Opinions on wood selection for chess table

I am using hickory (cream coloured) for the light, black walnut for the dark, and mahogany for the border.

I have been toying with making some lacewood inlay in the border, but I am not sure I want to spend the time when this is a freebie to a colleague.

Why not Cherry & Maple? If the cherry isn't dark enough, the maple can be masked after assembly & sanding and sprayed with a darkening agent. Then simply pull off the mask & finish as usual. Phil

This site has a few designs and also tell you which woods are used.

It probably wouldn't work well for this project but I like birch with cherry. They both just have that same glow.

I'm contemplating doing this with quilted maple and rosewood.

~Mark.

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Regards.

Thanks for all of the replies. I went to one of the expensive places that carries exotic woods (rockler) and I like the Brazilian Rosewood. I liked the contrast of this against quarter sawn white oak but I also liked the piece of birdseye maple they had (but at nearly $50 for the one board.......!). Rockler also had a nice looking piece of spalted maple (from a distance) but the board had some cracks that would have been difficult to cut around.

I think I'll opt for the rosewood and depending on what I find appearance wise, the light colored wood is still up in the air!

Now to get this done in two weeks........

Gary

Beautiful piece. How did you cut the hinges?

Now I'll be looking for fiddle back maple.........

Thanks for sharing,

Gary

Appreciate the compliment.

The hinges were cut on the same jig I used to cut the box joints at the corners of the walnut box. I had a hunk of the maple left so I planed it thinner, cut a bunch of box joint fingers in it, rounded them off on the router, ripped the board narrow on the non-fingered side, then cross-cut (by hand, too small to use power tools on after all this) the hinge pieces, taking care to line up the fingers offset. Put each hinge together, hold with masking tape, drill one 9/64 hole through all and "find" 1/8 a pin to fit. I say "find" 'cause I had to make the pins by chucking short pieces of 5/32 brass rod (smallest I could find) in the DP, then sanding it down with crocus cloth.

I'm told "it's actually quite easy". Liars abound.

Good luck with the chessboard. A chessboard was the first thing I made in woodshop class many years ago (too many!). It was teak and maple, Looked nice. I have no idea where it is now.

Regards.