/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.271880]

DIY chess sets?

I want to start our school's first chess club so I'll need supplies. I'll probably have to buy the pieces but to save money I was thinking of making my own mats. Any ideas?

[Anonymous No.271884]

get some square pieces of any material in two contrasting colors. Glue them to a piece of wood in a chess-board pattern. Now you have a chess-board.

[Anonymous No.271886]

I've seen some nice leather mats. The materials are cheap and easy to come buy and you don't need to much in tools.

[Anonymous No.271889]

>>271884
Well I wanted them to portable/flexible/whatever. I think I'll just buy vinyl and do that myself

[Anonymous No.271892]

>>271886
That sounds awesome. What kind of leather was it made of?

[Anonymous No.271894]

>>271889
you can buy vinyl with that pattern already on it, you just need to find one with the squares the size you want. A lot of auto places carry it because of the racing flag.

[Anonymous No.271902]

>>271894
Sounds good, I'll look into it then. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.271904]

I created patterns for a complete chess set that could be made by folding cardstock. Pieces and board fit into a one gallon ziplock bag. Used it to teach a whole classroom of 4th graders how to play. Adding pennies to the bottoms of the pieces gave them some weight.

[Anonymous No.271908]

Here are the pieces. They fold to make them two-sided and to create the base - glue a penny on the bottom of each to add mass.

[Anonymous No.271910]

Here is the board - if copied onto sheet plastic, it can be used on an overhead projector.

[Anonymous No.271912]

These pieces can be copied on plastic sheet to make overhead projectin pieces to go with the board.

[Anonymous No.271915]

>>271908
>>271910
>>271912
How long would these last? I was hoping for something durable, as they (hopefully) will be played with often

[Anonymous No.271933]

WTF kind of third world country are you in? If a school can't even afford a dozen latex chess mats and some sets of nice chunky plastic pieces for their Chess Club I really do despair.

Of course if you are in Saudi, Afghanistan, or Pakistan then I can understand the need to make "underground" chess sets which can be quickly desposed of in a fireplace or some such.

Please tell me you are in one of the most backward places on the planet? Hence the need for this DIY post?

[Anonymous No.271940]

>>271892

Here is my leather set. No clue what the type of leather it is but it does say its 100% leather, not some synthetic stuff. As you can see, its pretty fucking awesome.

[Anonymous No.271949]

Why destroy your schools budding chess enthusiasts with tacky cheap DIY shite when perfectly good tournament style chess pieces and mats are available cheaply, and will be the same thing your chess club will be using when competing with other schools?

Just from a quick google search, a set of 10 roll up vinyl mats and 10 sets of tournament pieces can be had for not more than £11 a set.

http://www.regencychess.co.uk/plastic-tournament-chess-pieces-375-inches-10-sets-p-759.html £67.85

http://www.regencychess.co.uk/20-inch-roll-up-vinyl-chess-board-green-x10-p-768.html £43.99

What kind of retard school could not afford £110 as a one off cost to keep a minimum of 20 kids playing. That £110 could be depreciated as a capital cost over say 6 years, so say £20 per year cost including contingency for replacing missing pieces or mats.

If the school is so tight, why not charge the kids £1 each per years membership so it pays for itself?

[Anonymous No.271954]

>>271940
Yeah - it is also pretty fucking shit. Are you seriously suggesting a room full of school kids are going to play with some tourist tat leatherette chess novelty item instead of the real thing? ...

Sorry, only Tournament chess pieces and mats are the way to go.

[Anonymous No.271960]

For the boards, can you just print them? Ideally if your school has an A3 printer, or just paste together 2 A4 sheets then reprint them whenever they get too dog-eared and dirty.

For the pieces, can you get access to a 3D printer? If you contact your local hackerspace I'm guessing they might be willing to make you a few sets to prove they can, or out of simple good will. Weighting the bases is still a good idea - the tactile sensation of the pieces is surprisingly important to Chess-players.

Finally, and perhaps not entirely appropriately for school children, Toohey's Old (an Australian beer) are currently printing chess boards on their cartons, and pieces on the underside of the bottle caps. Buy a few boxes and you'll get beer and chess, it's win - win!

[Anonymous No.271963]

>>271954

Look, bro, I know you have a tiny penis, but thats not reason to take it all out on people just trying to help.

He wanted to know about making a leather board, well, thats one that I have. He can make an awesome board using similar construction just not as a travel set. The board is great, the only issue is the weak pieces, which are the way they are because its a travel set. The leather used is thin enough that you could probably stitch it together on a standard sewing machine. Just omit the straps and the piece carrying pouch and your gtg.

[Anonymous No.271964]

ive always wanted to do something like this. have light beer for whites dark beer for black and some sort of liquor for the queen and/or king

[Anonymous No.271965]

>>271964

Hipster detected. Someone take away is PBR and break his fake glasses.

j/k

[Anonymous No.271972]

Do what the guy in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) did. make sure to watch that move for instructions.

[Anonymous No.271986]

>>271964

I'd also get the piece etched into the glasses, that way you can still easily tell them apart after playing a few games.

[Anonymous No.271992]

>>271963
Erm, nope, he isn't interested in your leather crap. He want's to DIY because he thinks he can make a stack of boards cheaper for a school chess club.

He can't - especially fucking stitching leather patches together, WTF?. How do you value and charge out your time never mind materials?

There is no way he can beat £4 per chess mat even if he made some shitty printouts and laminated them.

Anyway, keep stuffing your tiny dick in your fake leather tube when you have to "diy". That's the only action that crap has ever seen.

[anonanon No.271995]

>>271933
Im with this guy, and Im not a buyfag but do you know how cheap shitty little drug store chess sets are? Like 5-10$ and you can get glass ones, with weight and you can see through it, hell you could prolly even put it on the overhead and use that.

[Anonymous No.272013]

>>271992
>>Erm, nope, he isn't interested in your leather crap.

>>271892
>>That sounds awesome. What kind of leather was it made of?

[Anonymous No.272045]

>>271915

To my knowledge, the kids were using them well into the next year. Cardstock is a pretty though material as long as you're not willfully trying to destroy it.

[Anonymous No.272048]

>>271933

The idea was to provide each student with his/her own chess set on a teacher's budget. IE, out of the teacher's own pocket.

[eNon No.272248]

The cheapest options would be cardstock or vinyl. If you can't find vinyl with checkerboard pattern with the size you need (1" squares for casual sizes, 2" squares for tournement sizes), you can always just use masking tape and paint.

You can often find chess sets at garage sales and ebay. If you're crafty, there is also origami and papercraft sets I've seen.

[Anonymous No.272308]

>>271880
> I'll probably have to buy the pieces
Ive made my own chess pieces from tree limbs, dowel rods, and old broom handles. I used a makeshift lathe from a random small motor and used a Dremel to do the cutting since I didn't have gouges or any real lathe tools. It worked pretty well even though I didn't have something to keep the sizes exactly the same. It was also really easy and cheap.

[Anonymous No.272310]

>>272308
Oh, and the chess board is made from a piece of wood that has different color stains for the different color squares.