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Gluing up the strips
Set your bar clamps on a work surface and lay the strips on them, alternating dark and light pieces. Use as many clamps as necessary to support the stock at 24- to 36-inch intervals. Mark the end grain orientation of each strip, then experiment with the arrangement of the strips until you have a visually pleasing pattern, making sure that the end grain of adjacent boards runs in opposite directions. This will help keep the chessboard from warping. Next, mark a triangle on the strips to help you arrange them correctly should you move them prior to glue up. Standing the strips on edge, spread glue on each one. Butt the strips together and align them, then tighten the clamps to close the joints; use wood pads to protect the stock. Place a third clamp across the top of the strips, centering it between the two underneath. Keeping the assembly as flat as possible (right), tighten all the clamps until there are no gaps between the boards and a thin glue bead squeezes out of the joints.
2 Crosscutting the panel into strips
Once the glue has cured, you are ready to crosscut the glued-up panel into strips of alternating light and dark squares. To prevent the panel from lifting off the saw table during the cut, feed it using a jig (inset). Make the device from 54-inch plywood, cutting the base with a lip at one end. Fasten the hold-down to the base so it overhangs the lipped edge by about 2 inches. Lastly, screw a push stick-type handle to the hold-down at the jig’s trailing end. To set the cutting width, butt the straight edge of the jig against the rip fence and position the fence so the strips will be exactly the same width as the first series you cut. Holding the jig flush against the fence and the panel square in the jig’s notch, cut the strips. Use one hand to push the jig forward and the other to steady the board (right). Cut a few extra strips to give you more flexibility at glue – up time (step 3).
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Making the chessboard
Glue the crosscut strips together with bar clamps as in step 1. Use two clamps underneath the strips and tighten them, protecting the stock with wood pads. To keep the edges of the strips aligned, place two more clamps across the top of the stock, arranging them at a 90° angle to the two underneath. Again, use wood pads. Since you are gluing end grain to end grain, the glue bond is only needed to hold the strips together until the chessboard is mounted to a substrate panel (step 5). Holding the strips down flat, apply enough clamping pressure to butt the mating surface together with a minimal amount of glue squeeze out (left).
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Leveling and smoothing the chessboard
Use a belt sander to make the top surface of the chessboard perfectly flat and smooth. To keep the board from moving as you sand it. clamp a plywood stop block to your work surface. Install an 80-grit sanding belt in the tool and set the board down so you will be sanding across the grain. Make a few passes across the entire surface, using straight, smooth,
overlapping strokes; avoid sweeping the sander in a circular fashion. Then turn the board around and repeat. Once the surface is flat, repeat the process, sanding diagonal to the grain and a final time with the grain (above). Turn the workpiece over and sand the other side the same way.
5 Mounting the chessboard to a substrate
Use %-inch plywood for the substrate panel, cutting it & inch wider and longer than the chessboard to allow for expansion and contraction of the solid-wood board. Spread glue on the underside of the chessboard and the top surface of the substrate and press the two pieces together, centering the chessboard on the panel. To hold the board in place while you install the clamps, drive two small screws through the substrate into the chessboard. Make sure the fasteners do not split the board or penetrate its top surface. Set the assembly astride a sawhorse, using C clamps to secure the board and substrate together. Use wood cauls to distribute the clamping pressure evenly (right).
Making a frame for the chessboard
Make the frame from a 4^-inch-wide board slightly more than twice as long as the chessboard. Start by shaping both edges of the frame stock. Install a piloted molding bit in your router and mount the tool in a table. Align the fences with the bit pilot and use three featherboards to support the stock during the cut: Clamp two to the fence, one on each side of the cutter, and a third to the table. Hold the workpiece flush
against the fence as you shape each edge (above, left). Finish the cut with a push stick. Rip a 1-inch-wide strip from each edge of the stock, then plow a rabbet into the straight edge of each piece. Make the depth of the rabbet equal to the combined thickness of the chessboard and substrate, and its width 4 inch. Finally, cut the frame pieces to length, mitering the ends with a hand saw or a power miter saw (above, right).
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Mounting the frame to the chessboard
Start by gluing the frame pieces together. Apply glue on the mitered ends and fit them together, using the chessboard as a form and being careful not to spread any adhesive on the chessboard or substrate. Hold the frame together with a web clamp (left). Once the adhesive has cured, spread glue in the rabbets in the frame only where the frame will contact the substrate. Set the chessboard and substrate in the frame and clamp the assembly together. Finish-sand the chessboard with a random-orbit sander fitted with a fine-grit disk.
Turning the pieces
To produce a chessman on your lathe, transfer the pattern (above, top) to a hardboard template, cut it out and mark the diameter of each element in the turning—V-cuts, urns, and beads—on the template. Mount a blank between centers on the machine and use a roughing gouge to turn the piece into
a cylinder. Then, holding the edge of the template against the blank, use a pencil to transfer the layout lines to the work – piece (above, left). For the pawn shown, make the V-cuts with a skew chisel, then use a small spindle gouge to turn the urn and beads (above, right).
A layout tool for л
multiple turnings
A chess set requires 32 pieces; transferring layout lines to each workpiece can be time- consuming. A series of jigs like the one shown at right enables you to do the job quickly and accurately. Trace your design onto a piece of scrap and drive a finishing nail into the edge at each tran – sition point. Snip off the nail heads and file л/чЧ the ends to sharp points. Simply press the jig against the spinning blank; the v> nails will score all ^
the layout lines on the blank at once.
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Parting off the chessman
Once you have turned the piece, smooth its surface with sandpaper (photo, page 98), then part it off from the lathe. A skew chisel will enable you to preserve the rounded end of the piece. Holding the tool with an underhanded grip and bracing the handle against your hip, make a series of V-cuts with the long point of the blade until the piece breaks off. Since the workpiece is thin, support it lightly with your free hand as you turn it, keeping your fingers well clear of the tool rest (above). Once the piece is off the lathe, sand the top smooth. To finish the job, weight the bottom of the chessmen; this will prevent the top – heavy pieces from toppling. Drill a shallow hole in the bottom of the pieces and melt in some solder; non-flux solder with 50 percent lead works best. Once the solder hardens, cover each hole with a felt base. Adhesive-backed felt is available in most hardware stores as prepunched disks or in sheets that can be trimmed to size.
1 Drilling the hole in the top
The castle is one of the chessmen that needs some additional work after you finish with it on the lathe. Cut the top flat, then fit your drill press with a bit of the same diameter as the top of the castle, less % inch. To hold the piece steady on the machine table, cut small notches in the jaws of a handscrew and secure the piece in the notches. Center the castle under the bit, clamp the handscrew to the table, and bore the hole to about the first bead on the piece (right).
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Notching the castle turrets
Remove the handscrew from the drill press and clamp it to a work surface. Shape the castle turrets with an ^-inch – diameter round file. Holding the file perpendicular to the castle, draw it across the top to cut two notches in the walls left by the drill bit. Stop filing about lA inch above the bead. Since the turret walls are thin, use light pressure, particularly when filing the second set of notches (left). Locate the second set 90° away from the first. Use the same file to cut the notches in the King and Queen’s crowns.
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The first step in making a cribbage board is to determine its final dimensions based on the number of holes you plan to drill. Typically, cribbage boards feature a starting line of four holes and four rows of 30 holes each. The pattern shown in the photograph at right and in the illustration below also includes a center row with 20 holes to tally up the number of games won. A 4-by-12-inch board will give you enough room to space the holes properly. If you intend to turn the pegs (page 107), plan on drilling /^-inch-diameter holes. Pins thinner than this will be difficult to produce.
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Preparing the board for drilling
Before drilling the peg holes in the cribbage board, make a paper template of your hole pattern. To reproduce the pattern shown in the inset, enlarge it on a photocopier or copy the pattern on a piece of graph paper to suit the dimensions of your blank. Draw straight lines for the rows and mark each hole with an x, making sure to leave sufficient room around the edges for molding the board (page 106). Cut the template to the same length and width as your blank and fix the sheet to the board with artists’ spray adhesive (left).
3 Molding the cribbage board
Install a piloted molding bit in a router, mount the tool in a table, and set a shallow depth of cut. To support the board as you shape its edges, clamp a featherboard to the fence above the bit. Minimize tear – out by cutting into the end grain of the board first, shaping the ends before the edges. While running the board past the bit, keep it flush against the fence (right). Once you have shaped all four sides, raise the cutting height, and repeat the process until the desired profile is achieved.
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Drilling the holes
Set the blank on your drill press table, align one of the outside rows under the bit, and clamp a board to the table flush against the workpiece. The board will serve as a fence, helping you keep the holes in each row perfectly aligned. Set the drilling depth at one-half the board thickness and bore the holes, keeping the workpiece flush against the fence. Once the first row is finished, turn the board around and drill the other outside row of holes. Reposition the fence to bore the remaining rows, then continue drilling (left). If boring has caused some tearout on the top surface of the board, joint the face, using a push block to feed the board slowly across the knives set for a very fine cut. Finally, sand the board smooth.
1 Turning the pegs
Install a Jacobs chuck on the head – stock of your lathe. Make the cribbage pegs from hardwood dowels, such as birch. For each peg, cut a length of dowel about 1 inch longer than needed. Mount the blank in the chuck and use a small spindle gouge to taper the peg, working from the wide to the narrow end (right). Then fashion a head on the wide end of the peg.
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Parting the pegs off
Part the peg off the lathe with a small skew chisel. Cupping your fingers loosely around the peg. make a V-cut just above the top end of the peg’s head (left). The peg should drop into your hands.
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