Hand Cards and Chess

I haven't had much to post about recently, unfortunately. I was planning on finally growing flax after missing out last year because of my trip to Puerto Rico. But... after 2 years of fallow, the grass was too thick to plow by hand, and I didn't have a rototiller or anything to till the land with, so I had to miss out again this year. And my cotton plants died... sadly. I planted them too early this year, and they were sort of stuck in their pots, way too large for them, because it was still too cold outside, and I wasn't able to build the mini greenhouse for them either. Lots of sad news this year. But hopefully sometime in the future when I'm actually in the United States for more than a year I'll try again.

But anyways, on to happier subjects. I did have a couple of special projects recently for two different friends. One was a chessboard. I made it from Hard Maple and Black Walnut with a little bit of plywood/MDF for the base and the baseboard for the checkered pieces. The outside got a coat of carnauba wax, but I went ahead and did a French polish on the top surface which turned out really nicely. And the other project was my first set of hand cards that I made. The carder heads were made out of soft/curly maple and given chamfered edges, with turned Ash handles. The carders were outfitted with 90 tpi carding cloth and finished with two coats of boiled linseed oil. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking now!