My current playing set-up. Whats yours?

Any particular brand or technique?  I always get bleed when I try to do that.  Is that stain or paint?  Spray or brush?

Sand with 220 grit paper, mask with tape, Spray green (light coat, don't over spray).

Spray, Paint + Primer.  Valspar for wood, metal, plastic.

I got a little bleeding, very light, I can only see it.

Polyurethane (one coat), light sanding with 220 grit paper, mask boarder, paint black.

Then many coats Polyurethane.  220 grit paper between coats, and 220 then 440 on the final coat to remove the sheen.

You can always try one coat of ploy on the wood first, sand, mask, then paint.  Should guaranteed no bleeding then.

Sweet.  I just finished my own project, but it is full of paint bleeding problems.  It was just a practice project to learn how to do things better.  Your tips will help a bunch.  (I'm actually not quite done, still need to add the polyurethane)

Sure will.  Here are the colors (gray is rust-o-leum brand)

Looks very nice, I like the double board idea. 

Could call it the bughouse board. 

Thanks. The seam is pretty good, not perfect.  My saw has a little play in it, shows on the edges.

Wow! Awesome job! Did you mask the black border as well? For a shortcut I once used a Sharpie. It looked just as good as the masked lines and was a heck of a lot easier.

They look great, Oat! Burnish the edge of the blue tape after you mask, and resist the temptation to spray to heavily on any one coat.

How do you guys lay the tape so straight and even? I don't know that I could do it. Would love to try though.

Sure you could. I measure and mark off on the opposite sides, and lightly draw a pencil line with a straight edge. I then rip off a longer piece of tape, stretch it taught, and lay it along the line. Perhaps others have a better method, but that works pretty well for me.

There is another thread on this you might be interested in.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/last-weeks-chess-board-project

Funny, I did think about that.  I masked it and used black spray paint this time.

I used this (24 inch level):

and this (tape measure):

Exactly what I did, just I used the level instead of a pencil mark.

You will need to cut too, I used this (level):

and this (x-acto knife):

the board looked like this just before painting (minus the masking around the edges, I masked the edge before painting with green spray paint):

This is my setup using the set I developed and am now selling at http://steelcitychess.com

So you masked the whole board and then cut out the squares you would spray green? I did that with the first board I made, but I didn't like the knife marks I left on the wood. So now I do half the painted squares at a time. If you look at Ifekali's posts in the link I posted above, it seems as though he used an adhisive film that was > board size, and marked and cut his squares from that. I do have some 8.5" x 11" adhesive masking film I might try that with.

I did get a few cut marks from the knife.  Only see them if you look close.  I think you can avoid that, doesn't really take much to cut that tape with a sharp knife.

I didn't want to put tape on the painted surface, afraid of pulling the paint off with the tape.  This is why I used poly before masking the black boarder.

There is no perfect way with these DIY methods, whatever you prefer I think.

The correct way to do it is professional printing... not worth it for just one board.

The adhesive sheet is interesting... 

This is most obvious cut mark:

I tested my ideas with scrap wood while making this board.

I like working with wood and save scrap for the kids to tinker... have a big pile.

Well, it's a gorgeous board! What did you do to drill the magnet holes?