Carving hardwood is not an easy job especially when the project needs identical and detailed designs. That is why majority of wooden chess pieces are considered high quality and are therefore generally more expensive.
Choose your Wood Species and Gather Your Materials
Wood species to choose from includes Boxwood, Walnut, Ebony, Wenge, Rosewood, Mahogany, Birch, Ebonized Boxwood, Palisander, Beech, Bud Rosewood and etc. In choosing your pair of wood blocks, consider the color of the wood. One wood could be darker and the other could be lighter; otherwise, you can just stain the other set of chess pieces afterwards.
For example, Boxwood logs are lighter and the Walnut boards are darker, these types of woods combined make a great pair! The following are the needed supplies (some are optional):
- Board of Dark Wood
- Board of Light Wood
- Miter saw
- Table saw
- Wooden Lathe
Prepare the Wood
Before you prepare the wood blocks, you need to decide on the design for your chess pieces. Chess piece designs are available online and from books. However, you can still create your own design yourself freely.
Step 1) Rip the large blocks of your chosen woods using the table saw enough to make long wooden strips. The strip’s width should fit the squares of the chess board.
Step 2) Using the miter saw, cut the wooden boards to create rectangular shapes with the size of the chess pieces you desire. For each type of wood, you’ll need to make 16 chess pieces: 8 pawns, 2 bishop, 2 knights, 2 rook, a queen and a king.
Also mind your desired height in each piece. Most of the cases, the ‘King’ and the ‘Queen’ are the tallest among the rest of pieces. This, however, depends upon your design choice.
Carving of the Wood
Step 3) Mount the wood blocks on the wooden lathe to make the chess piece. Also create the major details of the pieces using the lathe. This time, be careful with the details of identical pieces. The sizes of chess pieces should also fit the inside of the chess board available.
Step 4) This step is difficult and requires care and attention. Using special tools like chisels and knives, manually carve the minor details of your chosen design in each of the chess pieces.
Extremely detailed pieces can be quite complicated to make. For instance, the knight’s complexity takes longer time to finish than the rest of the pieces. In such cases, the complexity of the knight drives the cost of the entire chess set higher.
Final Finishing and Polishing
Step 5) Polish your chess pieces using the sandpaper to achieve a smooth texture and appearance. Also, stain the other 16 chess pieces if you chose the same wood specie. After that, you can now move forward to play the game!
Making your own chess pieces out of wood is a great DIY project. Unlike plastic chess sets that are only moulded, wooden chess set requires skill and craftsmanship, and it looks great. Although carving takes a difficult time and effort, the output is well worth it.
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