r/ChessBoards

A little while ago I bought a small set, mainly to be used at home for analysis and reading books. I wanted something tiny, so it fits on my desk in front my of my screen and I can replay games from e-books. In those situations a compact arrangement is no big deal, even preferred (at least to me, YMMV) as the pieces don't need "breathing space" to be moved around quickly under time pressure.

With that ("the pieces are too big you need to fit four pawns on a square" "no they're not, different circumstances and demands") out of the way, I really liked this no-frills travel set on a 9" board sold be chess house dot com (I know an Italian store sells it in Europe but I forgot which one). The pieces are remarkable good by "magnetic game" standards. The only thing I didn't like was the cheap fake-leather board, while convenient for on-the-go, it has this hump at the underside where the fold is.

So I commissioned a board on Etsy - 1" squares, Jaques-style, maple/cherry with an oak rim. And I really like it.

(Picture includes a pair of pens just for scale purposes. It's really small)

In a bunch of ways mouse pad chessboards are superior! In one catastrophic way it is inferior. The issue is due to the felts on the chessmen. They are intended to protect wood on wood and to facilitate smooth movement between the wooden parts. As a spill over these also work well on vinyl boards. However the baize or speed cloth fabric doesn't work well on the fabric of the mouse pad, it is just too much friction. What already uses mouse pads? Computer mice! They use Teflon glides to move smoothly....great!

So ... I had some spare glides from my mouse I had recently purchased....stuck them on one of my older chess pieces and pushed it around my board and it was glorious!

I immediately started researching and I ended up purchasing a sheet of 1mm thick Teflon from a local supplier, the glue was the difficult part. I had to import (I am in South Africa so difficult for me may not be for you) a sheet of 3M LSE300 glue, there are a few different thicknesses of glue, I went with the thinnest one. The chess set I used is the woodtek German Knight set that I have sanded down with 800gsm sandpaper to knock back the horrendous shiny finish on them....they are really just brown and tan plastic that has been hydrodipped and varnished for anyone interested. So the base sizes are exactly 24mm, 34mm and 36mm. One of the more difficult parts was fully removing the existing felt material, it seems they are also some type of 3M adhesive, given the amount of research I had to do for this project I suspect the 200LS glue, slightly less powerful than the one we will use but they weren't glueing Teflon, we are! I eventually had to use a product called eco40 (not sure about international products) and let the pieces sit for a few days, that helped to break down the glue to a state where some elbow grease and a metal dish scourer was able to clean them sufficiently to the discs.

So once the glue sheet arrived I stuck it to my Teflon sheet with bated breath as I had no one online speaking about this only some data that indicated that this adhesive will stick to Teflon....well, I took this and stuck it between 2 hardcover books and took some spring clamps and clamped it for a few days. Great success! (You probably don't need to be so overboard if you follow along but I had time anyway) The next step was to ask my sister very nicely to cut them out on her cricut. Critically Teflon cannot be laser cut! I would have liked to have been able to punch them out but I never had access to a punch large enough or strong enough.

The cutting process took some time and it dulled the blade and the adhesive does gunk up as it cuts through...

But eventually I had 31perfect discs and 3 less perfect discs.... Then I began sticking, this process was a little frustrating, the adhesive is very very stick but the slight imperfections between the chess piece bottom and the Teflon disc doesn't help it make perfect seamless bonds....at least not without effort! So, the hairdryer came out, a bit of heat both helps activate adhesive and helps plastic to become a little more pliable, it's Teflon so definitely not going to melt but using some heat I was able to get any stubborn discs firmly adhered to the piece. Then after all this they needed the edges to be polished up as they were a little....scratch/catchy on the mouse pad, so I polished every piece nicely around the edges and then polished up the bases all with the same 800grit sandpaper....as a consequence these piece now glide on the chessboard as smoothly as a computer mouse glides on a mouse pad.

Small 9" board & pieces

Cool pawn shop chess board, cheese vs mice.

The 1849 Morphy Cooke set has arrived.

Walnut and Maple

Mouse pad chessboard felts

The Chess Store