I ripped off an idea for a simple chess board from a book. I changed all of the dimensions, and ignored most of the instructions, so I don't count this as building from a plan. :)
This is one of those out of control, simple-gone-complicated projects. At first it was just a board to go under a super cheapie $2 chess set on a camping trip. Now the board itself has had squares kerfed off and stained. It looks a lot better than I expected, considering the lousy piece of filthy scrap furniture I made it out of. Well-yellowed, unfinished Jummywood for the light squares that looks almost like red oak.
So now that I have a surprisingly good looking chess board (by my low standards, granted :), I want to do more with it than planned. Instead of just building a crude little free-standing box to hold the very crappy, feather light chess pieces from that $2 set, I want to build this board into a box of some sort (either as a hinged lid, or as the top of the carcass for a miniature set of drawers), and populate it with nice pieces. Nothing _too_ nice, mind you, because this is supposed to be a rough duty travel set, but something a step above these extremely cheap ones.
I thought about trying my hand at turning a chess set on my drill press, but while I've had some surprising results making steam domes and smoke stacks for steam locomotives, I don't really feel up to the challenge of making all those identical pieces with the crude setup I have.
So I thought I'd see if there are any sets of chess pieces for sale online somewhere that I can afford. (Yes, JOAT, I saw your idea for the hardware chess set. I'm thinking about that too.)
If I can find something affordable, that will tear it, but I've had no luck so far. If I have to spend a lot of money, I'll probably try my hand at turning on the drill press. More than anything else, I just hate the thought of doing that much turning on my $300 machine that I can't afford to replace, and which isn't really built for that sort of use. If I hadn't sold my old 10" benchtop, this would be a fun project.
Maybe I should also think about one of those hobby lathes relative to the cost of a chess set. I suppose in the end I _would_ like to say I made them myself at the end of the day. Though that's a slippery slope too. I make a really nice set of pieces, and then this stained, kerfed pine board won't do, and I'll end up with a much more complicated project that will take a long time to complete. I fully intend to make a nice chess board some day, but I'm trying to get in one last project before it gets too cold to use my shop, and the clock is ticking.
Ideas?