Great job! I think the nuts and bolts would be a great tribute to your father and grandfather. It will look great on display and would definitely be a great conversational piece. My only suggestion is to buy a separate set pieces if you intend to your the board to play chess. This will make distinguishing the pieces a lot easier.
My Chess Quest
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Dec 27, 2022
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#3
For the knight, you could add a wing nut to the top, and maybe even machine off part of one side of the wing nut. (The knights always seem to take more work, haha...)
For a more usable chess set, you could purchase unweighted wood chessmen, carefully drill out the bottoms, and weight the pieces with the nuts and bolts if you want something of your father's incorporated into the more standard Staunton style wood pieces.
Search around in the garage to see if your father has a metal alphabet/number stamping kit. With some creativity, the sliced off metal tips might make awesome metal notations inset into the border. The letters/numbers would be backwards, but I think it would be quite fitting. Good luck in your quest!
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll definitely be looking in to them! Much appreciated!
That is really nice. For the black pieces you might consider "bluing" them. This is a process that is used on metal parts to make them resistant to rusting, but it also results in a dark gray/black color. That way you would have a more usable set and still have as many parts from your father's garage as possible. There are two easy ways to do bluing at home. The first is to heat the parts with a torch and then quench them in motor oil. The second is to use a chemical blueing solution that you can order online or get at a gun shop/sporting goods store.
First method (heat + oil): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQBEn1b70Sc
Second method (chemical solution): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGpYh-_llzE
Good luck and enjoy your one of a kind chess set!
big_sasquatch wrote:
That is really nice. For the black pieces you might consider "bluing" them. This is a process that is used on metal parts to make them resistant to rusting, but it also results in a dark gray/black color. That way you would have a more usable set and still have as many parts from your father's garage as possible. There are two easy ways to do bluing at home. The first is to heat the parts with a torch and then quench them in motor oil. The second is to use a chemical blueing solution that you can order online or get at a gun shop/sporting goods store.
First method (heat + oil): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQBEn1b70Sc
Second method (chemical solution): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGpYh-_llzE
Good luck and enjoy your one of a kind chess set!
Acid + other caustic & toxic chemicals + blowtorch + extremely hot metal + oil (into which you will place the extremely hot metal)...
What could possibly go wrong??!!
I thought I share this with the chess community. Please feel free to comment. Any advice would be much appreciated.
So my Chess Quest started after my father passed away on September 24 2022. I was clearing out his garage and I found on top of a very old cabinet full of very old wood working tools. This very old handmade wooden/metal chess board. Now to put things in perspective a lot of the stuff in the garage was my grandfather old wood working tools random junk ect that my father inherited and put in there. It has all been sitting in the garage for over 30 years without being touched or moved. So I took it as a challenge to take this board and bring it back to life. Since I always enjoy playing the game of chess; that my father taught me and now am trying to teach my sons chess. Note I have no experience in restoration.
After deciding I would attempt to restore the board. I asked my father brother (my uncle) if he knew anything about this chess board. He explained he believes it was either my grandfather made it for my father or my grandfather made it with my father.
Also to note I never found any chess pieces for the board. Since there was no pieces I noticed my father had a ton of old nuts and bolts his garage. That’s when I realized I should make the pieces out of my father’s nuts and bolts. I took pictures of the progression so far and will be here for all to see.
So far I cleaned up the metal squares best I can by hand with Brasso. I put 2 protective coats of clear Polycrylic on the wood. Added felt pads to the bottom to elevate the board. I plan to add the chess notation on the board that is if I can find some type of metal letters to match and get the right size. For the pieces I still need to clean all of them. I have to super glue all the pieces together. Missing nuts for the 4 Bishop and 4 knights only ones I could find something that works in all the stuff my father had. So I may have to buy the nuts to make it look good. Everything else I was able to use from my fathers garage. I also want to put felt on the bottom of every piece. I haven’t figured out what’s the best to use for it yet or the best way to go about making the felt bottoms. Also want to get some kind of special pouches for the pieces was thinking maybe leather. I am still unsure what’s best for that.
I also found in my fathers garage 2 metal coffee containers with more pre cut metal squares same as the board I found that my father or grandfather cut. I counted how many squares there are and there’s enough to make another board with the metal. That’s going to be my next quest after this one.
It’s all slowly coming along. With work, kids, life ect it’s hard finding alot of free time to work on it as much as I like to. In time I’ll get this completed and hopefully I can pass this to my sons and they to theirs.
Please any advice or suggestions ect would be greatly appreciated.