Carpenters glue should be plenty good enough and a lot easier to manage than things like cyanoacrilate (Crazy Glue) particularly if you can't see. I don't know why though you can't laminate up alternate strips even of varying thickness. Keeping glue from squeeze out might best be done by applying a very thin layer on the bottom side of the black squares and letting it mostly dry then add another thin layer immediately before placement. Lay them all out taking care but because the glue is already beginning to set up it will stay pretty secure as the underlying surface rapidly begins to take up the moisture. Then clamp it down with cauls, strips curved slightly with the curve side down so that as you clamp the ends pressure is applied along the full length.
You could always invest in one of those vacuum bag clamping arrangements too, the sort they often use for applying veneer. An X Y drill press table would be ideal, I look at them longingly but so far still a little shy about spending that kind of money. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Sexton To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 11:15 AM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] making a chessboard I'll probably do the setup like tiles since it will be inlay into the table. Wonder if I should use a different type of glue than standard wood glue since I won't be able to clamp the tiles that well. It will have to be very exact measuring on my part to get it to fit without any spaces showing, but if I go the black squares on a white backing that problem would be solved. However, the problem then is glue getting on the white squares. Yeah, I want to drill holes for the pieces to sit in. I'll most likely use a scratch awl, square, and click rule to draw a grid. Luckily I have a drill press so drilling accurate holes is not too hard. I've always thought about making a jig out of an l-shaped wood fence and t-tracks and two click rules to line up for drilling holes. The fence would be able to move to any coordinate using the two click rules, one for x and one for y movement. Of course you'd have to calibrate and clamp it to the drill press, but that wouldn't be so hard. Once I had it lined up the first time I'd attach a dowel to the bottom of the device to fit in the hole of the drill press table. Only problem with such a jig is the price of click rules isn't cheap. If I made them easily removable however it'd be ok since I already own two of them. I can picture such a jig quite well, but not sure I explained it well. the other option is to make a XY table like on cctv's and use a click rule to measure and set the x and y axis. I could take it a step further and use a computer to control stepper motors to control a table on threaded rods, a motor to bring the drill down, make hole placement and drilling automatic. I'll do that if I ever decide to mass produce something with a bunch of holes in it. I have been thinking of making an accessible cnc machine for a while now. David Dale Leavens wrote: > > Why glue with dowels? Just glue the squares onto the maple substrate. > > Gluing up alternate thickness strips though shouldn't be all that > difficult. You could I suppose lay waxed strips between the thickest > strips so glue doesn't stick to them and they will be used to help you > level them up. Dowels or biscuits registered off of the flat side > would be another way of gluing the variable thickness strips together > accurately. Then you could rip and reassemble. > > Finally, if the playing surface is below the table level just cut them > all into 64 squares and lay them as tiles. You could cut 33 of the > black tiles and use the odd one as a spacer to help you locate and > glue the black ones accurately onto the white substrate. > > Will you bore holes to accept pegged chess pieces? I find accurately > locating that sort of hole pattern far more challenging. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: David Sexton > To: [email protected] > <mailto:blindhandyman%40yahoogroups.com> > Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 8:44 AM > Subject: [BlindHandyMan] making a chessboard > > 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? > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG. > Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.5.6/1575 - Release Date: > 7/26/2008 4:18 PM > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.5.6/1575 - Release Date: 7/26/2008 4:18 PM [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
