Woodturning Chessmen

Here is comprehensive information on designing and turning your own chessmen, along with a fascinating history of the game. Color photos of dozens of museum pieces and reproductions illustrate the wide variety of chess-piece styles over the centuries.

Darlow provides details on designing and carving bishops’ miters and horses’ heads, as well as cutting crowns and battlements using a shop-made indexing attachment. He has drawn from authoritative reference works to create detailed drawings for eight sets of classic chessmen, and has included drawings for a set of his own design, which turners can copy or use to develop their own designs.

The gallery shows the varied styles of six contemporary turners. Softcover, 8 1/2" × 11", 168 pages, 2004.