Our Chess Set
We made our chess set out of my grandmother’s collection of wooden
spools and antique buttons, and we store the pieces in an old cigar box that had belonged
to my grandfather. The set cost us nothing, was fun to make, and reminds us of my dear
grandparents every time we play. I have included these pictures of our set in case anyone
else would like to try to make their own set. Just click on the thumbnail to see a larger
picture. I tried to make the pictures show as much detail as possible, but our digital
camera is of questionable quality and I am afraid this was the best we could do.
The kings, queens, bishops, and knights
were made distinctive by the buttons we glued onto the tops. (We used a hot glue gun and
epoxy.) The kings and queens, in addition, were made from larger spools than the rest of
the pieces. The kings were made taller than the queens by the multiple buttons and pieces
from old jewelry that we used to build up the height of their crowns. The queens’
crowns were kept simple: a single large, flat button of either white or brown plastic,
with a flat decorated metal button glued on top of it.
The bishops, knights, and pawns were all
made from the same size spools. The bishops and knights were made distinctive from the
pawns by the buttons we glued onto the tops. The pawns have no buttons. The bishops’
mitres were made from three white buttons stacked inside and on top of each other, with
only the base button being flat. The other two buttons were taller, and so gave the
“pointy-hat” effect. The knights were made with two flat buttons, a smaller one
fitting just inside the base button. The brown knights were made with brown buttons, and
the white knights with white.
We used unique spools for the four rooks. They are almost the same height
as the pawns, but much wider in diameter. The spools that were to become the brown army
were stained with wood stain and allowed to dry thoroughly before gluing on the buttons.
We took off any paper labels that were still attached before staining and gluing. We did
not stain the white pieces or finish any of the pieces in any way after staining. As you
can see from the photograph, even though all the spools used were nearly the same height
(except for the king and queen), we were able to get a final height variation as in a
commerical chess set by a judicious choice of buttons.
