I recently started practicing turning chess men (knight first) and am ready to start turning a set. I first thought maybe cocobolo and olivewood or canarywood but after calculating the cost have not decided yet. After considerable thought I think I'll have more problems with the board construction than the men. Not sure which is the best way to approach making it. Anyone here have any advice? Also, I know how oily cocobolo is and not sure stabilizing will help. What wood would you use, keeping the board and men the same?

Ed, Ive made many chess boards and there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Some of this may sound very basic but you'd be surprised.
Fist you need to establish size, either the board or the piece. Pieces that are too big or too small for the board will detract from the overall look. Visit chess sites and you can easily find what size best fits what.
The board portion should have a good contrast, not necessarily black & white, but a good contrast.
As for board construction, wood choice is up to you, just be aware of the gluing properties of each species and act accordingly.
I follow the same method as David Marks, (his chess board can be found Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or ) but there are many instructions available on the web
Here are a couple of pics of variaous stages of completion.

Another thing about board construction is that it is typically glued to a substrate, like plywood. A substrate not only adds stability but an enormous amount of glue surface over the relatively small amount used to hold the squares together. As you can see in my photo, the strips used for the squares start out thin, so what you are doing is essentially adding another layer of veneer to a plywood substrate.
Which brings us to cocobolo,
It's definitely possible but it can be a difficult wood to work with. being very oily, as Ken said, doesn't take adhesives well, potential for bleeding into adjacent woods. and more.
A thin piece (square) on a chess board that is glued on 5 sides and effectively caged between adjacent pieces will certainly help eliminate or at least reduce problems but it's a risk/reward situation only you can decide.
  Care must be taken when working with these types of woods.

Thanks to all for your good help. Cocobolo was one of my favorite when I started with pens but have ruled it out for chess. I do like the opposing grain in Ed Weber's #3 board. If I match men with board my choices are limited to finding the board and men sized wood. I'm going for the wood this weekend. I'm looking forward to the challenge and will post my results.

Ed Weber wrote on Apr 10^th, 2015 at 9:52am:


Cool.  I learned a new term, "chatoyancy", although aware of it's existence. The abrupt change in grain direction that cause light reflection to change is what happens to crosscut zebrawood in the round. It is the appearance of transparency on two sides that makes the pens so fascinating to me. I think I've found the light color for my board if I can locate it. I already decided on Black Walnut for the dark. Just hope I can find both. Thanks.

How about Walnut and Osage?