what is the base diameter of the "peg'd" pieces? if it's 1 inch, what would it hurt if yu took your walnut and drilled out 1.5 inch circles? yeah, okay so it would be circles instead of squares, as you'd be looking through the walnut onto the maple. But the walnut would be raised, you could use a solid piece (glued strip or not) of walnut and you'd have the raised and lowered aspect of the project. You could lay the walnut over the maple, drill through both for the peg, and then lift the wlanut to do the 1.5 inch boring and your 8x8 peg matrix would still exist. I'm just trying to help in thanks for the trick you shared regarding the trick of a chess board. Or, how about this? Get 2x2 of a wood. then cut slices. Yeah 32 of them. But with a chop saw, that could be too tough. I've made ebony pieces, and would have been thankful for a chop saw. They would be end grain, if you can tolerate that. Good luck,
On Sun, 27 Jul 2008, David Sexton wrote: > I'm going to make a table with a chessboard in the middle. I will use > maple for the white squares and walnut for the black squares. The > standard way to make a chess board is to cut the boards into strips, > clue the strips so the colors alternate, crosscut the striped board, > flip every other strip end for end and glue back together... Instant > chessboard. > This is perfect except here's the problem: I want to make an accessible > chess board, most accessible chessboards have the black squares raised > about an eighth inch above the white squares. Gluing up boards of > different thicknesses is difficult at best. Drilling square holes is an > option I suppose if I wanna drill 32 of them, but that probably won't > look great. Most accessible chessboards I've seen have a solid particle > board white backing with an overlay of usually plastic for the black > squares. Not sure how easy it would be to cut such an overlay from plywood. > Maybe I could have a backing of maple ply, drill holes in the center of > each square, cut out walnut squares, drill holes in them and glue each > square in place with a dowel to hold them in place, drill out the dowel > when it drys... > Any other ideas? > >
