Mini Chess Set

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I've also made my very own miniature chess set! Yeah, homemade chess set. It's both an International chess and Chinese chess set combined in one, pieces have chinese characters inscribed on one side and international chess symbols on the other. I duplex printed a chessboard, one for each type of chess, all on one sheet of paper.

Well, I like the eclipse mints (about $4 from petrol stations and supermarkets). They usually come in nice metal containers with a snap on metal cap. I had recently just finished another box so I had an empty container. Basically I just rinsed and cleaned it, and it was ready for use. I wanted durable chess pieces, so paper and cardboard were out of the question. Buttons were too small and coins were too heavy (not to mention unsightly). So what I did was I went over to Daiso and bought wooden chips. These are circular discs made of balsa wood, generally for hobby crafts, relatively inexpensive.

Bought 2 packs for $4, which contained 25 chips each, totally 50 chips. That gave me plenty of room for errors, should I happen to damage any of the chips. I then used the red and black ballpoint pens to inscribe Chinese characters on the chips. It's not really that hard, and in the case I found anything unsatisfactory, I could always rewrite that character on a fresh piece. Chinese and International chess both use 16 pieces per side (32 pieces total), so I had quite a few pieces left over.

I considered coating the chips to protect them and enhance their look, but it would be too troublesome and take up a lot of space.

Using flash, I quickly drew up two chessboards, one chinese chess and one international chess board. Printing them were quite easy too, although I had to manually duplex it.

I then decided to laminate the paper to protect it, thereby using up the last bit of laminate tape we had. Unfortunately, the laminate made the paper too thick to pack into the box and it had to be abandoned and reprinted.

Anyway, here's the final results of my miniature chess set.



The metal box casing, originally holding eclipse mints. Pretty small for a chess set.



The 32 wooden chess pieces.



Board with pieces, properly arranged for a game of chinese chess.



The board and pieces flipped over, this is for international chess.



All fits in the box nicely.

A match, anyone?

| HCH - 2:56 PM |