Chess Table

Chess Table

Two drawer Chess table

This a Chess Table that I designed and built for my Sister. It was made from quartersawn white oak, black walnut and ash lumber. I had a lot of fun doing this project. I had to make a lot of different jigs for all the different joining techniques. That was also part of the fun. Click on a thumbnail to see a larger image.

Cutting Squares

To begin construction of a chess board, I choose some nice looking contrasting stock. This particular board was black walnut and quartersawn white oak. I mill all of this down to the same thickness. I mark all boards for top and bottom, choosing the best grain for the top. I leave the boards a little long at this point. I rip the outside two boards (one of each color) an 1/8" wider than the rest of the stock. This is used later to get the board perfectly square after laminating. Since these boards are just over 2' long, I get joint ready rips from the BT3100 tablesaw.

The next step is for the router table. I dado a 1/4" by 3/8" dado down the center of this stock. I make several passes using a spiral upcut router bit. I make sure to run all the pieces the same way through the router. The side that I marked as being the top goes on the fence. I mill up 18 splines that measure 1/4" by 11/16" by 2' out of hardwood. I test fit these to get them just right. Not too tight nor too loose.

Now I'm ready for glue-up. I do this ala-Norm Ahbrams, very messy and fast. I lay down some wax paper and start spreading the glue in the joints. The 2 wider boards must go on the outside now or you messed up. DAMHIKT. Clamp these boards up pretty good and wipe off excess glue off with a wet rag. If you haven't done this before, I would glue this up in sections and later glue the sections togethre. I use TiteBond 2 wood glue and it is unforgiving if you're not fast. This pic only shows 2 clamps, but I generally use 4.

Getting it square

In the next image you can see that I am squaring up the sliding miter table fence on the BT3?. In order to cut such a wide crosscut accurately, I needed to make an aadjustment to the SMT. I actually drilled an extra hole in it for the fence pin, but I have since learned that this can be done with clamps instead. When I have the fence square, I make one cut, then I flip the board end for end and make another cut. If this off-cut is the same size on both ends, my cuts are then square. This is asuming that the front and rear edges are parallel to each other. Once the board is square, I then use the rip fence to slice it back into boards. I number these boards in the order they were cut which helps with the grain pattern later on. The first and last board being 1/8" wider than the rest for squaring later on. These should be clearly marked. Now I repeat the dado process on the router table.

I do this next glue up in steps. It is critical now that you glue these parts up square. I glue up 2 boards each time, alternating the pattern. I then glue these together and finally glue the 2 halves together. I am constantly checking that they are square.

Leveling the playing field

I use several methods to get the board level. I start by using a scraper. I have a 4" jointer blade that I attached to a hand scraper that I like to use to remove excess glue and to help flatten the squares. A card scraper would work too. Then I use a belt sander after I finish scraping. I have tried using a block plane too, but I use a lot of extoctic and sometimes highly figured wood and the grain direction can be questionable. I sure wouldn't want to gouge out a plug in that stuff. I first use an 80 grit belt very lightly to hit the high spots. I find these high spots using a framing square. When pretty close, I switch to a 120 grit belt and try to remove some of the scratches. I only sand and scrap now with the direction of the grain which should all be in one direction on the playing field. I repeat this process when I have applied the borders and pegged splines. Then I start with 100 grit on a palm sander, and progress to 220. I carefully inspect to see that there are no scratches. They will stand out when finish is applied.

The playing field trim

The basic dimensions for my chess boards vary a little, but they generally have around 2 1/4" playing squares. This particular top had 2 1/4" squares to start with during the basic construction. I then run a saw kerf between each row of squares and then inset an white ash strip in the kerf for contrast. I worked one direction at a time. I carefully measured the desired depth and then the width between the squares using the micro-positioning device. I cut thin strips of ash and run them through the planer. Then I ripped the to the width I wanted. I have used both the BT or a bandsaw to rip these. Just gotta use care. I glued the inlay, let it dry. Flush the strips close with a block plane. Then I repeated the process in the other direction.

You can see the finished glue up in the background of this pic. In the foreground, this is the perfect cutting miter jig that I built. It does cut perfect ones too. In the jig is a part of the border. You can see that I have glued up 1/8" strips of both walnut and ash to the oak. I measure each cut to fit the board and number these border pieces. Then its back to the router table for these border parts and the playing field. They get dadoed and splined the same as before. Then I glue these borders on carefully. Let it dry. Then on to yet another jig.

Splining the corners

This is my spline jig that rides along the rip fence using my Rip fence jig guide. Its pretty self explanatory as to how it works. I cut a kerf in the 4 corners of the board. Inserted and glued a spline in the kerf. Then I drilled 3/8" holes with a brad point bit and inserted walnut dowels through the splines. This makes for a very solid miter joint. It should not move. You can see the splined and pegged miters in the pic below.

I added another border to this top because I wanted to give the top the appearance of thickness. On a stand alone board, I might have just routed a decorative edge here and been done with it. I cut 3/4" x 1 1/4" walnut for this borders border. I added a 1/8" x 1 1/4" strip of ash to this which you can see in the close up pic above. I ran this through the saw blade again for splines, but I didn't peg these splines. I added another piece of trim to the bottom of this.

Legs

I glued up some oak stock to be able to trim to the final thickness of 2" square and length of 27 1/4". This height of 28" overall was just my preference and can be changed easily to suit you. I got it close and then planed them to get 4 equal sides. I marked these legs for the best looking faces to be outside. I marked both top and bottom.

Next, I milled up some 1/4" wide stock with some interesting grain 2 1/4" x 6". 8 of these, 2 per leg. This was the glued onto a relief that I dadoed at the top outside faces of the legs. (see pic). Once this inlay was flushed back to the leg, it was time to tackle the mortices. These are 1/4" wide x 4 1/2" long and were 1 1/4" deep. I just used a 1/4" spiral upcut bit in the router table and used a mark on the fence for the first plunge and a stop block. I changed the bit height about 5 or 6 times removing a little material each time. Care was taken with this setup to place the apron tenon part just covering the oak and leaving the walnut exposed for a reveal on the corners.
It was then time to taper these legs, Yes another jig. I used a standard hinge type adjustable taper jig like we have all watched Norm Abrams use. The taper started just below the walnut inset and left 1 1/4" on the legs at the bottom. I only tapered the 2 inside faces of the legs.

The Aprons

Here is where I ran into my only problems. I knew that I wanted a drawer front to match the grain in the face frame. This meant the front had to be cut out of an apron part. The leftover would be the face frame. This would have been easier to do if I hadn't cut the tenons first. I overcame that problem with perseverance and fine tuning the tenons again after this work was done. Another problem was I didn't figure the final trim for the top when I centered the drawers in face frame. If you follow the dimensions in the graphic, you won't have to add a spacer around the top of the apron to allow for the outside trim on the top.

I chose the 2 sides that I wanted to use for drawers and marked the accordingly as to front, back, top and bottom. Same with the other 2 side apron parts. To find the length for these aprons, measure the underside of your top. Subtract both legs (2" each) from this measurement. Subtract another 1/4" for play. Then add your tenon length. (1 1/8" each end). I wasn't so pleased with mine, because I subtracted 3/4" for play rather than 1/4". This would have given me a little more room in the drawers which would have came in handy for the particular Chess Set that went into this table.

Face frame to drawers

I first ripped the parts on the BT using the dimensions in the graphic. I did all 4 sides and labeled each piece that I ripped off as A, B, and C. They have to go back together in the correct order for the grain match.