Oops, I Did It Again...

I thought I had stopped with buying the last of 22 wood chess sets.  But no, I did it again, and it's thanks to this forum.

The recent event of reproducing a West Coast chess set used in the 20th Century got me interested.  Mind you, I was not $600 interested, but interested nonetheless.

A guy I helped get into playing tournament chess, about 9  years ago, bought a Mechanics Institute Chess set early in this decade.  I have seen it and played with it before, but not too much.

Well, I went to The House of Staunton web site and looked at pictures of the set as well as read of the provenance of this set.

The set was designed specifically for a simul and visit from Capablanca himself, in April of 1916.  Yes, that's right at 100 years ago.

Capablanca played a simul with 32 opponents and won 29 games while drawing 3 and losing no games.

I do own 3 sets, HoS Morphy 4.0" Series, HoS Marshall 4.0" and HoS Classic 4.4", that need either a 2.375" or 2.5" square size.  I actually thought this Mechanics Institute set would be a nice set to have because I have no other in this size range without some delicacies to the pieces.  This set doesn't need no stinkin' delicacies.

The set arrived this afternoon and I opened it up right after arriving home, and boy oh boy, am I really pleased.

This coming Monday evening, I am playing a friend in our city championship tournament that has difficulties with his vision and really likes the pieces to be bigger and more pronounced so he can easily tell them apart.  I am going to bring this set-up.  The board is a 2.5" square size.  The material is Corian.

The board is made of a material called Corian.  It is a material made by DuPont as a solid for things like counter tops.

It feels hard and dense like a stone material.  This board is quite heavy.

I bought the board on eBay last year for something like $70.

The dark square material has more of a green coloring to it compared to the pictures above.  The pictures look kind of blue.  But the squares are more of a mint green coloring.

What amazes me is how these humongous pieces don't look too big on the board.  These pieces could be used as personal weapons for bludgeoning.

For instance the base part of those rooks are 5/8" deep, and that's only the flat part of the base.

The set & board are fantastic Eye.! Its just too big for my tastes though or I would jump on this one.!

Great pics, Ron. I own one of these and I love playing with it. When you double up the rooks, those are some serious and heavy hogs.

Oh, I generally agree with you kick.  The majority of sets and boards I own and play with are smaller, like 3.5"-3.75" Kings.  The boards are usually 2.25" at the biggest. 

But, I bought that Morphy Series 4.0" set about 9 or 10 years ago and the smallest board it can handle is a 2.375" square.  And last year I bought a 2.5" vinyl board and it looks really good on it, so I ended up getting 2 or 3 more in wood and this one in Corian.

I got this set because it definitely is not as delicate as the other Staunton sets I own at this size, and I figured I would bring it to Chess club on occasion with a 2.5" vinyl board.

I was pleasantly surprised by this monster of a set, and I do mean monster.  This was a Frank Camaratta era design, so of course it is made very well.  If you played blitz with this set, you would get your weight lifting workout for sure.  And it does look nice on that board size, doesn't it?

Plus, my friend with the vision problem has the old Cavalier plastic set as his favorite because the pieces are bigger than normal, especially the Knight.  This Mechanics Institute set's Knight resembles the sizing of that Cavalier set, and then some.

So, of course the majority of my games are and still will be on the smaller stuff.  For instance the game after this will see the Noj GM Pavasovic set in action on a 2.25" Walnut board.  And the game after that will have my favorite set, the Noj Dubrovnik II Walnut, which has that 3.6" King and smaller board size need.

But what the heck, I might as well keep my friend Mike happy and have some fun with this beast.

Beautiful chessboard! Also love the pieces! 

Thanks, Chuck.  What I didn't mention before was how interestingly nice those rooks are made.  They do look like  little castle towers, don't they.  I like how they have the brick lines, and the top of the piece is rounded off.

This is definitely a fun chess set.

Yeah, thanks for the comments on the board, guys.

I bought it on eBay, not knowing exactly how it would be in real life.  Well I'm here to say that this board is really substantial.  The whole thing is made of Corian, and it is a heavy material and board. 

I looked on eBay again and there is no sign of that type of board on sale.  I hope it wasn't just a one-off.

Congrats, 'btw' on your new, yet 'old' set! -- Here's a 'chess-set' news item, I found, {min. ago}.. By the 'keyword' search-term, under, {what else}.. 'chess sets'; On 'Google's {top-of-page}, mini -News- 'search engine' ..{see link}

 One of a 'Ton' of News articles 'fwiw'.. on that specific topic! 0:

http://www.cantonrep.com/article/20160410/ENTERTAINMENTLIFE/160419930

Really a great looking and sturdy set that will last forever!

Thanks Crappov.  Yes, you are right.  This set is sturdy and will last forever.

Ron,

Welcome to the Mechanics Institute owners club. I love playing with my MI set. It fits perfectly on a 2.5" board, with scaling factors of: Kd = 75%, Pd= 57.5%.

As far as reproductions go, this set has an interesting history. Some sets are famous/popular because they were used at a specific tournament or match. As you mentioned, this set was created for Capablanca's 1916 simul. The only other sets I know of that were designed specifically for an event were the Dubrovnik set created for the 1950 Olympiad, and the 1966 Havana set, which would make a great repro.

Whimsically, I did make one slight modification to my set. Now the knights seem to be staring at me from all over the board!

P.S. Kudos on your photos, Ron, they're truly outstanding, as is the chess board!

Lou, I had you in mind today when putting this set on the 2 different sized square boards.  You have ruined me for the correct base diameter to square size percentage.  In fact when I was considering this set, and talking with Scott the manager of HoS about a great deal and so forth, I pulled up the calculator on my computer and started calculating the percentages.  And the 75% of the 2.5" board convinced me to buy the set.  Of course the phenomenal price he gave me helped quite a bit.

I remember Frank telling me about this set when he was having it first made.  At the time, I had just bought my 4th or 5th set from him and wasn't interested.

Anyway, Frank told me how he was working or collaborating with the Mechanics Institute to come up with this set as a true reproduction.  I am glad that the originators of the set, or at least those that still were in charge, agreed with Frank and even support HoS in their making of this set.

You know, the eyes you put on really fit in with what I think is the fun feeling of this set.  The design of the rook and queen sure are fun.  And those Knights, wow, they are some kind of humongous.  The set is actually growing on me the more I look at it and pick up the pieces.

Congrats!

This set looks strong and formidable to me, especially the rook with that wall brick carvings, the robust horses, and the very thick base. Very unique styled and impressive set!

Ron,

When I first bought my set about 2 years ago I did some searching through the Mechanics Institute newsletters online. It seems that there were a number of these sets originally made up for the simul. They never said how many, or whether they had enough to cover all 32 boards. Anyway, after the simul, the sets were pressed into daily service at the chess club. The pieces were so indestructible that some sets survived into the early 1970's. I think they still have at least one original set on display, which meant that the reproduction could be done from the pieces themselves instead of photos.

BTW, the MI set also made it into the movies. Here's a still from the 1937 production of a Prisoner of Zenda with Ronald Coleman, one of my favorite classic films. With David Niven and C. Aubrey Smith.

Nice addition, variety is the spice of life.  Yes we all can get by with one chess set but then what a boring chess world it would be for some of us. 

Hi Mike,

Having only one chess set is like living with a single pair of pants. Yeah, you can get by, but why would you want to.

I think the discussion about posterior aromatics is in another thread.