Welcome to Certabo forum

Both posts in italian and in english are accepted on the forum to help everybody to provide contribution irrespective to geographical location. Object of the forum is to provide technical information on various items and help developer and users to personalise software for Certabo chessboards. User explicitly accepts the conditions of use of this forum here reported.

A brief introduction of user is always appreciated in section Welcome to….

Benvenuti nel forum di Certabo

Sul forum possono essere postati articoli sia in lingua italiana che inglese per permettere a tutti di dare il proprio contributo da diversi luoghi geografici. Il forum ha come scopo fornire informazioni tecniche in generale e aiutare gli sviluppatori ed utenti a personalizzare software per le scacchiere Certabo. L’utente accetta esplicitamente le condizioni del presente forum consultabili qui.

Un breve saluto del nuovo utente è sempre gradito nella sezione Benvenuti a….

Please or Register to create posts and topics.

Putting the chips on new pieces

PreviousPage 2 of 2
Hi,
For what it's worth. I solved the challenge of removing the felt off my pieces by soaking them in a tray filled 1mm with water. Less than 12 hours later I was able to peal off the felt without any trouble. I've replaced the old felt with a new set using using this.
Hope this helps.
Robert
Quote from Graham on December 6, 2020, 3:11 am
Quote from spaceboy68 on December 5, 2020, 12:20 am

I have a beautiful set of staunton pieces with billiard cloth under the base and I would like (if possible) to put the chips under that felt so it was invisible and the piece looked as perfect as before. wonder if that is possible and if people were doing that and how.

I think the key word here is "that" in "under that felt". I can't see how you will be able to lift the felt off the base of the piece without destroying the felt.

I am currently using an old plastic set where I removed the felt with a knife and used some sandpaper to remove any excess glue. I then attached a chip to the centre of the now bare bottom of the piece. Using the piece and the plastic frame that the chips came in I positioned the piece and frame on a new piece of felt (real felt this time, rather than billiard cloth) and then removed the piece while holding the frame still. This gave me a template to cut out a hole for the chip. This turned out to be harder than I expected and I always ended up tidying up the hole with a pair of scissors. I then cut a rough circle around this, bigger than the base of the piece, and glued it to the piece using Tacky Craft Glue (I was told normal PVA is too runny for felt). Once it dried I was then able to trim neatly around the base of the piece.

I cut the inner hole because my felt was advertised as 1mm thick but was actually slightly thicker than the chip, so it makes a nice support for the piece while the chip doesn't actually touch the board. If it had been the same thickness or slightly less I would then have glued a second layer to make the base of the piece one flat layer of felt.

I was able to be quiet aggressive on cleaning the pieces as these were cheap and old. I have a new set of Ebony/Boxwood pieces on the way and will probably attempt the same thing, but that will require a little bit more care! If the chips are nearer the size of the pieces (I have a set of 25mm chips to use) I might try and get some new billiard cloth and use that to cover the whole base instead of a ring of felt. Maybe a company that repairs pool/snooker tables can provide some offcuts as I need less than an A4 sheet for each colour of piece.

 

Hi Pietro, continuing this thread.
I can confirm that 20 mm fits on the larger pieces, i.e. King, Queen, Knight, Bishop, perfectly. They, however, stick out underneath the pawns by a couple of millimeters which kinda sucks.

In regards to possible reflection issues with the pieces, I tried a little experiment placing the metal pieces on the board at the same time with my regular wooden pieces with chips. As far as I could tell everything works fine, the software functioned normally without mistakes or errors on the software.

Quote from Pietro on December 6, 2020, 7:49 pm
Quote from Robert on December 5, 2020, 4:56 pm

Hello Pietro,

I too have recently purchased a set of chess pieces, in addition to my set of chess pieces, however these ones are not only for the smaller chess board but they are made of metal too. The metal is non-ferrous

Here's the link for the new chess pieces. So my question is this, given that the pawns measure about 17mm in diameter and the larger pieces are 20mm what size of discs can you supply? Assuming you have 15mm should I use this size the pawns and 20mm sized discs for the larger pieces or should I use the 15mm size for all of them?

See the attached for more images to give you context.

regards

Robert

 

Hello Robert

Very nice set ! I know italfama, they are not very far from us their sets are very famous. Ok i have question have you checked with the standard 20mm chips if they work ok? The kit looks quite small so probably there is not much metal. You just need to check with one piece as maybe fully metal piece can affect a bit. Anyhow we have some naked coils 15mm but those need to be embedded in the base, so i reckon it's not an option. The smallest we could go with encapsulated plastic is 18mm so i reckon it's about fine and antenna should not be much smaller than the current 20mm. Only thing we do not have and it's custom one if you need we can make (so it will take some weeks to make).

PM me eventually,  also if there is some other requests for that size 18mm from other Certabo friends let us know as we normally need to make in order of 1000+ so good if we get some other requests for those.

All the best

Pietro

 

Well, my new set of pieces arrived just before Christmas and I've been busy converting them for my board. This took a lot longer than I'd expected as halfway through I discovered the varnish on the boxwood pieces was faulty and I ended up re-varnishing them too! I've posted the full story and put lots of pictures on my web page:

https://goneill.co.nz/chess-pieces.php

If that's too much to read here is the summary:

  • Don't buy your new pieces where I bought mine! (I won't embarrass Pietro by naming them on his forum).
  • Metal weights in pieces can definitely affect the chips but I found a good solution is to use multiple layers of electricians PVC tape as an insulator between the weight and the chip: it's not the mass of the weight that's the problem, it's the metal itself.
  • It's worth waxing ebony pieces with something like Liberon Black Bison Paste.
  • If you really want to re-varnish your pieces you'll need some 400 and 600 (or 800) grade sandpaper,  a wipe-on polyurethane varnish and lots of time.

And here are a couple of photos:

Uploaded files:
  • You need to login to have access to uploads.
camfisher_nz, Lars Nowak and tobias have reacted to this post.
camfisher_nzLars Nowaktobias
Quote from Graham on February 5, 2021, 3:05 am

Well, my new set of pieces arrived just before Christmas and I've been busy converting them for my board. This took a lot longer than I'd expected as halfway through I discovered the varnish on the boxwood pieces was faulty and I ended up re-varnishing them too! I've posted the full story and put lots of pictures on my web page:

https://goneill.co.nz/chess-pieces.php

If that's too much to read here is the summary:

  • Don't buy your new pieces where I bought mine! (I won't embarrass Pietro by naming them on his forum).
  • Metal weights in pieces can definitely affect the chips but I found a good solution is to use multiple layers of electricians PVC tape as an insulator between the weight and the chip: it's not the mass of the weight that's the problem, it's the metal itself.
  • It's worth waxing ebony pieces with something like Liberon Black Bison Paste.
  • If you really want to re-varnish your pieces you'll need some 400 and 600 (or 800) grade sandpaper,  a wipe-on polyurethane varnish and lots of time.

And here are a couple of photos:

Hello Graham

Thank you very much for posting the instructions it was really great job! and be useful for many other.

Also good tip about electrical tape easy to apply yes sometime the shape or maybe the kind of alloy used may affect more rather then the actual mass. Actually we think more the specific shape till certain point. Small thickness of tape to increase the PVC shell thickness  will create a further gap and the interference drops quite fast with even some more physical spacing distance.

Thank you very much for sharing!

Pietro

PreviousPage 2 of 2