another chess board question

[David DeCristoforo]

"Did you try dowels?"

One of the first things I tried.

"Where the joints actually failing or where they shifting enough to be noticable and ugly?"

Either. Or both...

[Howard Jahnke]

I made a chess board 14 years ago out of Corian and walnut. Double sided board, and still use it to this day. It has been knocked over and dropped on a few occasions and still looks identical to the day it was finished. I had decided then that this was a good method of dealing with opposing grain issues. After this many years I would say it works well.

[Mike Heidrick]

David, how do you make the interlock joint? What bit/cutter are you using. Could you use a Freud EC031 Reverse glue joint?

[David DeCristoforo]

I had my cutter made bit it's very similar to this:

http://www.toolstoday.com/p-5741-car...nt-cutter.aspx

I tried a "glue joint" cutter like the one in your pic but there were two "issues:" with it. First, I wanted more "fingers" to maximize the "long grain" contact. And second, since the top and bottom of the cutter in your pic are not in alignment, the squares are all offset on the "bottom" which makes it look totally bizarre. Of course if you are not worried about what the underside of the board looks like, this is "moot". But I wanted the squares to align on both sides.

[Guy Mathews]

As promised, this is the board I made using just birch veneer plywood. The apron is some old oak that I salvaged from an old building that was being torn down.

A piece of birch veneer was stained and allowed to dry.

Strips were cut and glued and then cut and glued again to make the checker/chessboard pattern.

A pour on epoxy resin provided the top coat and it is as level as the day it was poured. If you look closely, you can see a ring in epoxy resin on the upper left dark square. It is from a shot glass that was sitting on the board only 24 hours after the epoxy was poured.

This board is actually for playing a game my family likes to call Irish Checkers. Each player starts with 12 shot glasses of his or her favorite intoxicating sipping whiskey. As you jump an opponents shot glass, you have to drink their shot.

The winner is the person who doesn't puke, pass out or fall face first into the board!

The back side was never finished or sealed. I just ran it through the wide belt sander yesterday to get a few years of stains off of it.

Anyway, there are many ways to skin a cat and I would say that we have touched upon nearly all of them when it comes to cats named "Chessboard"!

[David DeCristoforo]

"...a game...call Irish Checkers..."

That's similar to "Alcoholic Chess". The pawns are represented by shots and the pieces by mixed drinks that increase in potency according to the value of the pieces. The Queen is a 5th. You have to drink what you capture so there is a "built in handicap". The famous chess champion Emanual Lasker was known to be the best alcoholic chess player in history due to his uncommonly high tolerance for alcohol. He is reputed to have won a game in which he was in a particularly difficult position by setting up a forced sacrifice of his queen.

[Guy Mathews]

"...a game...call Irish Checkers..."

That's similar to "Alcoholic Chess". The pawns are represented by shots and the pieces by mixed drinks that increase in potency according to the value of the pieces. The Queen is a 5th. You have to drink what you capture so there is a "built in handicap". The famous chess champion Emanual Lasker was known to be the best alcoholic chess player in history due to his uncommonly high tolerance for alcohol. He is reputed to have won a game that he was in a particularly difficult position by setting up a forced sacrifice of his queen.

David, thanks for the story about Alcoholic Chess. I think the queen sacrifice thing is hysterical.
M*A*S*H fans may remember a similar game where Hawkeye and Trapper "perverted the game of checkers" according to Frank Burns!

I can not remember, but I believe when Trapper told Hawkeye to "King me." Hawkeye put an olive in his shot.