Black Walnut and Spalted Maple Chessboard

 

After hearing all the comments on how much my cutting board looked like a chess board I decided to build one, this way everyone can see the difference. 

For this project used a piece of spalted maple that I found in our firewood pile, along with some of the left over black walnut from my cutting board project. 

I started by sizing the walnut and maple into 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" sticks, then sliced them into 1/8" wafers on my crosscut sled. I glued the wafers to a piece of 1/2" MDF, clamping the edges together using cauls covered in packaging tape, and using a piece of bubble wrap and plywood to clamp them to them MDF.  

I used a book-matched set of figured black walnut for the back and added 1/4" maple for the inner border on both front and back.  I cut a 1/2" dado into the walnut outer border so it would slide over the MDF and then mitered the ends to fit. 

To hold the outer border together and to add a little more class I added some maple splines to the corners, and after a lot of sanding and a few coats of polyurethane, I am more than happy with the results.