Leather Travel Chess Board

Hi all,

during corona I rediscovered chess for me. This, in combination with a gifted old leather bag grew the idea of producing a well-portable magnetic travel chess board.

To create this nice space-saving chess board you can take wherever you want, you will need the following things:

- a sheet of leather (appr. 30x30cm) - a 3D printer - wood (optional) filament - 32 little magnets - ferro-foil - cloth (appr. 30x30cm) - leather dye - sewing equipment - (spray) paint

Create the CAD files for your chess stones or be as lazy as I am and download some from the internet. Shout out to moka401 for the perfect design! Check him out on thingiverse:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4847312

What I did next was to create little cavities on the bottom of the stones. Here the magnets are glued in place. This is what I like doing in Tinker CAD, fast small changes in existing STL files. It is very convenient for such tasks.

Then print two sets of chess teams.

Then put in the magnets (I glued them in place). The small round magnets for the closing mechanism of GIZEH cigaret paper packages make very good magnets for such a task.

Then paint one set of the stones. I spray painted them

I was lucky that I got some real sheep leather from a bag that I could use.

Cut the leather according to the size of your chess stones. (8x8 little squares)

Paint the playing field (leather dye is very effective)

Make a sandwich of the leather, the magnetic ferro foil and the cloth. Sew the cloth to the leather, leaving space for the ferro foil to move a little bit. This is because you wand do roll this sandwich lateron. And if the ferro foil does not have enough space there is a lot of tension and you cannot roll it properly!

The magnetic attraction will keep your game alive and kicking even in windy situations.

The stones attach to each other and can be rolled up in the centre of the leather playing field.