Chess Table

Chess Table Recently, I built this table to donate to the children of my church. It is made primarily of African Mahogany, and the light-coloured squares are birch. The top is supported by a turned Queen Anne style column and a tripod base, the design for both of which I got from a book of Queen Anne furniture. It has a tilting top so it can be put away in a corner when not in use. And it also has a hand-rubbed finish made from a mixture of varnish, linseed oil and turpentine, and as a final measure of protection, it has two coats of paste wax, made from pure beeswax and linseed oil.

At the 2002 Minneosta State Fair, the table and chessmen both won blue ribbons, and I got the Peterson Memorial Award for Superior Craftsmanship. This picture was taken with a new Canon PowerShot A40 digital camera, which, I think, does a marvelous job. The others were taken with an older Toshiba digital camera.

Here it is with the top tilted up.

Here it had the top down and the pieces set up to play.

This is a close-up of the chessmen, which I made from birch on the white side, but the dark side is made from some other sort of wood which I had lying about my shop, and I'm not sure what sort of wood it is precisely; it is far harder than mahogany, and it emits a highly irritating dust when cut or sanded; the colour and grain pattern, however, are similar enough to mahogany that they look good together.

The following are views of the column and the sliding dovetail joints which attach the legs to the column.

And this is a little box I made for the chessmen; it is made of Central American Mahogany, and this picture illustrates very well the difference between Central American, or "geniune" Mahogany (Swietenia mahogani), and African Mahogany (Khaya senegalensis).