Chess Sets of All Shapes and Sizes

Chess sets – or chessmen – come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and materials. Their function in the game all stays the same, but their appearances can be radically different. All chess sets include 32 pieces – 16 Pawns, 4 Rooks, 4 Knights, 4 Bishops, 2 Queens, and last, but not least, 2 Kings. An array of materials and techniques are used in order to make chess sets unique pieces of art.

• Material 

Chessmen can be made from wood, marble, stone, bone, glass, plastic, or even carbon fiber. These are among some of the more popular materials used today. Chess sets can be either hand-made or machine manufactured out of raw materials.

Wood is one of the more popular materials used in making quality chess sets. Ebony and Rosewood are types of wood that are used in many high-end, handmade chess sets. These types of wood are very dense so they take more times to construct the pieces. Maple, palm, and cedar are some of the other wood used to make chess sets as well. They are not as difficult to work with as Ebony or Rosewood, but they still make for great chess sets. Wood offers versatility in style, which is why it is a common material.

• Style 

Chess sets vary in style as well. The most common of the styles is the Staunton chess set. Staunton chess sets are the style recognized and exclusively used for competitions. Nathaniel Cook made the first Staunton chess sets in 1849. He then asked Howard Staunton – a prominent chess player and chess columnist – to promote the style of chessmen in his column. After that, they become known as the Staunton chess set.

By design, Staunton chessmen have wide molded bases. The knights always have the shaped head and neck of a horse, but they can stylistically vary in appearance. The king, queen, bishop, and pawn all have “collars” separating the head of the piece from the body. Most importantly, kings are the biggest pieces and pawns are the smallest – which represents the hierarchy within the game.

Staunton chessmen are among the most common style of pieces, but they are most definitely not the only pieces. There are classes of chess sets from thematic, artistic, contemporary, etc. There are also chess set design differences – Lessing, Broadbent, Anderssen, and Morphy – to name a few. Each set has specific nuances and functions.

 

• Technique 

There are different techniques to making chess sets as well. The two most common are handcrafted and machine manufactured sets. Hand crafted sets are mostly made of wood, bone, and stone. Wood pieces have hand carved tops and the rest of the piece is normally done on a lathe. Bone and stone chessmen are all hand carved by skilled craftsmen. These types of chess sets are weighted at the bottom and then covered with felt to help the pieces glide across the board.

Manufactured chess sets are mostly made of plastic and metal. Molds are created and the molten metal or plastic is poured into a mold. The pieces are then cleaned up and ready for use.

 

 There is a lot of hard work, thought, and craftsmanship that goes into any chess set you may come across. The sets are almost as intricate as the game of chess is – and for good reason. Chess got its start as a game of nobility and it has kept the look to go with it. Next time you sit down to play chess, take some time to admire all the hard work that goes into making each piece.

Unfinished Chess Sets

Is anyone out there looking for unfinished wood chess sets?

Unfinished Chess Sets

Since our beginning we’ve always received a lot of calls from people asking if we carry unfinished chess sets so they could finish the sets themselves. Up until now, the answer has always been no… but maybe some day. It’s taken a while, but after 13 years we finally have unfinished chess sets, so let the orders come in!

We’re starting small to see just how much interest there is now that we actually have them. We’re starting with our most popular and best selling chess set of all time – the good old German Knight Staunton, and in the same 3 sizes we offer our finished chess sets.

The best wood for staining or painting is boxwood because it has a light, consistent color and a nice tight grain. Boxwood is the wood that we use for the white pieces on all of our wood chess sets. The downside to boxwood is that it’s more expensive than a wood such as golden rosewood. But to get the right look and consistent texture, we believe using all boxwood pieces is important.

One thing you’ll notice right off is that unfinished chess sets aren’t a whole lot less expensive than the finished ones. The reason being that nearly all of the work and cost of making the chess set is already done, even though the pieces aren’t finished (weighted and polished). When you think about it, thirty-two pieces of wood had to be cut to the right size from a big log, the wood pieces were then individually chucked up on a lathe and carefully turned to rather precise specifications, and then sanded nice and smooth. Plus, the 4 knights were hand carved one at a time. The pieces were then packaged, crated, and shipped. All in all, making an unfinished chess set is still a heck of a lot of hard, time consuming work.

But the main reason people are looking for an unfinished chess set isn’t to save money anyway. The real reason is that they want to finish the chess set in their own unique and creative way and have fun doing it. There’s definitely satisfaction in taking a plain unfinished chess set and making a beautiful piece of art out of it.

For the purpose of providing some samples to share with people of what can be done we bought a few cans of metallic spray paint at the local hardware store and went to town on some pieces. We found it amazingly easy and fun to create some pretty darn cool looking chess sets. It’s hard to tell the painted wood pieces from real copper, silver, gold, brass, and nickel. We also stained a few sets several bright colors and created some pretty nifty looking chess sets where you can see the grain of the wood. We finished these sets with semi-gloss polyurethane and they turned out amazingly beautiful.

Jerri Koos, our director of marketing who is also a pretty talented craft lady, just for fun took some paints and a brush and created a truly elegant and colorful chess set. In fact, here in the next day or two we’ll get some pictures taken of all of the other ones and get them posted to this blog and Pinterest. The colors, patterns, designs that you can create are endless.

If you decide to stain, here’s something you’ll want to keep in mind.  Because boxwood is so hard and has such a tight grain it does not accept some stains very well. We recommend water based dye such as J.E. Moser’s Aniline Dye. These dyes are cheap, easy to mix, and come in just about any color you might want. This dye easily penetrates the wood and with the different grain direction you find on the pieces, the dye creates some unique looking patterns and different intensity of colors.

A couple of more things worth mentioning, these chess sets are not weighted but can be weighted with a little extra work. For the handyman, all you need is a drill press and some lead or steel plugs you can use as weight. It’s a little bit of work but if weight is important, it can be done. The last item is the pads on the bottom. It’s as simple as running down to your local fabric store for some felt. Then it’s just a matter of cutting out some round pieces and gluing them on. FYI, we’ll soon have full sets of cutout felt pads with PSA on one side. Just peel and stick.

We hope that both chess players and crafts people alike will find these unfinished chess sets a lot of fun and a rewarding project. We would love to have you send us pictures of your chess set if you buy one and finish it and we hope to make a page on our web site for posting everyone’s work of art. Paint away!