I'm getting ready to make a nice chess box for Dad, and I want to make a real board this time.
I can think of lots of ways to do it. Squares of veneer, dark one-piece board with light inlays, plywood with ~1/8" thick squares glued on...
I don't have a bandsaw. My table saw is not much good for resawing. I'll be thicknessing the wood by hand. That makes thin-square ideas unattractive.
So I'm thinking of a bunch of squares say 1" thick, and thinking about how I could build such a thing so that it wouldn't explode or wrench itself out of shape.
It sounds like a bitchy glue-up without mechanical alignment for one thing. I don't have a biscuit joiner or a T&G bit or anything like that, so I'd be thinking of maybe cutting T&G on my table saw (if I can work out a way to get it to come out consistently, that is) or using dowels to assemble the whole thing like a bunch of Tinker Toys...
Also, I'm playing with the idea of doing a split board with dual hinges, so it could open in clamshell fashion. That would solve the problem of what to do with the awkwardly huge lid of this thing, but it would be a lot harder to execute successfully.
Anyway, just some initial thoughts. I know there are a lot of ways to skin this particular cat. I'm just trying to think up a way to do it that isn't
*too* ambitious or too Norm intensive. I've never tried to assemble anything made from that many little pieces before.