{"id":1191,"date":"2021-02-25T14:20:27","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T11:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodiswood.com\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2022-09-07T12:00:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T09:00:54","slug":"how-to-whittle-chess-pieces-a-detailed-guide-to-wood-carving-a-chess-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodiswood.com\/how-to-whittle-chess-pieces-a-detailed-guide-to-wood-carving-a-chess-set\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Whittle Chess Pieces: A Detailed Guide To Wood Carving A Chess Set"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The secret to carving your own wooden chess set (without a lathe) is a little bit of consistency. The wooden chess pieces must look similar to one another, and the styles between, knights, rooks, and bishops must be somewhat similar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you are a beginner or an expert at carving wood, this article will guide you to creating a fully functioning chess set in any style you want. While we concentrate on carving the chess by hand (whittling), a lot of the tips you will read in the article are also suitable for power carvers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article will concentrate on the general tips and ideas that you have to know before carving the chess pieces, as well as the specifics of each piece that you will be carving. Without further ado, let’s start with the things you need to know before starting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fundamentals Of Carving a Chess Set <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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In this section of the article, we will give a good general understanding of what you need to prepare and some tips and tricks that you can choose to implement when carving your chess pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start with let’s discuss the tools that you will be using<\/strong>. The range of assistive tools can go wild, but the main tools you will be using to whittle the chess pieces will of course be the carving knife. You may also choose to use power carving tools, but we will not be concentrating on that side of carving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other thing you will need is to get the wood that you will be carving to the appropriate size<\/strong> for all pieces. You can either do that by cutting a larger log with a saw and measuring each piece to be the same, or buy carving blocks of different sizes <\/a>from Amazon. For any size of the piece, you will need to count an extra 20% to be carved off. For example, if you want a 6×4 pawn, get a carving block that is 7×5 as the rest will be carved away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like how we said at the start of the article, to get your chess set to look good you will need as much consistency as possible<\/strong>. This means that the theme of the chess pieces, their size, their design all look the same at first glance. If you are making a Balinese-styled king and queen, you can not have medieval knights and modern-looking bishops. The same idea applies to sizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on your experience with carving, you may or may not know that 99% of completed carvings are actually sealed if you want them to be durable. This is also important in chess pieces. If you are new to applying finishes on your carvings, head over to our article 5 ways to finish your carving<\/a>. A simple finish for a chess set would be wax\/beeswax.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also aim to get the chess pieces to be shiny. <\/strong>This also requires a specific technique to the way you finish your carvings. It can be done with beeswax or even polyurethane, for both methods give a shine to any carving. You can find a tutorial for this method in the same article that we recommend one paragraph above this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, you should set the expectation based on your level of expertise. <\/strong>if you are an intermediate woodcarver you don’t have to take the most difficult pattern of pieces. It’s better to carve a simple chess set that looks identical than take difficult patterns and end up with 4 knights that look slightly different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wood For Black Chess Pieces<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While with white chess pieces, you can use almost any wood, wood for black pieces is a little less common. Of course, you can use walnut stain<\/a> to give your chess pieces the dark color. However, if you want to leave the wood’s natural color, here are a few kinds of wood that you can use for black chess pieces:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red cedar<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Red cedar a savior to beginner carvers when it comes to carving something dark out of wood. While dark red is not necessarily black, it still gives a clear and rather stylish distinction between the two chess colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red cedar is easy to carve<\/strong>, it is among the top softest woods in the world, therefore, if you are a beginner, we strongly recommend red cedar, if you are an expert at wood carving, then we still recommend red cedar, but also check out walnut as another equally interesting option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a very nice article that describes the different types of cedar and their unique traits. If you would like, find some more information about red cedar in our article all about carving cedar<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walnut<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Walnut is a go-to wood when it comes to carving dark wood carvings for professional woodcarvers. It is very tough to carve, so we would not recommend it for beginners. With that said, walnut is the ideal dark color that black pieces should have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grain and detail of the wood<\/a> is very beautiful, it is definitely worth carving if you are up to the challenge as it really is the ideal wood for black chess pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make sure to keep your tools super sharp when carving walnut, and if you have not carved it before, consider going for a simpler less detailed design at first just to make sure that your chess pieces are consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ebony<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One of the most expensive woods in the world is ebony. We never carved chess pieces out of it, but if you really want your chess set to be luxurious, you can purchase ebony wood for your chess set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carving a Wooden Pawn<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Pawns can be very different depending on what style of chess you are looking to carve. If you are looking to carve a more traditional chess set, with the pawns looking something like in the picture above, you will need to use the push cut technique<\/a> to round off the top of the head and then work your way down from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More exotic chess styles such as the Balinese style chess that you can see below the subheading “fundamentals of carving a chess set” have more chipping away techniques such as the ones used in chip carving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter what style you are using, when it comes to carving a rather precise design you should make some drawings on your carving. Going back to the traditional pawn, you should mark the deepest area on every layer<\/strong>, so under the pawn’s head, under the collar, and then the start and end of the skirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What drawings do, is help you understand after which point you should start making the carving wider again to continue outlining the shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a very helpful youtube video showing the tutorial of carving a chess pawn. Be sure to watch it to get a better visual understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L5Y2BGQFIlk<\/a>