table of contents

• wednesday 17th june 2026
• thursday 18th june 2026

wednesday 17th june 2026

i went down to sheffield hackspace’s craft night with my new housemate alfie and i decided that i wanted to create a chessboard out of wood.

i’ve only explored woodworking once before, when i made a dm’s screen for dnd out of an old door and some hinges, but creating a chessboard would require skills i do not have, and tools i wouldn’t have access to without hackspace’s lovely facilities.

i picked out this piece of scrap wood to start planning with and roughly marked it square, it had a small piece of wood on the back of it that i chiseled off by hand and then i got to writing a plan.

for those who (rightfully) cannot read my terrible handwriting, that reads

1. sand edges
2. plane
3. cut to size (either 272²mm or 275²mm)
4. cut into 64 pieces
5. stain half of them
6. reassemble

i relayed my plan to alfie who made some suggestions, mainly to create the 64 squares out of a piece of wood that wasn’t a square the size of my ideal chessboard, as when using the band saw, the width of the blade would discard small amounts of wood with every cut, eventually making my initial measuring obselete, he suggested a long, thin plank and helped me pick one out of hackspace’s supply (it cost me £4 to buy, which was an easy process), and finally he suggested that i create one square and make it as perfect as i possibly can, and then to use that square as a guide for the rest of them.

i roughly marked the plank of wood at 30²mm and used the band saw to cut it to size, i then measured each edge to make sure it was square, and found that the edges were: 31.83mm, 31.06mm, 31.82mm and 31.23mm. one edge was between 0.6 and 0.8mm longer than the other, i decided that my goal was to get the piece to within 0.2mm of being a perfect square, and took it to the belt sander to achieve that, which i did.

i then cut 3 other pieces to size so that i could work on them without using the band saw to get them the same size as my guide piece, at this time, it’d gone 9pm so i decided it was time to go home for the day and return the next day to continue.

thursday 18th june 2026

i arrived at hackspace and my first job was to use a circular saw to cut my plank of wood into 4 more manageable pieces, i asked ellie to teach me how to use it, and she helped me to safely use the saw. i then spoke to alan, who is a lot more experienced in woodworking than i am, we spoke about how i planned to make my chessboard, and he explained to me an easier way to do what i was trying to do, using a table saw and a crosscut sled (read the attached hyperlink for a slightly more detailed explanation of what that is and why it was useful).

i used some scrap pieces of wood to adjust the crosscut sled to the size i wanted, which was 32mm (leaving space for sanding) and then got to sawing. i started by sawing each piece vertically to 32mm, and then did the same horizontally, using the next piece to push the last cut through to avoid bringing my fingers too close to the saw, and after around 20 minute we had between us cut just over 64 identical squares that i could then sand down to size. at this point, alfie and chester had gone home for the day, so i followed shortly after, the next day i would be able to go to the hackspace would be monday 22nd june 2026.