Chess Set

[Jeff Skory]

Beautiful set Don! I love the spalted figure. And having worked with it to make pens I know what you are talking about when you say it is a pain. I wonder if something like olivewood might have given a similar look without the disintegration. Can't wait to see the completed set.

[Don C Peterson]

Wow! Great job and nice uniformity overall. Just one question....why the extra queens?

Thanks Jerry,

Most of the nice chess sets come with extra queens to make it easy to deal with queening a pawn before your queen gets taken. It's just a nice touch to have for those rare occasions.

[Don C Peterson]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. As for uniformity, there isn't much of it if you look close. What there is was achieved through the use of several calipers set to the three or four key diameters and a story stick for each type of piece. The rest is just eyeballed... There is definitely variations between pieces, but that's what makes it "handcrafted" right?

Still, I'm pretty happy with the result and the customer is too. (I'm making the set and table for a friend at work).

[John Keeton]

Don, not being a turner, and never having worked with spalted maple, I am sure I don't have a appreciation for the effort that went into this set. But, aside from that, the result is striking. The manner is which the spalted maple picks up on the color of the walnut, yet contrasts beautifully with it, really makes this set work. Very, very nice!

[Don C Peterson]

The problem with spalted Maple, especially heavily spalted maple like this is that there is a very fine line between spalt and rot. There were also lots of worm holes. All this combines to produce wicked tear out so I wound up roughing the pieces down and then applying liberal amounts of a thinned lacquer to stabilize the wood. After it was dry I could do a bit of turning but quite often, I needed to repeat that process three or four times on a piece. There were also several times that a piece was almost done, only to have a catastrophic tearout or find a nest of worm holes that ruined the whole piece.

I started out with what I figured was more than enough wood, and barely managed to get all the pieces done because of the waste.