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?
