, at least under standard circumstances (room temperature, not actively trying to eat it, etc.)

I remember the 50's well and I couldn't wait for a thermometer to break to play with the  mercury.  Also I remember lead split shots for fishing, all they made back then. We used our teeth to open and close these round pieces of lead shot.  Amazing I lived through all of that. 

Those things were probably safer than the millennium generation doing 20 shots at a party.  But no law against that is there. 

Anyways maybe we can get back on topic soon.  

Regarding htdavidht's remarks about making chess sets. A look at my website on the 'make a chess set in a weekend' pages shows that yes, indeed it is possible for someone with no lathe experience to produce a chess set.

I disagree with him about the level of skill needed to produce accurate chess pieces quickly and consistently and the level of skill needed to carve respecable knights heads but that is because I can do these things and therefore have first hand knowlege of all the processes involved.

If you look on my website for this article,

• Article: How Games are Made, William G. FitzGerald, The Strand magazine (London, 1895)

You will see that workshops were by no means small or 2 or 3 men operations and Ayres was only one of many manufacturers of games at that time.

Regarding weights lead or steel or whatever. It seems to me that the rusting problem of steel could be overcome by using stainless steel billets. these and lead weights could also be inserted a bit loose with rubber solution glue to allow for wood shrinkage avoiding the splitting of bases and or weights pushing out causing thr pieces to wobble.

The splitting of bases particularly on ebony is a long standing problem. I see dozens of antique Jaques Staunton sets come through my workshop with split bases quite apart from the damages caused by use. And one hopes that the modern manufacturers will take this on board (no pun intended) and solve it.

I don't really have too much experience working with wood. I have work with metals in some of the biges companies out there.

Anyway I remember seeing a video of someone making a couple of powns (I think it was you), at the end they where very different, and the person on the video comments that this was common back in the day.

Today you can use something like a wood lathe duplicator, with this tool you need to make the piece ones, like the skillfull craftmen does, then anybody can run a duplicator and get a bounch that look the same.

My comments on chess shops being of small size are still valid. When I say Drueke was a small factory and they make several diferent toy products, I was talking of something around 50 employees, So a picture of 15 workers doens't do anything for me. This is the actual NOJ shop, notice there is way more machines than people, as it should be:

https://www.noj.si/?mod=gallery&id=14

I understand your comments about the carving of the knights, and I would agree that you need  skill to make some of them, others are just simple combination of machinery and ingenuity. This pictures ilustrate how knights are made, to a basic shape, from there you can carve as much as you want to, still this website ornates them and sell them with not further carving, you can count some 30 per cycle:

http://gelmanschess.com/woodwork-making-of-the-knight/

So it will come down to the design. But it will be folish to atemp to produce in serie a design for wich there is not proper tools and experience. Here is where the shop have to work with what they have.

Ones again I don't have much experience with wood, what I know a lot is about manufactoring, quality controls, standarization, optimization of proccesses and things like those, I still make a point that a lot of this things can be translate into a shop that works wooden chess sets.

About the split of the wood, I don't know what else I can say, there is some things that maybe worth trying for example metal rings on the base of the set will help prevent this, And they also look sexy, Here a picture of what I'm talking about:

http://www.bestchessmenever.com/blog/files/img_7072.jpg

Material of the ring is stainless steel.

PD: I really like your website and your videos.

It seems there are differing opinions on what each of us finds appealing.

Does it really matter whether every pawn is exactly the same as long as they are visually acceptable. Personally, I prefer the beautiful hand turned chessmen of yesteryear to the mass produced modern examples shown on the NOJ site.

<BTW ... I think these are ugly, but someone else may like them>

Your second link shows an example of the reifendrehen technique that Alan Dewey explains very well on his ChessSpy site for duplicating simple forms. As a master turner, I think he knows what he's talking about!

What you should expect from a reproduction set would be something that closely and accurately resembles your item of interest. And I suspect that Chess Bazaar will put out a product that lots of people will buy.

If you want perfection, be prepared to pay for it!

I really would like a link, I though Alan was using a scroll saw to cut the basic shape. I appreciate if you can give me a link, or if Alan can let us know.

Sorry.  And a correction in my earlier post...it's reifendrehen.

Here's the link for Alan's site... http://www.chessspy.com/

BTW, NOJ is a small familiy-owned business, and none of their sets are mass-produced. All of their sets are hand-turned and produced in fairly small numbers (which is why they have waiting lists).