So I am trying my hand a combining some skills. I am making a chess set for a charity project my family is looking at starting. I won’t go into details on that now other than to we are putting our creative talents to work to earn some money for a needy family. I am making this chess set for an eventual auction.

So far all I have done is the pawn. I started out by turning the basic form on my lathe. Then carved in the face. I then made a rubber one piece mold of the wood blank. Then poured the pawns in resin. and am in the process of painting. One side will be silver the other side copper. The band at the base will be colored red and blue respectively. Here is a photo of the blank, a raw casting with no clean up yet and the almost finished painted pawn. I am very happy as there is very litle to clean up on the raw casting, they come out pretty clean and the better my pouring technique gets the less air bubbles I get.

Cool!

Gonna be a fun set!

Be Blessed.

John

John Caughey said:

Gonna be a fun set!

Be Blessed.

John

It will be a fun set. The plan is to make it more or less and end table. It will be on tall legs that you can pull a chair up too. The pieces are fairly large, 1 1/2" diameter. The squares will be 2 1/4". The there will be a substantial border around the board for setting captured pieces on. There will be a drawer on each side to put the pieces in. So the plan is to have it serve as a little side table and then be able to play chess on it when the mood strikes. I am going to make the board out of alternating black cherry and spalted maple. The border will be spalted maple and the sides and legs black cherry.

Thats the plan. I hope to have it up for auction this summer.

Nice! Good start. I inherited an old set made in England years ago. They are “Viking-Celtic” looking pieces like yours.

The set is more or less going to be medieval/Celtic inspired. I love Celtic chess sets. The rook will be a standard castle affair and I am hoping to stretch my carving skills for the knight by making a horse head in battle armor if I can. King, queen and bishops will follow similar form to the pawn.

If all goes well I might even sell a set of just the pieces, but I have 14 of the 16 required pawns poured and my mold is starting take a beating. And I don’t plan on making another.

As long as you keep the masters, you can make another mold if the mood strikes. Like say, in July when you should have track in your yard, instead of playing with little men.

David Maynard said:

As long as you keep the masters, you can make another mold if the mood strikes. Like say, in July when you should have track in your yard, instead of playing with little men.

I will definitely keep the masters for just that purpose. The pawn mold did well, like I said 14 of the sixteen are poured and I have developed a small tare but it does not effect the casting. I decided on a one piece mold to avoid a seem line and possible misalignment and I am glad I did. It pours beautiful and since it is more or less cone shaped with only minor undercuts the pieces come out easy. But that initial breaking it loose and getting it to start to come free did cause the rip at the top. I will get the remaining two done no sweat. Just not sure it would live through 16 more. But the rip does actually make it a bit easier to get them out and no ill casting effects.

This chess set will have to be made in conjunction with the layout and all my other projects. We want to start our fund raising in April/May and be done by thanksgiving. The plan is to use our various talents to produce items (we have a talented bunch of wood workers, blacksmiths, quilters, two chefs, and other talents) and then sell them at auction or however and donate the proceeds to a local family before Christmas so that they can have a nice holiday. It will be given to the family of our choosing at a big fancy dinner party that we will throw for them. There are about 15 of us family members already dedicated to this project. The hope is to raise as much as we can but a sort of bench mark of a $1000.00 bucks would be nice. We will take silent nominations from our community for families in need and then we will as a family decide on who to give our gift too.

Stop using Ken Burnt as a model for the pieces and all will be good!

Rooster he wants stout figures. If he would use your spindly frame for the a model then all his figures would be too…well…thin.

I don’t know ow what Ken looks like but I am getting an idea

Devon Sinsley said:
I don’t know ow what Ken looks like but I am getting an idea

This is actually a current picture of Ken (middle) Hollywood (left) and Gary in his green chair. Don’t ask about Gary’s choice of attire as we just let him wear what he wants these days.

And this is what Rooster looks like now!

Ok. I can see the “LSC Chess Set.”

Your right rooster it would appear as if Ken might be the model lol

Tom Ruby said:

Ok. I can see the “LSC Chess Set.”

Now that would be fun. . . For someone else. . .

Tom Ruby said:

Ok. I can see the “LSC Chess Set.”

Now that would be fun. . . For someone else. . .

Devon, are you using a commercial mold release? Are you using a Commercial grade RTV or a hobby grade? Also if you want a mold to last longer, you need to make sure that the thinnest cross section from your pattern to the edge is at least 1/2 inch thick. This helps keep the mold from deforming very much as you remove the piece. The RTV has an elongation factor per millimeter before it will tear. The thicker the RTV the more stretch you get before it tears.

I see Rooster as the Knight, Hollywood as the Castle (Rook), Jan Golding as the Queen, and who else but Bob (is Fearless Leader) as the King.

Bishop is, who else but Fr. Fred!

Can you tell I am on new good cold medication?