09 Two Kings
This project was inspired by a profound encounter with a distant cousin in India. Our attempts at conversation — my rudimentary Telugu and his fragmented English — were comical. Fortunately, chess stepped in. The game proved more eloquent than either of us, transforming our linguistic fumbles into a silent but intense dialogue of moves and countermoves.
In the ideation phase, I was greatly inspired by New York City's outdoor chess scene, and how it brought a variety of different people together, just like me and my cousin in India. Portability became a priority, which is why I started experimenting with ways to design a foldable chess board which also included storage for the pieces. The ritual of unfolding the board and setting up the pieces is part of the game.
The board and the pieces are made of mahogany and maple. Cuts were made on table saw and bandsaw, and it took a lot of sanding to get the playing surface to be flat. The small scale prototype I made was crucial to practice the cuts and the glue-up technique.
Now that the board was complete, I needed to embed magnets under each square so the pieces would center themselves automatically, improving the final playing experience. This took a lot of precision, especially with the drill press.
After the 2 parts of the board were complete, I began work on the chess pieces themselves. Since the CNC was the most efficient way to make the pieces, I designed the pieces with its limitations in mind, especially regarding undercuts and small details. I soon realized that the knight would be (by far) the most complicated piece to model.
