Post pictures of your chess pieces/boards that you made yourself

Really precise in your details!

Very Clever , creation , " The Amazon"..

The Knight in the earlier image has a serpentine look.

Very original! Nice craftmanship !

Thanks! By the way, the amazon and the other fairy pieces already exist on chess.com, just check out the variants.

Used leftover LEGO pieces from childhood (no special pieces) for the 32 chessmen (now painted silver/copper) and an approximately three-foot square board.
Board can also be used with the Avon after-shave bottles from the 1980s.

I call this arch bold chess

Sm

@trudhe648756 this isn't the forum you're looking for. this is for physical sets made, not custom positions. Check out the variants and custom variants clubs if you want to submit this sort of thing, i highly recommend them, there's many interesting variants there.

Hello fellow chess enthousiasts!

Unfortunately, I don't have any wood working or 3d printing skills.

I do, however, have an idea for a 'make it at home' chess set.

My idea is to gather household items that could combine to make a chess set. Preferably items that most people have at home, if possible all over the world.

Most of the items I have thought of so far are food related, but they don't necessarily have to be.

It would be nice if the items naturally exist in black and white variants.

The items I have come up with so far are:

King: beer bottle / clear liquor bottle.

Queen: coca cola bottle (full/empty)

Bishop: soy bottle (Kikkoman. I'm not sure these are used world wide). Or maybe lemon juice bottle.

Rook: beer can.

Pawns: salt and pepper dispensers.

Knight: this is probably the hardest one to come up with. Maybe a small milk can might work.

I know there are custom sets out there which consist entirely of coke bottles, other kinds of bottles or pepper shakers of different sizes. However, I'd rather have a set that one can make themselves, en which has more variation.

Of course I am aware that most people probably don't have 8 salt and pepper dispensers lying around.

It would also be nice if the board could consist of household items. Unfortunately I haven't been able to think of a good idea for this yet.

Do you have better ideas for the pieces? Or maybe a good solution for the board? Please let me know. When we're done thinking of the best setup I might actually make it and post pictures.

Thank you for adding your good ideas! Also, if some one else came up with this idea first, please let me know. I couldn't find something like this, yet.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/unlimited-friends?newCommentCount=1&page=1#first_new_comment

@EricNigmaThe main problem I see with some of those items is the sheer size of the board compared to standard sets. I do love the idea though, I'll prob try it myself.

For this folding board, I'm curious how you got the grain of the individual squares to run from player to player (rather than from side-to side).

I've been planning out my cuts - I am looking at gluing them up as two 'half-boards' (actually one big glue up with no glue on the centre seam), slicing them and gluing up two 'half-boards' again, but this means either the grain on the squares runs side-to-side or it requires a more difficult glue-up (across eight short boards rather than across four long ones).

The only other way I see is to glue it up as one big board and then cut it in half at the end - which means ranks 4&5 are half a kerf shorter than everything else or you have to start with extra material in those two ranks (on the second glue-up only) and then cut to the right size.

I guess the easiest way is to just live with the half-kerf loss in two ranks and maybe use a thin-kerf blade. May I ask what you did?

I'Ve made another Chavet.

I made a few origami chess pieces.

Here is a rook:

And a knight:

Funny how simple they look in the end. Some of the folds were very difficult. Here is the knight in an earlier stage:

Nice, you can probably weight them by sliding some coins in the bottom pockets .

Oh good idea!

Very cool

Thank you!

I made a hexagonal chessboard with my 3D printer for my son to go with his hexagonal gaming table. He's a fan of Hexagons are the Bestagons.

I also printed the hexagonal box for the pieces. I got the plastic 2.5" analysis pieces from ChessHouse where it was easy to get the required extra bishops and pawns.

Nice! How does a hexagonal board play differently? The starting configuration is pretty wild. Why aren’t the pawns as far back as possible?

There are several varieties of hexagonal chess. This setup is for Glinski's variation. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_chess#Gli%C5%84ski's_hexagonal_chess. Apparently this variation was relatively popular for a while, but I can't find much literature about it. I would expect that some opening theory and mating pattern literature at least would have developed. I look forward to playing it with my son.