Flohr-Botvinnik '33 chessmen musings

Fabulous indeed.

I just found this thread, and I’m so glad I did; because it puts a name to this photo I found a few weeks ago on a Russian forum! I saved the image to my computer because the BFI and Smyslov sets are among my favorite designs, so it was cool to see a hybrid of sorts. I love the bishops and queens, but I was really fascinated by the significant tapering of the rooks!

Another reason I saved this photo is because of the amazing wood patterns of the white pieces. I’m so curious why olive wood isn’t more often used! It looks so cool.

Based on the photo above, I thought the black pieces were ebony. I just read that you used Indian rosewood. Beautiful! How did you get it so dark?

By the way, I don’t know if you know, but Stephen Kong is working on a collab reproduction of Antonio Fabiano’s Botvinnik–Flohr-I set. The Indian Chess Company will release it. I’m definitely getting that set once it comes out.

Olive wood is very dense and has a tendency to crack - so you need some force to carve/turn it but be very carefully not to transform it into a cloud of splinters. A CNC should be able to do it more reliably than the traditional lathe+static cutting tool so maybe we'll see more of those soon.

Interesting. Are there no light woods with similar patterns that are easier to work with?

Afaik the grain pattern is unique, there's nothing close to it. Olive trees grow in strange ways, contorted and curling in on themselves, that makes the grain very different from straight growing trees. The only thing I can think of that's in that direction is root wood (like eg walnut root) or flame/tiger maple, which both aren't very cheap or particularly easy to work with either.

Also don't get me wrong, olive wood can be turned and there's people who are quite good at it, it's just an extra skill to pick up along chess piece making so it's not that common.

Hi.

Thank you.

The rooks tapering was my own design that came out of prototyping on the lathe with some scraps. A few years after I made them, I still really like this design.

Indian rosewood is generally quite dark under lacquer. In real life it changes from 70% dark chocolate brown with a lot of figure to 99% dark chocolate brown with little visible figure, depending on the lighting. The figure and the colours play in the light if you look at them from different angles. It came out very dark in this photo. What you often see being sold as "rosewood" in most cases has no relation to actual Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) or to Dalbergia species. The name "Rosewood" sells well, regardless of what wood is actually used. Sometimes you get very poor quality low grade Indian Rosewood logs that are closer to brownish grey, but even they look much nicer than various cheap substitutes.

Re olive - it's quite hard. A pleasure to turn by hand when it's still green (only partially dried), but can get very tricky once it's fully dry. Mass-produced pieces are usually made in one go in a very quick fashion by running a blade with the piece profile against the wood. Takes about 8 seconds a piece. There used to be a video of the process circulating the internets. So it's not even a CNC-controlled lathe. I suspect that green wood might be a lot more prone to clogging the machinery or more likely to cause corrosion.

There's zebrawood, but the grain is straight and it's got a horrible smell when worked. And there's black limba, but it's too soft for chess pieces.

Yeah it's during that static tool cutting process on the lathe that the wood can crack and either chip off parts or destroy the work piece. The woodworker I know only buys dried olive wood, maybe it tends to crack less on green wood. Also he doesn't do chess pieces.

Your set is beautiful in both design and execution. Any chance it'll show up on Etsy some day?

Thank you very much.

Highly unlikely I'm afraid. I don't turn commercially, and my lathe's bearings died a while ago. I've replaced the bearings, but I think I've made a pig's ear out of that job and the new set is already on its way out .

If I was turning another set, it would be the Vsehudozhnik. I've prototyped a couple pieces and was very happy with how they look and feel.

@M_Chavez

The rosewood and olive on your sets indeed look very nice. Have you found the olive wood variant wood pattern to be distracting?

Thank you.

Generally, you want plain wood for highly decorative designs, and you want figured wood for plain designs. In this case the turned decorations are quite limited, so figured wood is quite appropriate.

Olive starts out as very bright white when you've just turned & finished it, so you get some zebra effect from the black stripes on white pieces for the first 6-12 months or so. Then olive starts darkening and white becomes a cream yellow (potentially with hits of green and pink in the right light) and the black figure blends in very nicely.

So overall, no, not distracting at all, if you don't count the first 6-12 months of the set's life.

Looking at your flag, I've seen several old Spanish sets made out of olive (no surprise there, given olive availability in your region!) and all of them looked very nice.