Building a Chess Board

probably doesn't

Absolutely, 

www.rosecityropes.com

instagram is:

@rosecityropes

I'm a professional carpenter, I do woodworking on the side. 

From your site, it looks like you do beautiful work.

Thanks! Working on a board right now. Will post a writeup when complete. 

I love it, it looks amazing. So elegant, and the look with no border is beautiful. It just makes you focus on the wood. Fantastic work.

Here's the current board in production. A ton of energy going into this one. Handplaning instead of sanding. The depth of the wood grain will be profoundly deeper and more striking. Greater contrast in the grain since you are slicing it, instead of grinding it off. Stack of pics to show the progress, including the worst square on the board. 

First pic, straight out of glue up. 

Second pic, a rough glue scraper to remove the mess. 

Third pic, just a visual of a handplane and what kind of shavings you get. 

4th pic, lots of shavings. 

5th pic, measurement of the worst of the white squares. My eyes have a hard time seeing imperfections on the corners of dark squares. Much easier to critique the white ones, so that's what I spotted and measured. .012 inches or .305 mm off. Very happy with it. 

A visual of the worst square from normal distance. 

Last pic, a little more zoomed out and at an angle with the worst square. 

Very nicely done!

Gorgeous. 

Wow!

"Cut twice, measure once...or something like that."

Amazing work, Sir!

Measure once, swear twice or more !

Haha!

Measure 50 times, cut 1000 times, swear until you lose your voice!

Wrapped up! Tragedy did strike, I blundered and did reverse the grain on one of the dark squares, which isn't the end of the world, except.... I discovered the mistake when I ran the hand plane the wrong direction across it and chipped it. As a result, I decided to roundover the edges (not my favorite) but it saved the board. I figure I'll keep making these, once I have a dozen or so I'll start a chess club in the park nearby, see if I can harvest some summer games with people. 

Almost final product. Needs another coat of finish, and then a buffing, but this is close. You can see the quality of the quilted maple, absolutely love the 3rd dimension that wood brings to a board. 

The mistake:

I can't say I like the rounded edge but the board is just stunning.

Good way to save the board, I think it looks fabulous.

Let's focus on the positive! This was an awesome photo series of the board making process. Glad you were able to save the board with a minor alteration. Design is a constantly evolving process that changes with the situation. You gotta roll with the punches. 

Next time this happens, what about a small 1.0x0.25" wood patch with a tiny tiny contrasting butterfly inlay to strengthen the repair? Own the mistake and turn it into a visual design element. 

Thanks for all the compliments!

Seeing as how I've never done a hand planed project before, I really have zero complaints on how this turned out. I think the wood looks beautiful and it really opened my mind to a lot of possibilities outside of the traditional sand it into submission approach. 

@pawnerai I like the way you're thinking! I initially considered glueing the chip back on, but it fragmented and I lost part of it. I even considered cutting out the entire square, which would be a cool challenge, but for the sake of the process I wanted to see this one through. I've also never bowtied a piece back on, which would be cool, but I'm unsure of I would have just wrecked it  I'll give that a try on some scrap woods and see how it comes out. Thanks for the challenge!

I'm going to do one more post on this build that will be more of a deep dive into exactly what the steps are, and the pitfalls along the way. It will discuss square alignment, milling, glue-ups, sanding vs planing, finish, etc. It will be a full blog post for my site, and I'll share it here to try to debunk a few of the common misperceptions on board flaws. I'll also point out a few flaws that I haven't seen mentioned here (despite being on the boards) and I'll explain where they came from. 

I'll also add, start to finish, this board took 7 days to build. Not 7 full days, you can't work the wood nonstop, it will get warped. Probably 14 hours of work plus materials. 

The board still looks beautiful. And, for me, it might make an unaffordable board affordable