I’ve never turned a chess piece before, so I decided to start on something small and work my way up. From Pawn to King, in fact.
These ebony pieces were hand-turned on my nano-lathe. Next I’ll be looking for some pale maple or tagua nut (vegetable ivory) to make the opponents. They are under 0.4 mm diameter each, (under 16 thousands of an inch). Does that make them the smallest wooden chess pieces ever? Together they will adorn a chess board not even 4 mm square (less than 5/32 of an inch square).
To avoid losing the pieces, I’ll have to secure them in place, so I’m looking for suggestions on which move to glue them into. Feel free to leave a comment to suggest your favourite chess game set up.
The image shows a handy ruler with one cm in half-mm divisions. I took the photo by scattering the pieces on the scanner, then I rotated each piece on the computer, hence the questionable “cut-out” look of the images.
NANOTRAY 