selfmade boards and peaces

Hello,

Anyone made his own board and peaces ?.
Since I sculpture stone, i have wondered to make my own board.
Altough i wonder how much time it would make in for example marble or lime stone. Also if you made it in stone what kind of glu did you use for the board ?.
Did you put something under it, like glass or another stone ?
Maybe you have a picture of it?

And how long did it take to make all the required pawns (that might be the most boring part of it i think.

When I was in high school, I made a set of pieces out of clay and sprayed them with engine enamel.  Not the greatest looking set in the world,  but it was playable, and I still have them in the basement.

I say do it!  Just be patient with yourself and your creation.

yes, I've made this set, but it only exists in the digital world.

Hmm clay isnt such a bad idea...

I could make the board out of lime stone, and peaces out of painted clay
I'm also thinking to build the board inside the living room table.
Using some stone, or paint or a different wood kinds to make the board.
I think it would look cool

That's a great idea!  You should do it!

Sounds like you're a lot more experienced than I was - it should look great!

How did you do this?

I made a board and pieces that came out nicely:

The pieces are made of flat 1" disks of rose quartz and black onyx. On top of the disks are glued rounds of suede leather, brown and grey. On each leather round is inked in red or black the design for each piece.

The board is a two piece affair with 1.5" squares, leather, in green and natural. I glued it to a base of teak and made a border of teak as well.

I have a photo around here somewhere and will post it if anyone cares to see it.

yeah i would like to see that photo !!!

what u kearned sofar from an internet survey, that it seams to be difficult to glu a chakkerbord and make it all fit together. Sofar i'm also not sure about which kind of glu to use. another thing that came into my mind was to make the white speaces out of glas and the dark out of stone... but then i need a glu expert i think.  Sofar this is all an idea to me, to have may living room table reconfigured as a peace of art and chess board. i will gonna do this, when i got enough time for it, i like to hear experience practical, how long did it took etc, photos for ideas etc

I once made a board by gluing ceramic tiles to a piece of cardboard. I was young with little money and some chessmen. I bought some cheap tiles, like for tiling a bathroom wall, about 1.5" square. I used plain white glue to glue them to some stiff cardboard. It wasn't fancy but it worked. Sometimes I wonder what could be done with some really nice tile and better backing. Maybe I'll find out someday.

well getting nice tiles isnt a problem to me, its just finding the right raw stone.
if i make it from stone i will use some kind of limestone, aspertin or so.

Maybe you could recreate the 1972 board used in the Spassky - Fischer championship. goldendog posted a nice pictures of it as posts #519 and #584 in this thread: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/greatest-chess-photos?page=26

Here it is:

Here's that set I referred to above. When this pic was taken no finish had been applied to the teak frame yet. Now it's dark and glossy.

Cool, it would take a while to get used to which pieces are which!

 Correct. Just getting used to the set to the point of subliminal recognition of the pieces (such as we all have with otb Stauntons and the diagram piece sets) is something to reckon with as well. I have a suitably sized Dreuke plastic set that fits the board well and I tend to use that. Cest la vie.

It's still an attractive and unique set, the rose quartz and onyx and all.

I don't think the picture does it justice...but very nice!

 No no no.

First I designed the symbols in Microsoft Paint. Then I made each frame in Microsoft Paint. I started with the original starting position and then copy pasted as needed. Each white move is a single frame, then each black move is a single frame. Each is saved as GIF.

Then I used Blumental's Easy GIF Animator to line them up and adjust the speed fo the animation. Then save and upload to an image hosting website. In this case Photobucket.com.

Then post to Chess.com and watch the dollars roll in! I mean watch the fan mail roll in...I mean... 

Well, thank you for the question.

 That's a nice job! I like the board a lot.

 Thank you!

I've been curious about making boards for different variant games, especially now that I have some variant pieces to use with them. I figured I could do them on poster board or foam core with sharpies, but I decided to poke around in craft stores to see if I could come up with something better. The second craft store I went into was also a fabric store. Unknown to me, whose closest contact to fabric has been bleaching and drawing on his jeans, you can buy vinyl in fabric stores. I found some vinyl close to, although not quite the same as, the stuff they make roll up chess boards out of. So I made a roll up Capablanca chess board:

Here's a picture of it partially rolled up:

Obviously I didn't make the pieces. They're my Seirawan chess set from House of Staunton. The rook pawns (which unfortunately don't match very well) are from my high school tournament set.

The vinyl was pretty easy to cut up with an exacto knife. Then I marked it up with a sharpie, a fine point for the grid lines and algebraic notation, and a chisel point to fill in the squares. What took so long is that the sharpies need to dry overnight or they smudge easily. So I did it in five nights: border and rank lines, file lines, algebraic, white side squares, and black side squares. I also experimented with fabric markers, but they are nowhere near as dark as the sharpies, and even with the sharpies you don't get an even black. I probably could get an even black with another coat, but I'm not that worried about it. Oh, working with those chisel tip sharpies makes you appreciated the phrase "well ventilated working space."

Anywho, I'm going to take it to club with me today, and see if I can get anyone to play it with me.