My dad taught me to play chess when I was a kid. Chess and Gin Rummy were staples in our house while I was growing up. When my brother was old enough, Dad taught him as well, and we played entire days sometimes during summer vacations. We would sit at the dining table, playing chess and drinking run-through coffee, oblivious to the world going on around us. Then later, as adults, we’d always play at holiday gatherings at our parents’ home.
My dad gave me a lathe he had purchased to turn cork handles for his fly rod builds, but ended up not using. I immediately thought of turning chess pieces. I have always loved custom sets and wanted to make a few as gifts for my brother and sister and their families.
I sourced the wood online, opting to try black walnut and maple. Through trial-and-error I developed each piece for each set, trying to avoid copying typical store-bought sets. I wanted each of my sets to be unique. I sketched out ideas, but really, the patterns came to me after filling the floor with mountains of sawdust.
After I had a pattern for each piece I liked, it was simply a matter of replicating that piece as closely as possible, without becoming too obsessed with perfection. Imperfections set my handmade pieces apart from those store-bought sets that are made perfectly on machines and are indistinguishable from the millions of others produced.
I used coins to glue into small cavities I recessed in the bottom of each piece to give them more weight. This was then covered in felt.
The chessboards were quite a challenge. In a lot of ways, more so than the pieces. I learned the hard way that assuming each blank of wood would be the same width, even though they were sold as such, only ends in frustration for me.
The tiniest degree off on a single blank and the entire chessboard would be off. I tried to sand and cobble what I had to work, but in the end I just ordered more blanks and carefully measured each before cutting and gluing.
Both sets turned out great and hopefully give my family years of enjoyment.
–Trev
