Purple Heart and Cherry Chess Board
A Christmas gift for Alexa's father, this cherry and purpleheart face grain chess board was a fun collaboration between Alexa and I. I'd been trying to get Alexa to take on some woodworking projects for some time and it was this project, for her Dad, that struck her fancy. We started from scratch, visiting the hardwood store, having her pick out the woods she wanted to use, and eventually moving through resawing, ripsawing, glue ups, planing, sanding and finishing. The finishing touch was a laser engraving of a boat Alexa drew, a nod to one of her father's favorite songs, Billy Joel's, Downeaster Alexa; you guessed it, her namesake.
Required Resources: 5 hours, $15
Size: 16" x 16" x 0.75"
Materials: Cherry, Purpleheart, Titebond III Glue
Finish: Natural colored Stain, 3 coats Semi-Gloss Polyurethane Aerosol.
Tools: Miter Saw, Table saw, Planer, Jointer, Orbital Sander, Laser Cutter
New Techniques:
End Grain Glue Joints: I have made a number of checkerboard style end grain cutting boards, but never dared making a face grain checker board. While the difference between the two aforementioned styles may seem semantic, the construction process on the latter is considerable more challenging. In the end grain board, the glued faces are all side or face grain, which a) plane/joint nicely and b) form a strong bond when glued. On this board, however, with the face grain showing on the top side, two sides of each of the squares are end grain that have to be glue up to the end grain of another square.
Lessons Learned:
As mentioned above, this board featured a series of end grain to end grain joints. This type of joint in this application is tricky because end grain doesn't plane very well, so the glue line/ rip cut had to be sanded flat rather than jointed. Secondly, an end grain to end grain glue joint is very weak (I have broken such a joint by dropping a piece a mere 12 inches on to the ground). Knowing what I was getting in to, I did the best I could and delivered the gift knowing that it had neither the prettiest nor the strongest, glue joints. There are some things I could do to improve the process the next time around. First, I could mount the whole board to a substrate. This would give me a lot of face-face glue surface and make for a very sturdy board. I could also cut overlaps with a rabbet bit and get more face-face surface that way. To make the rip line seem cleaner, I could spend some time tuning up my jointer and sharping the spindle blades. With small enough passes, sharp blades and some backing blocks to prevent blow outs on the trailing edge of the part, I can create nice clean glueable faces with relative ease.
