Background:
Having finished boards 1-3, it was time to turn my attention to boards 4-9. Naturally these will be a little different than boards 1-3. :-> Boards 4,5,6 are PurpleHeart/White Maple for the squares and boards 7,8,9 are Mahogany/Walnut or Ipe/Mahogany for the squares. The purpleheart/white maple combination is turning out quite nice. I will probably use this combination in the not too distant future.
Ipe is a really, really hard, dense and heavy wood. It's at the top of the chart on the Janks Hardness scale. Ipe adds some real weight to the board too.
As you might imagine, chess boards involve a lot gluing. Each Chess board I make goes through 8 separate glue-ups. Glue ups #1-4 are for gluing the 64 squares. Glue up number 5 is the bottom of the board. I don't put felt on the bottom of my chess boards. I use another hardwood for the bottom, typically cherry, oak or mahogany, that is pretty light in color. I do this so I can write a bunch of stuff on the bottom, specifically all the chess moves from the board from the Famous Chess Game your board is named after. Glue ups #6-8 are for the 3 borders that are found on each board. Each border is glued up separately and is successively thicker than the previous border. The outer most border is mitered (45 degree angles) on the corners.
Starting with board #10, I will start making the Chess boards tournament legal. Currently boards 1-9 are made with approximately 1 3/4" squares. Starting with board #10 in the series, I will make the squares 2 1/4" inch.
