One of my little hobbies is to design geeky chess games in which the pieces can be put together in such a way that they form a solid block. There are four designs so far:
Design IV
With the most recent design, I have tried to keep in mind the cost of producing a set more than in the earlier designs and also the user-friendliness of everything: In particular, I have stopped trying to fold the board into a box since everybody always loved the idea but hated playing on such a board…Instead, the pieces now fit neatly into a box in such a way that a checkerboard pattern is created and the way the pieces fit is very simple and less puzzle-like as in the previous versions.
The pieces in the images I handcrafted myself, so they’re not ideal. I’m currently in the final stages of organizing the production of a batch of sets for this design with the same workshop that also realized the Design II version in the photos below. So: Same quality as the pieces below, but in design IV. If you’re interested in obtaining one of those batches (only around 20!), let me know.
Design II
The most beautiful handcrafted version exists of design II (photo credit goes to Felix Sewing).:
This game made of walnut and maple was produced by Lucas Kannenberg from the workshop Monath + Menzel. It’s certainly the most elegant woodwork I have ever held in my hand. Here are the pieces. Note that apart from the king all pieces are made of a single block of wood!!
There is also a 3D printed version. Here you can also see the folding mechanism.
Design III
For this one, I gave up on the idea of making the board the box and instead focussed on an easy-to-produce design, and also designed the folding in such a way that both teams together form a single cube. For the board, it is all magnetic and also has a relief. My flatmate Emii produced a beautiful case for the folded board and pieces. This version I built from beechwood and mahogany (I hope that maybe someday Monath+Menzel will produce a version of that one as well!)
Again, the individual pieces:
Design I
The first game I built in 2010 when I lived in Turkey: I wanted to make use of the wood workshop of the foundation that I lived in and so came up with the idea of building a foldable chess game. I was mainly driven by the idea that, by designing the pieces in such a way that they would exactly fit into another and form a solid block. The challenge was then to design the board and pieces in such a way that the resulting shapes could still be recognized as the corresponding pieces. The result of this effort was this little chess game here.
Even though it’s a cute little thing (built from a Euro-plaquette!), I was never quite happy with it because it didn’t fulfil the challenge I had set myself: Neither did the pieces actually form a solid block, also the pieces themselves had to be put together from smaller bits. Moreover, the folded box didn’t actually keep the pieces from falling out on the side…this bugged me, hence I recently (on a very hungover weekend) decided (apart from never drinking alcohol again) to put some more effort into this problem, leading to the second design.
being but lumps - Paul Boes 